Bronze age knives

[Dreadhead]

Toddy i dont think the handle resembles a knuckle duster i think its a full handle with holes tae use less material and take some weight away which is perfectly understandable alongside the idea that the spine is tae add strength tae compromise with material again.

but aye your right i would never consider a bronze blade in the bush. tis purely a fancy i have

 

[Toddy]

Not my specialism, sorry....Robbie might well know though. Dave Budd and Andy Mac too, they're metallugists

I know that bronze will bend while earlish iron, cast iron that is, not worked meteoritic stuff, will break. I know that hammered iron, properly tempered, beats them all into a cocked hat though.....where steel comes in

Bronze polishes beautifully, and gleams in contrast agin the silvery shine of polished iron when used as fixings.
The Romans were high on the whole status symbol thing for officers, so maybe ?

Copper tools, as stone carvers are very effective though, so that's a whole other matter, before someone asks. Basically the copper is soft enough that particle of granite become embedded in the edge so effectively it's stone cutting stone, not soft copper. Just like us drilling through stone with a wooden stick

I have to confess to becoming incredibly dubious about claims on reenactor sales sites.
Some are very, very, very good; very authentic, but there are an awful lot chasing sales and sometimes reality goes out the window when something that has an appeal looks like selling. Caveat emptor.


cheers,
Toddy

 

[Toddy]

Hey, I like the look of throwing knives, yet they're damned all use for anything else something about the symmetry I think, so no down on you for liking the look of the knife.

I think that if they were really after saving metal they'd have just tanged that blade. That holed handle is very complex casting while the blade screams simplicity, so.....somehow they don't mesh, iimmc.

cheers,
M

 

[HillBill]

Bronze polishes beautifully, and gleams in contrast agin the silvery shine of polished iron when used as fixings.
The Romans were high on the whole status symbol thing for officers, so maybe ?

Aye, it was a status thing. Roman officers were not really expected to be in the thick of a fight, more stood behind the ranks giving orders and keeping an eye on the lines.

Similar i suppose to Wellingtons infantry officers. They were all given a light infantry sabre, but never really expected to use it as the troops did the fighting, not them. They were total carp in use too by all accounts. Yet still they had to go into combat with these inferior weapons

 

[shaggystu]

.....Bronze polishes beautifully, and gleams in contrast agin the silvery shine of polished iron when used as fixings.
The Romans were high on the whole status symbol thing for officers, so maybe ?....

that could well be the reason, or i could just be completely wrong about the whole thing

 

[Dreadhead]

Hey, I like the look of throwing knives, yet they're damned all use for anything else something about the symmetry I think, so no down on you for liking the look of the knife.

I think that if they were really after saving metal they'd have just tanged that blade. That holed handle is very complex casting while the blade screams simplicity, so.....somehow they don't mesh, iimmc.

cheers,
M

aaah now i understand you, good point indeed.

 

[Ogri the trog]

Just how big were these blades?

I'm thinking that if it were table cutlery, the user would use the wide spine to press upon with his index finger to cut his food - lightweight table knife, strong for its size and high (ish) status!

Where do I collect my prize?

Ogri the trog

 

[shaggystu]

Aye, it was a status thing. Roman officers were not really expected to be in the thick of a fight, more stood behind the ranks giving orders and keeping an eye on the lines....

only just noticed this.

so the half remembered fact that i had in my head, that in roman times good bronze made better swords than iron, is all wrong then?

 

[ged]

...so the half remembered fact that i had in my head, that in roman times good bronze made better swords than iron, is all wrong then?

Not necessarily. Bronze is relatively easy to produce with primitive resources and it is a very forgiving material. You can bend it. Iron produced in primitive ways tends to have a very high carbon content (of the order of five percent) and this makes it very brittle. It won't bend, it will break.

Steels with carbon contents in the one percent region, which are more flexible than iron and so of more use in e.g. bladed tools, are much more difficult to produce without modern infrastructure. Steels were probably just very difficult to get hold of a couple of thousand years ago. For something like a broadsword, I don't think it would matter very much whether or not it held a great edge as long as it didn't break. Bronze might just have been the economic or pragmatic option.

 

[shaggystu]

Not necessarily. Bronze is relatively easy to produce with primitive resources and it is a very forgiving material. You can bend it. Iron produced in primitive ways tends to have a very high carbon content (of the order of five percent) and this makes it very brittle. It won't bend, it will break.

Steels with carbon contents in the one percent region, which are more flexible than iron and so of more use in e.g. bladed tools, are much more difficult to produce without modern infrastructure. Steels were probably just very difficult to get hold of a couple of thousand years ago. For something like a broadsword, I don't think it would matter very much whether or not it held a great edge as long as it didn't break. Bronze might just have been the economic or pragmatic option.

my mixture of half remembered history and less than half understood metallurgy led me to pretty much the conclusions that you've outlined there ged. it's my understanding that the iron age came about mainly due to the socio-economic factors of the period. i'll take your word for it that bronze is easier to produce in a primative way than iron, but bronze production has the downside of being entirely dependant upon international trade. you obviously need both copper and tin to produce bronze and AFAIK you never find the two things in the same place (i guess they like to grow in different soils, a bit like trees), but to make iron all you really need is some iron ore, something to burn, and a bloke with big arms and a hammer. to make good iron however requires quite a lot of time/effort/skill/resources. from what i understand early iron tools were made mainly out of necessity, not because they were better at all. for the purposes of cutting tools the advance of quality goes something like; flint - steel, with bronze and iron being popular for reasons other than cutting ability. economics wins out nearly every time