This may be the greatest Byrne Board thread ever, and it comes about with no John Byrne input at all:

“Wolverine’s claws vs a lightsaber? Please help me settle this argument. I say that the lightsaber would not cut through the claws, they say otherwise. Ground rules are that I’m using Wolverine as established in the Claremont/Byrne run.”

“A lightsaber seems to be limited somehow, since jedi knights don’t just cut everything they see Ginzu knife-style, so my money is on Wolvie. I kinda remember the Shiars using lightsaber-like weapons, so it might already HAVE been answered on canon!”

“If we assume Wolverine’s adamantium must have a melting point, for it to have been able to have been shaped and joined to him, then we must assume that enough prolonged contact with a lightsabre would create enough heat to melt its way through the claws. (Reference Qui Gon Jinn’s use of the lightsabre on the blast doors on the Trade Federation command ship.) If we are dealing with just the Byrne/Claremont Wolverine, then we must accept that only the points of his claws are sharp. In theory, they could claw through a lightsabre’s blade, but ultimately they would do no damage to the blade, as it would just reform after their passing. The way for Wolverine to damage a lightsabre is to go after the blade generating mechanism itself. Now for the blade to maintain enough contact to eventually melt through the claws, we must also assume that Wolverine is not fighting actively, otherwise the poor Jedi doesn’t have a chance. So we must presume that he is unconscious, his claws have remained unsheathed, and/or he is otherwise under the spell of some Jedi Mind Trick, which I find unlikely. So you can take this as a qualified yes, the lightsabre, under a very specific set of circumstances, would be able to ‘cut’ through Wolverine’s claws.”

“What about if the light sabre sliced through a major artery cauterising the edges - I would have thought that would slow him down a little.”

“Now, we know that lightsabers can eventually liquify many metals to intense heat.  So, if a lightsaber were going against a claw, the claw may stop it for a time.  But as that time goes on, the claw will become superheated.  As metal is a great conductor of energy, that heat will travel down.  So, the connective tissues heat up, burn, basically are destroyed.  Then the claw falls off of the arm much like a bone being tossed aside from a rack of babyback ribs. Libersaber wins.”

“But, we’re talking about Wolverine.  He has a healing factor, that is shown to be able to regenerate very rapidly, which is going to slow down this destruction of tissue considerably, leaving Logan far more than enough time to skewer any Jedi that gets within distance.”

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