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Post by tsmspace on Dec 7, 2019 19:15:49 GMT
I spent life thinking that many shapes associated with swords I saw were based on aspects of blacksmithing and recreated with casting in order to sell the sword because it reminded buyers of these popular shapes that were the result of hammer shaping. Here is an example of how I would have imagined a quality leaf-bladed sword to be shaped.
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Post by MOK on Dec 8, 2019 2:33:41 GMT
If anything, it was the other way around, since cast copper and bronze blades came WAY before forged iron.
And there actually is at least one demonstrable form of that in the archaeological record, in the Neolithic stone axes made to mimic cast copper ones to the point that they even include a representation of the casting seam.
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christain
Member
It's the steel on the inside that counts.
Posts: 2,835
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Post by christain on Dec 8, 2019 20:22:22 GMT
It's been my understanding that all early bronze swords, daggers, and axes were cast from molds, then hammer-hardened on the edges. The leaf-blade shape wasn't so much a result of the hammering, but totally intentional. A leaf-shaped blade leaves a big, nasty wound.
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Post by AndiTheBarvarian on Dec 8, 2019 22:41:10 GMT
There are some swords from the early iron age found here in Bavaria that obviously are made as a copy of bronze leaf blades because "that's how a sword has to look like".
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Post by tsmspace on Dec 10, 2019 5:21:34 GMT
If anything, it was the other way around, since cast copper and bronze blades came WAY before forged iron. And there actually is at least one demonstrable form of that in the archaeological record, in the Neolithic stone axes made to mimic cast copper ones to the point that they even include a representation of the casting seam. I know that you can forge copper. I realize that we have to make our understandings based on evidence, but you aren't going to suddenly , out of the stone age, suddenly start casting bronze. There is a significant period of time with no history, but where we have to make guesses about how technology might have gradually evolved from step stone-age, through step copper and gold age, finally arriving at certain history, with the bronze age. During this time, (thousands of years, possibly tens of thousands of years of metal in use) metal would have been a continuous development of experimentation at all sizes and statuses of society. Mostly, for a very long time, the only metal would have been gold, which can be shaped without heat or at low "camp-fire" temperatures, and also would have naturally occurred on the surface, sometimes in large exposed deposits. Copper is not actually found in veins in the modern era, and because of its properties it is assumed that mostly, pre-antiquity, it also did not exist on the surface. So, although it is possible to discover veins of copper, it is very possible that most of the copper age still used copper that was produced from smelting ores. Smelting ores is not a task for a monkey, and even producing copper from ores is a very sophisticated activity. anyway, I am going to assume that forging of metals was AROUND for that whole time, and that although casting was used for many of the artifacts discovered in the bronze age, forging was possible with the same metals, and would have been more accessible to most people, as casting is actually quite a bit more sophisticated, requiring quite a bit more infrastructure, than forging . I personally would argue that forged gold would have been the first available metal, and may have been the only available metal on any type of scale for a significant period of human development, possibly thousands or tens of thousands of years. which is why I still think that despite the incredibly sophisticated egyptian casting techniques, I still entertain that tools would have been regularly forged the world around before that time.
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Post by Timo Nieminen on Dec 10, 2019 7:01:52 GMT
First, forging predates smelting by at least 5,000 years. The oldest known copper artifacts are from about 10,000BC, while copper smelting developed around 5000BC. Using native copper, of course. The oldest gold artifacts turn up somewhat later, during the 5th millennium. Even after casting was in use, forging was still common (generally, for copper, gold, and bronze, thin sheets were usually forged, and complex shapes were usually cast). A few points:
- Outside some parts of North America, native copper is rare, and is usually found in small pieces.
- Copper is difficult to weld.
- Native gold is usually found in very small pieces (some large nuggets are found, but gold dust is much more common).
- Gold dust is difficult to weld (gold is easy to weld, but really tiny pieces are difficult).
