It is worth noting that early Iron was of much lower quality than any modern forged steel and in fact it was in many cases even worse than bronze, but the real advantage was that it was dirt cheap as compared to bronze and you could equip with iron weapons much bigger armies than with bronze weapons due to abundancy and availability of iron.
@@Hadrian_S stone age lasted even longer. Basically nobody knew how to process iron and how to make tools out of it. It took hundreds of years to discover technology of melting and forging iron.
@@Hadrian_S I never said they didn't know how to. The last I checked there was not a single verb "to know" in any of my comments. I said it took time to discover technology. Technology is basically a way how to do things. Technology of processing iron in my world includes melting it first. So they didn't have this technology and it took a lot of time to discover it. I included stone age to demonstrate that it takes a lot of time to move from one set of technologies to another. In case of moving from stone to copper/bronze it took even longer than to move from bronze to iron. But the idea that they knew they need to melt iron and just didn't know how to do so is dubious. Most likely people didn't even realise that iron ore needs to be melted for some reason. Until at some occasion they reached necessary temperature and some iron ore happened to be inside their furnace (perhaps the furnace walls was made with it). The ore melted accidentally and they were like: "Wow, we can melt this thing too, let's see what can be done with this".
I found myself missing "it's not what the swords do to the material, it's what the material does to your swords. There's a roll, you can hear it *tink tink*. Some dulling but overall good job"
This video is a bit historically inaccurate. During the transition period they would cast iron weapons like they did bronze. Bronze also is slightly harder than wrought iron, which makes me believe they didn't use a comparable metal, and just opted for the lowest carbon steel they had available. They didn't really have any control over the carbon in the iron at the time too, and you would have widely varying levels of hardness. Some of the earliest iron swords were pig iron cast around a bronze core and the blast furnace for melting and casting iron has been around since 500BC. A concave edge was also something that came later on. During the transitional time period iron weapons were generally inferior to their bronze counterparts except in one major aspect, it's much easier to mass produce when you only need one ore.
@@hanswerner321 The primary difference between iron and steel is that the former is a metal, whereas the latter is an alloy. Iron is simply a metal element that occurs naturally on Earth. In comparison, steel is a man-made alloy that’s made by mixing iron and carbon together. Iron, on its own is not really durable, I would argue it has the same durability as bronze..
I wrote a comment to this, but then I re-read nowknow's comment and saw that he DID already cover logistics and trade as a reason for the transition to iron weapons. Sorry about reiterating what you already said dude,
@Danger Bear I can imagine that a man with a bronze sword is more to fear than that with a iron blade because of that, or possibly if a soldier who had a iron weapon saw a bronze one on the ground they would likely take it for their own
@@zyanidwarfare5634 bronze is way more expensive, due to the rarity of tin. Imagine you're an Aegean merchant, and you wanted to trade for tin. You must either went to British Isles or Afghanistan just for enough tin. Cyprus have some, but it's not enough to supply the entire Mediterranean. This is why the destruction of trade network in the end of bronze age have devastating effects to the civilization there. After bronze age civilization collapsed, people trying to find another way for creating weapon, eventually creating the first iron weapon. Even thought the weapon is not as durable as their bronze counterparts, they don't need to have extensive trade network for creating that. Because of that, the iron began to replaced bronze for weapon (mind you, weapons not armor) in the iron age. Why don't they create armor from iron? Idk, but i could create some educated guess. Iron are harder to forge in large scale, so it would take more time and money to create armor rather than casting bronze armor (this might explain why only philip 2 have iron plate armor). But, celts people have a brilliant idea to create small rings and interconnected it into a shirt, creating mail armor (this might explain why they ditched their bronze armor). In other parts of the world, India subcontinent people began creating steel (known as wootz steel) and they get a lot of profit for that. They trade their steel abroad, eventually reaching the Mediterranean. At this time, steel became prestige and only the richest could afford it. People also began ditching their bronze armor in favor of cheaper brass and linen. Around the 4 or 3rd century bc (maybe) people in Mediterranean and europe figuring out how to create steel, and they began equip themselves with this metal. It's interesting to think if bronze age collapsed never happened. But considering ancient Chinese is a bronze age civilization, and they use bronze weapon for much longer, even alongside new steel weapon, this might also be the case in alternate history.Peace out.
@@hu4ngming people only folded steel because it had impurities and it pushed out the impurities and it can lose csrbon content and create air bubbles making it weaker also science has proven bloomery steel only needs to be folded twice
Love that the expert with a fedora hat underlined that swords were a secondary weapon not only in the bronze age but in history. Spears along with bow and arrows have been the predominent weapons of hunting and war for thousands of years before swords even came on the scene, and the short reach of swords and daggers makes them a very last resort weapon.
exactly. If you were a soldier/warrior in the era, the last thing you want is to have to get close and personal to someone during combat. You could end up winning an encounter, but the chance of you coming out of it injured was high... and given the limited medical tech of the time period, even what would today could be considered a light wound, could prove to be lethal back then.
