Henrix wrote:
>
> On Wed, 05 Jul 2000, KYER, JEFFREY wrote:
> > Iron is mankind's pet. Bronze is much more of a bugger to work with.
>
> Depends on where you start. Bronze is much easier to work with if you think of
> time used in building the oven for smelting, the amount of coal used and so on.
True. But an iron work is much similar. And both are fixed constant installations. The problem with iron is the heat required, which requires charcoaling or, better yet, coke. Coal and wood just won't do.
> I participated in building a bronze oven and using it a couple of years ago, as
> part of my archaeology studies. That was quite fun, and it did not take too
Impressive! At least yours didn't burn down. =)
> long, I guess that building all you need, i.e. oven, bellows, moulds, could be
> done in a couple of days.
> The coaling (is that the English word?) and mining of bronze is another thing
> though.
Charcoaling -- coal is not sufficent to the task of working iron. And the problem with bronze is not the eas of working with it, but the material itself which is why ancient folks were willing to make the massive (relatively) investments that "large scale" ironworks required.
> In short, bronzeworking is relatively easy and requires far less resources
> than ironworking. It is, as you say, harder to produce larger and more durable
IF you can find the tin. In Glorantha, of course, we've got natural ga-metal. Hmmm. You're probably right on this, as casting and alloying the bronze is the rough part.
> items. Bronze can, however, be very flexible (bronze has, in fact, often been
> used in springs), but requires more controlled alloys than you normally can get
Bronze is used as springs in modern instrumentation where the content and annealing can be controlled with great precision. I suppose it could be used as leaf springs in an older setting. Certainly the torsion equipment of Roman siegecraft was bronzework (and the only thing the engineers carried from site to site, making a great savings on travel time -- something that the siege trains of medieval times lacked)
The problem with bronze though, is that its britle failure. Iron (and steel) will bend far more readily, far past the point where bronze will snap like a twig. This means that bronze weapons must be more sturdily contructed and hence heavier. Iron's lighter and more supple. And that's why there's no bronze chainmail, or at least, none that I've heard of.
> using simpler techniques. I think this is one point where the Gloranthan smiths'
> songs come in.
Yes, that's true. Magic does change the equation considerably.
> Bronze in the real world is the name not for one alloy, but for a whole group
> of copper based alloys, with various different other components, the most
> common being tin, with perhaps lead as a good second (red bronze), zink or even
> arsenic. I doubt this is the case in Glorantha, though.
Bronze is copper-tin, usually. The tin is what gives it the hardness and strength. And tin is very hard to find with ancient mining methods. The tin mines of Spain were a prime objective in the Punic and Luistitanian wars. Haven't heard anyone using lead historically, except perhaps for ornamentation. Lead is wierd stuff and often too dense to meld well with something light like copper.
Jeff
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