Old World pre-Copper Age copper artifacts (i.e., copper artifacts from before copper smelting was discovered) are almost all small ornaments such as beads. You can make beads out of small pieces - just cold forge them into a thin sheet (which might need annealing to avoid excessive work hardening), and roll the sheet into a bead. Early meteoric iron objects were often similar - iron cold-forged flat and rolled into beads. If you can't weld copper, and want large pieces, you need to melt the small pieces and cast a larger ingot. From that, you can make larger objects. This explains why almost all of the objects are small ornaments. In North America, in the Western Great Lakes, large copper objects were forged, from about 4000BC. These people don't appear to ever have developed smelting (nor did smelting reach them from Mesoamerica). Objects include spear points 5cm long, large beads, axe-like blades from 1 to 5cm long. The big beads are made by making a big sheet, and rolling it into a multi-layered ball (there is a similarly made pre-smelting large copper object from Europe: a multi-layered rolled-up mace head). The layers are separate, rather than welded together. Once you start smelting copper (probably first done accidentally during pottery making, via glazes made from copper ores), you know that copper can be melted, because the temperatures needed for smelting copper (at least with the usual chemical reactions) are higher than the melting point of copper. Thus, if you smelt copper accidentally, you'll get little molten balls of copper on your pot. If you do it deliberately, you'll get a crucible full of molten copper. Now you can start forging large copper objects! The melting point of gold is a little lower than that of copper, so now you can melt your gold dust, and either cast large objects, or cast ingots and forge large objects from them. The Copper Age had begun (the Copper Age basically being defined as the time between copper smelting making copper much more common, and the wide use of bronze (at which point, enter the Bronze Age)). The key technological development that enabled this was high-fired pottery (stoneware (and later, porcelain)). The temperature for firing earthenware are too low to smelt copper, but stoneware firing temperatures are high enough. Now there was a choice of two technologies, for both copper and gold: forging and casting. Presumably it took some time to discover good methods for making molds to cast complex object, and the method of choice was initially forging, with the only casting being of the ingot that is then forged. The next step: bronze, which gives a mechanically superior metal. Both forging and casting were used. Thin objects were typically forged because it's difficult to cast thin sheets (so helmets and armour were usually forged). The next step: iron. The smelting temperature is higher than for copper, so it needed time. Once furnaces were hot enough, iron could be smelted. Back to forging as the main method for making objects, since the melting point of iron is higher than the smelting temperature. Once the Chinese developed the blast furnace (c. 2000 years ago), they could produce liquid cast iron (i.e., iron with about 3-4% carbon) directly from the smelter, and they also developed methods to decarburise it to make it forgeable. If brittleness wasn't a problem, they could just cast the finished object. Back to both forging and casting being usable (as long as the brittleness of cast iron was acceptable). Later, much later, our technology improved enough to allow the casting of iron and steel, as well as the casting of cast iron. The famous iron dagger of Tutankhamen is interesting. It's meteoric iron, and very large for a pre-Iron Age artifact. It's welded, and if you're welding iron, you're doing it hot. So it might also be hot-forged, unlike the earliest meteoric iron and telluric iron objects, which are cold-forged.
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Post by Timo Nieminen on Dec 10, 2019 7:03:40 GMT
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Post by MOK on Dec 10, 2019 8:06:57 GMT
Yes, you can and people did forge copper, but nobody made swords that way.
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Post by Timo Nieminen on Dec 10, 2019 8:36:41 GMT
Yes, you can and people did forge copper, but nobody made swords that way. Depending on what you call "sword" and "dagger", maybe not or maybe yes. Forged copper daggers, which could have blades over 30cm long, were made, by the Tlingit. Their daggers were also made with shipwreck or imported iron. Copper examples include some made from native copper, and some made from imported smelted copper, which were not cast. Some were made purely by stock removal, but cutting and grinding a chunk of native copper (no dislocation of the crystal structure by forged, and no trace of annealing to relieve work-hardening). Some were forged. One example: On this style, the mid-rib is a separate piece pinned to the blade (AFAIK, generally there is one-mid, with no partner on the other side), with the pins soldered in place. On this one, the pins are visible: Another style: Photos are from here: warriorpublications.wordpress.com/2015/09/30/knives-and-daggers-of-the-pacific-northwest-coast/Detail of manufacture here: www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/metallurgy-of-the-tlingit-dene-and-eskimo/
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Post by MOK on Dec 10, 2019 8:50:52 GMT
Depending on what you call "sword" and "dagger", maybe not or maybe yes. Forged copper daggers, which could have blades over 30cm long, were made, by the Tlingit. Their daggers were also made with shipwreck or imported iron. Copper examples include some made from native copper, and some made from imported smelted copper, which were not cast. Fair point, of course, but has anyone actually ever called them swords instead of daggers? (Personally, I'm partial to Guy Windsor's definition, by which a blade is a sword if it's functionally meaningful to distinguish between the strong and weak of it. It runs into some unconventional conclusions with lighter gladii and the like, though.)
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Post by Timo Nieminen on Dec 10, 2019 9:30:26 GMT
The most common type of these daggers are made of bone, and are purely stabbing weapons. I guess that the copper versions were also just intended for stabbing, so "dagger" is fair, despite their length. Copper doesn't give a good cutting edge, so that will be the most effective way to use them. Here is a NW Coast (Tlingit?) copper weapon that's definitely (short) sword length: It's described as a club, so presumably not sharp enough to cut. From www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/northwest-coast/tlingit/tlingit-collection/weapons(The blog post linked above labels one of the iron examples as "dagger/short sword".)