I understand the limitations of the show but you're using modern hemogenous Iron against bronze which i don't think is representative in any meaningful way. The whole downside of iron is that pre-industrial iron and steel were very difficult to homogenize. I think crucible steel was the only pre-industrial steel that was fairly homogenous and it was not commonly available and almost mythical in places like Europe up into the early modern period. so while you used iron of similar carbon content to your bloom iron it's still not in any way a comparable material because you would have to do some metallurgical wizardry to ever get that bloom properly homogenized. I mean without a Bessemer blast furnace that is. I look forward to that episode.
If I remember correctly this was a small "bloomery." The chances of getting good yields at this scale would be very small and even then this was more than enough for a proof of concept for low grade iron/steel. With that being said I too would like to see their attempt at crucible steel.
you can work and fold the metal to homogenize it, the real problem is the carbon content, impurities, and tempering. and I think they used a steel with comparable carbon content and didn't temper it.
19:26 for the iron sword vs. bronze sword tests. It is amazing. Thank you for providing this on the internet! Bronze would be destroyed in a fight against Iron. Amazing work all, thank you again!
Can't wait for a crucible steel episode. Earliest example of a sword we have is circa 600BCE, and I can just imagine how much hell you'll go through trying to make it. Good way to recycle your bloom, though, as many recipes used a mix of bloomery iron and carbonaceous material, or bloom and cast iron.
Early iron celtic swords were made out of bog iron, because that stuff was around everywhere in wetlands. But those swords were crazy easy to bend, so what would happen during a fight was that warriors would throw their swords on the ground at some point, and step on them to straighten them out, then pick them back up again and continue. Kind of a crazy thing to think about.
I grew up in the Bronze Age, on a bronze farm. We'd spend every day in autumn harvesting the finest bronze ingots ever grown. Then we would cast swords out of them and sell them to Assyria and Babylon at a dizzying markup. Good times.
You should definitely retry the iron smelting. Iron tools will be incredibly useful for progressing. Some good suggestions in the comments about how to work your bloom. And next time, try to stick with just your bronze age tools
I don't think he researched it enough, and I'm not sure he'll do the smelt again unless he improves the bellows, but after you do the melt and break open the furnace to reveal what you've got, you're meant to take it *IMMEDIATELY* and smash the bajeebus out of it for a long time. Basically what he made was a very soft rock/carbon thing which kind of acts like ceramic. It is also very crumbly, which means it's brittle. But that chunk had lots and lots of tiny nuggets of Iron and Steel strewn throughout it, which you saw when it was broken down (think of it a bit like a chocolate chip cookie, but very dangerous, burnt, and probably not very good for you to eat or even touch). What you need to do is while everything is still *VERY* hot (as in, get it out of the furnace stack as soon as you stop bellowing) and start smashing it. What you're doing is forcing all the kind of sticky, treacle-like Iron/Steel mix to move around inside the ball, and because it's sticky, it grabs onto other pieces of almost molten hot metal, and after a while, it all consolidates into one ball of metal surrounded by the slag. Because you're hitting it, you're exerting energy on the ball which will keep it hotter for longer, and not brittle like you found out. Once it cools, that's it, it's not going to come back together unless you smelt it all back down together. But once you've smashed all the tiny bits of metal together and it's cooled, you just give it a quick smash and most of the slag will crumble away! That, or drop it in water, but that sometimes ends up with an explosion, or everything shattering. Both less than desirable outcomes from the experiment. I hope you do it all again just so you can experience what people went through, and what good historical weapon recreators go through to get a very period accurate piece of _art_
@@BlackDragonWitheHawk It's not a case of doing things to perfection, it's a case of doing things right if you're going to go through all the effort to portray it as "doing it right". The whole "here's one I made earlier" gets old quick too. The "comparable ingot" wasn't even slightly comparable and if it had less than 10% extra effort put into all of the steps that were went through to doing the whole forge stack thing and bellows, he could've got a really impressive piece of metal that could have been forged into something amazing, or, at least, failed dramatically in an entertaining way. Rather than it depressingly crumbling into a million tiny pieces, it could've shattered into a *billion* tiny pieces at the very end. I can't help but feel he would've been really disheartened when he went to forge his steel and it just crumbled like, ironically, a cookie, when hit with a hammer. Just 10% extra effort could've turned an "aww, that's disappointing" into a "WOW! That was amazing!"
