Sword of Goujian

[Tjurved]

Hello some unusual blade I found info about yesterday and thought I share it. Perhaps not very bushcraft related... Sword of Goujian more then 2000 years old and still very sharp and almost no sign of time. Found it quite amazing . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword_of_Goujian

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6wcFzBTa7Q

1:15 is a paper cutting test .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKil2sTMako

 

[bopdude]

Interesting videos

 

[Janne]

What amazes me is how late the Chinese left the Bronze Age and entered the Iron Age.

The sword in the videos is amazing. But I doubt the grave belonged to that king.

 

[boatman]

Bronze swords can crop up in the most unexpected places. One of the strangest is the story of the bronze sword found in the hands of a dead Irishman in the 18th Century.
https://www.rom.on.ca/en/blog/weapon-wednesday-the-long-history-of-an-irish-bronze-age-sword

 

[HillBill]

Indeed.....Roman Bronze sword and other artifacts found on Oak island near Nova Scotia. Romans could have found the Americas over a thousand years before Columbus, and vikings.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...-World-Columbus-according-radical-theory.html

 

[Blundstoned Love]

Indeed.....Roman Bronze sword and other artifacts found on Oak island near Nova Scotia. Romans could have found the Americas over a thousand years before Columbus, and vikings.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...-World-Columbus-according-radical-theory.html

Yea, that was on the Oak Island TV programme and an expert said it was modern. Didn't explain how it got there though, but Oak Island seem to attract some really flakey people

 

[Janne]

The Romans did not use Bronze for their gladius' they used steel.
It is believed this harder cutting, steel weapon together with the tactics made them virtually invincible.
A bronze sword got blunt and quite useless, but the Roman one still cut.
A Gladius was mainly a trusting weapon, and had to be made from steel to work.

The Oak island artefact is bronze. I beleve no other Roman gladii ever found were bronze.

 

[HillBill]

It was iron to be fair rather than steel any carbon in roman blades was there through the forging process and was incidental more than deliberate. Ceremonial blades a lot of the time were made of bronze as was some ceremonial armour.

The Romans did not use Bronze for their gladius' they used steel.
It is believed this harder cutting, steel weapon together with the tactics made them virtually invincible.
A bronze sword got blunt and quite useless, but the Roman one still cut.
A Gladius was mainly a trusting weapon, and had to be made from steel to work.

The Oak island artefact is bronze. I beleve no other Roman gladii ever found were bronze.

 

[Janne]

Iron with a bit of carbon so steel. And other metal impurities. Pure Iron is pretty useless. Too soft.
And difficult if not impossible for them to make. But the Romans knew very well how to make steel. Several swords are made from different steels of varying hardness and Carbon content, similar to the Japanese technique.
Some are found to be made from one piece of steel, but with varying Carbon content within the homogenous piece!

Still it is quite impressive that they could produce the huge amount of steel / iron weapons they did.

A neighbour of ours discovered after a land slide what was found to be the largest Roman furnace found outside Italy. Trust me, it was small!

 

[boatman]

A bronze sword is unlikely to be blunted in a single combat and both bronze and iron can be resharpened. A BBC documentary showed a fight between a bronze and iron sword. The bronze chopped into the iron blade and both suffered damage but if that fight had been for real both swords would have still been lethal. The contest was realistic in one way with the bronze sword representing a mature technology and the iron sword the early stages of iron development.
However, it is uncertain if swords were clashed deliberately but rather parried by shields.