Right now if you go mining with a regular weapon, at some point your weapon will become damaged permanently.

What I'd like to see is whetstones being able to remove that damage. A person with craft weapon ranks could use that stone to fix a chipped blade.

Each application removes one -1 dmg penalty stroke.

So a weapon that has -8 would require 8 uses of a whetstone.

Seems to me a good idea'd be not to go mining ore with a sword.

Ooh, if it really does this sort of damage to weapons, that'd be so awesome. Now we need a chance of weapon damage when using alchemist's fire!

More on topic, I disagree with this. Notching a blade won't be fixed with a simple whetstone, you'll need a smith to actually administer repairs, or better yet, get a new weapon.

alchemist's fire isn't that hot to melt the weapons.

It's more like some chemical component that can burn easily like a "Molotov cocktail".

But mining with weapons isn't "smart" at all. I wouldn't like to see people running at the cleaning wagon to gather trash items to waste in mining.

It's acceptable that you can use a dagger to remove a gem from a cave wall, but one that you can actually "see".

Just my opinion.