Also would love to get an understanding of the material that a shifting weapon is made from.
Can I have a sword (metal, leather) shift into a bow (wood, string)? If I shift into a bow, do I need to string the bow? What about a sling (cloth)?
Is there such a thing as a metal bow?
Also what about special materials? Does this mean that you can’t make a bow out of any special material that isn’t wood?
For me in general I don’t think that any/many/most of these things would break the game to allow them to work, however RAW suggests precious materials remain the same, though nothing is said for anything else, this seems this was intended as a positive bonus but in the case of something like orichalcum, as a metal, would stop you shifting into something that contained key alternate material.
Maybe you could state that changing into a metal weapon into a sling makes a chainmail like cloth to use for the weapon, maybe changing your bow into a sword grants the same properties of a standard sword (damage & perhaps durability?), it just happens to be made of wood