Re: waxing leather



Dwight E. Howell wrote:
Chilla wrote:
Sorry dude, but copper is and always has been a common element. Heat up malachite and you get copper. Iron is a smelting process, then it has to be refined in the forge, so it was by far a more expensive process.



You think copper and its ores are common? Maybe you're confused because you can find native copper?

Copper ore is not common compared to iron ore.


True, but I wasn't comparing it to iron in commonality, I was saying copper was a common element, and it still is.

The main difference being copper was mostly extracted from malachite, whereas iron was mined or, as in the case with bog iron, collected.


Most of this planet is iron. You can find workable iron ore most every place though the amounts may be small. Heck if you drag a strong magnet across local fields you will find lumps of iron ore stuck to them.


Cool, and if you ever find a piece of pure iron, take it to a smith. FYI: Trivial pursuit information, Carbon is the most common element on this planet (not a metal, but information worthy to store in a brain cell).


Learning to smelt iron ore was the trick but once they did learn how to do that iron became a heck of lot cheaper than copper and its alloys.


Historically not, in the late bronze age, iron age, it really only became cheaper as industry grew up around it, in the later medieval period.

The main way to get copper was to crush malachite and melt it. Native copper isn't that common. Melt an ingot, add a little tin, and pour into a mould. Pour a sword, pour an axe, or pour a knife. Bronze sheets were made by pouring copper between two pieces of granite, then hammered (cold) to the required thickness. The sheets would then be shaped to say a muscle cuirass.


The main way to get iron in England was to collect bog iron, and smelt it into a nasty chunk of bloomery iron, then it would need to be refined on a forge. Both fairly time consuming processes, and this is before it can be made into anything.

The Romans were an exception, the Romans had industry, and the smiths would buy iron rods that they would fashion. Behind this you would see iron ore shipped to smelting facilities, then refining operations to finally being made into a salable item. Mass production = cheaper prices. Everywhere else it was not, due to the lack of supporting industries.

With the transformation of the Roman Empire into a controlling religious power, the industries supporting it collapsed. From the dark ages to the middle of the medieval period iron became very expensive.

This is why you see the common armour (for those that could afford it) being mail (hollywood would call it chain mail ugh). From mail they had the transition period where armour had strips of sheet metal replacing some of mail, to finally plate armour. These were still expensive, but demonstrates that production methods were getting to a point that iron and steel were becoming easier to obtain.


Right now I'd say copper is heading toward being a semiprecious metal. People are tearing apart vacant homes and tearing down power lines to get the stuff. If you sell scrap copper you have to give your finger prints in my home state.


If you go by the prices of metals copper is still abundant, I buy mine granulated for $4 a kilo. We produce a lot of metal here, so the prices are definitely better for us. Annual production of copper around the globe is 6 billion tonnes.



Tin ore is down right uncommon and you don't have bronze without tin. A nation with tin could get rich on the tin trade. England has tin deposits and I've seen claims that tin may have been one reason for the Romans invading Briton with a copper a second.


Tin is an expensive working metal I pay $18 a kilo, and that's cheap. Romans invaded for a lot of reasons, resources were a secondary motivation. The main motivation was conquest, and expanding the Empire, the goal was to make the world Roman.



The reason you see iron armour and weapons phasing out bronze equipment, wasn't because bronze was more expensive. Iron, even in an unhardenned state, made better weapons and armour.


No. If you know what you are doing, and by the end of the bronze age they most certainly did, you can make a fairly decent weapon out of bronze. Some of the Chinese blades even contained Chrome and were more than decent weapons though how they managed that is any body's guess. The books all say they didn't know what chrome was but swords have been found containing chrome. The swords are still sharp. They aren't a match for the finist steel but more than a match for soft iron.


By the end of the bronze age iron was still better as they were starting to learn how to make steel.

It shouldn't be a guess how the chrome got in there, maybe they found a natural seam of copper with chromium impurities, although this is unlikely as the melt points are different by 800 C. The chinese did everything by law Imperial Edicts, and if they didn't they were beheaded. The ratios of copper to tin for the creation of bronze were strictly governed, and documents support this. I suspect that the documentation covering the chromium addition is lost or as yet undiscovered.



Of course the Roman's didn't know what pure zinc was either and they had plenty of brass.


The Celts knew what brass was, but they considered it rare and used it for coins.



There is some discussion about the helmet shells being spun, even the iron ones. This tells us that the Romans had an industry, so maybe on second thoughts, for the Romans, with their industrialisation iron could have become a cheap commodity... maybe.


Not cheap and not abundant but they used slave labor and slaves work cheap. I've seen estimates on how much iron was made in a given year and the numbers weren't all that big by current standards especially when you consider home big Rome was.




The reason for spinning is uniformity. Not all the Roman military were rich, but those that were could afford better gear, not the spun rubbish.

The "spun rubbish" is what is commonly found though iron does become the in thing in the last days of the Western Roman Empire. It looks like the spun rubbish may have been used for centuries being passed down from father to son or nephew or through the local used armor dealer though some of the older equipment seems to have been issued/sold to auxilleries in bulk.

It's still spun rubbish ;-)



Old swords look like they got passed on the same way.

True


We did some experiments with spun helmet bowls as opposed to hammered sheets. The spun bowls caved in, or were pierced relatively easily. The hammered plates required a lot more force.


Copper alloy work hardens.

Sorry I should have qualified that, they were spun and hammered steel. Steel work hardens also, so the premise would be the same.

Spun helmets are crap compared to a hammered one.



Regards Charles

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: waxing leather
    ... Iron is a smelting process, then it has to be refined in the forge, so it was by far a more expensive process. ... You think copper and its ores are common? ... High grade hematite will still stick to a magnet and if they had a forge as in what they had at valley forge they could deal with it. ... Melt an ingot, add a little tin, and pour into a mould. ...
    (rec.knives)
  • Re: Determining Geologic Sources of Native American Copper
    ... >> I do know of copper artefacts found in Greenland, ... meteoritic iron. ... That same year a `plate' of iron from Ohio was the ...
    (sci.archaeology)
  • Re: I beleive this is important, please read.
    ... replace the penal settlements they lost in North America after the War ... There was some use of native copper from around the ... There is also some evidence for the presence of iron among the inut/Eskimo ... Another option is trade. ...
    (rec.knives)
  • Re: I beleive this is important, please read.
    ... exploration and settlement of Mexico and central America. ... There was some use of native copper from around the Great Lakes that started back in the very early days as in maybe 9,000 year ago but no evidence for smelting in what became the U.S. ... There is also some evidence for the presence of iron among the inut/Eskimo in the east. ... Another option is trade. ...
    (rec.knives)
  • Re: Question about a mission oak style desk
    ... he used brass, and if it looks like copper it's because it was plated. ... any Craftsman, Mission, or mission piece. ... "Stickley offered iron, brass, and copper hardware through general catalogs and through special catalogs ...
    (rec.antiques)