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Post by tsmspace on Dec 10, 2019 9:55:12 GMT
Yes, you can and people did forge copper, but nobody made swords that way. well, maybe they never made swords during such times as those, because swords are huge and just like today, most cutting happens with very small knives. but just like today we have people making all kinds of impliments, I can imagine that during the span of time we are talking about. (from the beginning of artifacts until today) a lot of things might have been done and lost to time. So, for arguments about lost to time,,, well, consider the value of gold. lets say that gold made tools, and people were continuously recycling old tools into new ones by either smelting the tools or simply refurbishing them and passing them on to another user. a large gold tool would be pretty valuable. If you had a chunk of gold the size of a sword, it would be hard to imagine people willing to just let the gold go to waste,,, they would eventually use the gold to make more tools. This logic would also apply to other metals throughout the ages, despite their significantly lower value. Even a wealthy and well respected individual might not be buried with a full size sword, and if they were then the chance of looting is very high. following this rational, it's imaginable that there WERE such large tools made from gold or copper, but because of the value of that amount of metal, there's virtually no chance that one would be preserved. but just the same, it's also imaginable that a huge blade is actually just not feasible until a pretty high level of sophistication, and a small knife is the tool that will work, and so no one really made tools that don't work, so they made only small tools. mostly, even today with the technology we have, a small razor blade (box cutter) is the best tool for every single cutting task the average human will ever encounter. you can't even cut efficiently with huge knives or swords.
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Post by MOK on Dec 10, 2019 12:10:13 GMT
well, maybe they never made swords during such times as those, because swords are huge and just like today, most cutting happens with very small knives. but just like today we have people making all kinds of impliments, I can imagine that during the span of time we are talking about. (from the beginning of artifacts until today) a lot of things might have been done and lost to time. So, for arguments about lost to time,,, well, consider the value of gold. lets say that gold made tools, and people were continuously recycling old tools into new ones by either smelting the tools or simply refurbishing them and passing them on to another user. a large gold tool would be pretty valuable. If you had a chunk of gold the size of a sword, it would be hard to imagine people willing to just let the gold go to waste,,, they would eventually use the gold to make more tools. This logic would also apply to other metals throughout the ages, despite their significantly lower value. Even a wealthy and well respected individual might not be buried with a full size sword, and if they were then the chance of looting is very high. following this rational, it's imaginable that there WERE such large tools made from gold or copper, but because of the value of that amount of metal, there's virtually no chance that one would be preserved. Aside from their complete physical absence, there's also no pictorial, textual or oral evidence for the existence of swords like that - which doesn't mean that it's impossible, of course, but it does mean there's no real reason to think it's likely, let alone actually true. (Plus, gold in particular would make a pretty rubbish blade, being so soft and malleable. Better materials for that purpose were available to most stone age cultures.) There are plenty of paddle-like clubs, like the one Timo posted above or the Maori patu, or things like the Mesoamerican macuahuitl and Oceanian clubs lined with shark teeth, and you could potentially count those as swords or proto-swords, but with the possible exception of the above copper club they were not made of metal in the way proposed by your sketch up there. And the sword forms that immediately preceded and then evolved into leaf-blades like the Greek xiphos were also not made like that. So, I do think you're right in that what you used to think was indeed wrong. Well, that depends on what exactly you're cutting and to what end! Clearing undergrowth with a pocket knife would take forever, and it would make a mess of carving a roast, too...
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Post by randomnobody on Dec 10, 2019 19:14:23 GMT
Well, that depends on what exactly you're cutting and to what end! Clearing undergrowth with a pocket knife would take forever, and it would make a mess of carving a roast, too... Hey, watch what you say about pocket knives. This thing can handle a roast just fine, and doesn't even print in my pocket. (Yes, I know, but still)
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Post by buliwyf on Jan 4, 2020 18:49:42 GMT
If time was taken a bronze blade can be as sharp or sharper than iron. Although it dosent hold it's edge very well because the blade is much softer than iron and carbon steel. I always wanted a bronze sword so when I got a chance to buy one on face book from Neil Burridge off the Bronze age swords page I went for it. believe me it's so sharp you could shave with it and it's very light and fast. I have the Ewart Park a Classic leaf shaped blade from the late Bronze Age. The original was found in the River Thames at Chiswick (West London). Total length of sword 64.5cm without pommel. Heres a link to an old page of Neils pay no attention to the prices they arent even close. lihttp://www.bronze-age-swords.com/index.htmnk My sword.
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Post by Jordan Williams on Jan 5, 2020 2:47:22 GMT
Sharper than iron? How so?
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Post by Timo Nieminen on Jan 5, 2020 3:28:51 GMT
Should be quite possible. High-tin bronzes of the types used for swords are harder than iron. Both can be work-hardened, and high-tin bronzes can still be harder than iron. The very high tin bronzes used in China even more so.
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Post by MOK on Jan 5, 2020 14:39:24 GMT
Razors were made of bronze, too.
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Post by AndiTheBarvarian on Jan 5, 2020 14:54:17 GMT
Metals Vickers hardness: Tin (Sn) 5 Aluminum (Al) 25 Gold (Au) 35 Copper (Cu) 40 Pure iron (Fe) 80 (ca. 1 HRC) Good tin bronze (Cu + 10% Sn) 220 (ca. 20 HRC) Mild steel 140 Hardened steel 900 (extreme) (ca. 68 HRC)
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