Marc Kaden Ridgeway
Member
Retired Global Moderator
Awful lot of leaving and joining going on here for me .... And gosh I can't recall doing a bit of i
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Post by Marc Kaden Ridgeway on Oct 2, 2013 21:48:32 GMT
The fittings are brass ... The original had bronze ... Though in China the two are ambiguous and almost interchangeable . I have been advised that there is likely no true bronze casting coming out of China ... Sword wise
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Post by stickem on Oct 3, 2013 1:33:10 GMT
Thanks for the clarification, Marc. Interesting to know other jian advertised as having solid bronze fittings are brass as well. This one from Hanwei comes to mind: kultofathena.com/product.asp?item=SH1013Perhaps some things get lost in translation, but you'd expect a manufacturer with as big a US presence as Hanwei to get the description right... I learn something new every time I come to SBG. Thanks for the head's up
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Marc Kaden Ridgeway
Member
Retired Global Moderator
Awful lot of leaving and joining going on here for me .... And gosh I can't recall doing a bit of i
Posts: 8,778
|
Post by Marc Kaden Ridgeway on Oct 3, 2013 1:46:08 GMT
Please don't take my word as gospel. I am only passing on what the bronze expert told me. There has been lots of confusion in Chinese/American translation about Zinc/Copper/bronze/brass...
I do not know for sure that the Hanwei is brass not bronze ... but here is what the bronze expert I consulted with said :
" Bronze and brass are somewhat flexible terms but to my knowledge there are no actual bronze castings coming out of china, only brass. My personal experience with bronze from China is that it tends to have a very high proportion of zinc, making it something like brass and not bronze. The color of those castings looks more like brass to me, but as I said, the castings themselves look fine as far as I can tell."
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Post by stickem on Oct 3, 2013 3:28:18 GMT
Understood. No worries. No interest in litigating against Hanwei or anything :lol: Certainly the metallurgy standards in China differ from the ones in the US with iron-based metals, so no reason why copper-based metals shouldn't differ as well. I had a similar issue come up when I was looking to buy some fittings called yamagane in their description. Since yamagane is copper that has other elements in it because it hasn't been refined, basically it may be brass or bronze or who knows what, something else with copper in it. So when I asked the vendor to clarify what they were made of, he acted as if I was from Mars... as if you bump into yamagane every day where he's from. So this is what I mean by something lost in translation. I have always liked bronze and had a hard time liking brass, so maybe I am just anal about this delineation. My understanding is bronze is typically copper + tin, while brass is typically copper + zinc. So your bronze expert is probably going by this standard. In which case, if the Chinese use zinc as the alloying agent to the copper when making sword fittings rather than using tin, then they should be labeled as brass, IMO. Ok, stepping off soapbox now and returning you all back to your regularly scheduled programming of Chinese sword porn
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