I didn't read your whole comment but by what I read from the first two paragraphs I agree he should research a little more just to make sure he does it historically accurate
I’m 20 seconds in and by the footage that the bronze sword has not been hammer hardened properly.... this example is historically incorrect.... it’s my day job to study Bronze Age weaponary... there seems to be a disruption to the surface of the bronze. This is work hardened by thousands of taps with a hammer to strengthen the edge and flats
Yeah, he mentions polishing out all the divots he made while he was work hardening it - his words not mine lol - so he probably polished off most of what he did harden with the angle grinder trying to smooth it back to an oval profile. I know they're trying to be true to how it would be in not having an anvil to work on, but he could have found a flat stone instead of one that gouges and chews up the material he's trying to harden on it. Bit more of a research effort and proper preparation peeps!
Also hitting the weak soft part of any metal with the strong, aligned edge of it is gonna cause problems. I dunno why that guy thinks they used the flat of the blade to "block" 😒
Pretty interesting stuff, though I can see why when you had access to tin and copper, you would have an advantage with being able to outfit more soldiers far quicker. Though I could see officers and veteran soldiers receiving iron weapons... Though that sword was made with modern soft steel, not the stuff that you would've seen back in the day, that one bar alone would've been of mythical status in Europe at the time. You could pour 30 or so swords before finishing one iron/steel blade, and there's the whole argument of "good enough" to kill.
Also it was so much easier that it was even worth importing tin from far-flung places. When the bronze age civilization crashed and trade slowed, metalwork became much more difficult, and it was in that necessity that ironworking technology improved.
I think you should make a second attempt at melting iron, I think you should at least extract a workable amount of iron before you move on to just using modern supplies.
Should he also hire merchants to go to the Tin Islands to import the tin for the bronze? Gather his own wood, and burn the charcoal, for forge fuel? Should he be eating only food he created himself the entire time? Bit unreasonable.
As the Bronze age fighter pointed out: Historical soldiers weren't trained to block with their blades. They had shields for that. Blocking with a blade puts you in a situation where the opponent is building momentum, and you are not. You might as well be flat on your ass in other words. That isn't to say that no one ever won a fight because they blocked with their blade, but that's the rare emergency where it's necessary. At the end of the day: A Bronze wielding warrior could easily kill an Iron one. And no; the Iron one will not be chopping through their blade. The tests here prove Bronze bends; it's not brittle. And only bends if the one holding it makes the mistake of blocking with it.
In that sense, the Iron Wielding soldier could just as easily kill the Bronze one, it all comes down to whichever combatant is more skilled and experienced
Im not sure how you came to that conclusion iron is not brittle and just like his tests showed it would have no problem breaking and choping through bronze sword. You are thinking of cast iron, cast iron is brittle and it has over 4% of carbon in it, by comparison spring steel or good steel sword would have no more than .5% of carbon. Iron is very tough its not as strong as steel, but strength and toughness are two different qualities. Strength is defined by how much force or load an object can handle with out bending, taking a set, or breaking. Toughness is the ability of an object to withstand repeated blows, and impacts with out cracking and breaking. Iron is very tough tougher than high carbon steel, but it is not as strong. But ultimately Iron is far superior to bronze, Iron tiped arrows and spears could go through bronze like butter, bronze would deform and bend hitting iron but has no chance of going through.
Bronze is not one metal. Bronze is as varied as steel. And weapons grade bronze age bronze beats iron age iron any day. Bronze wasn't exclusively cast either. In fact, it could be forged at a way lower temperature than iron. It was also heat treated and tempered before it was cold hardened. Cold hardening was just used to reinforce the bevels and the edge. The bronze-clad Greeks didn't curb-stomp the iron-wielding Persians for you to come along and say "Buh! Bronze is bad because we're dumb and don't know how to make it properly! Buh!"
I'm not sure the direct combat between bronze and iron is what makes the former superior. Since most armed combat doesn't last more than a few blows, it seems unlikely that either weapon would break before the battle was decided, however in a contest between armies, one outfitted with iron weapons would see greater longevity in their sword throughout a battle. Whether impacting shields, armor, flesh, or other weapons, the iron weapons will be more likely to remain viable for the next strike. This combined with a longer usable lifetime justified the additional craftsmanship required for iron weapons (and tools)
You're correct, the main factor in a fight between warriors armed with iron and bronze would not be the quality of their weaponry but the skills of the warriors themselves. An ancient veteran warrior could probably beat an average modern man 99 times out of a 100 even if the modern man was armed with a high end modern steel sword. In a fight, if you telegraph your next move then your opponent will easily see it coming. Therefore, loading a big swing to "cut trough the oppenent's sword" could be very foolish. Or it could be your best chance at victory, in a fight, nothings a given: their are too many factors to truly account for like skills, speed, strength, technique, luck, even the direction of the sun.
The real factor that made iron dominant was logistics. It's actually extremely rare for there to be significant deposits of both copper *and* tin in the same place, so the bronze age required extensive and complex world-spanning trade routes to function. Iron meanwhile only requires one ore, which is abundant. That greatly simplifies sourcing raw material for production.
@@Ackalan that's true but that is not the scope of this video, this is comparing material vs material in a single engagement to see if one could make the difference. furthermore, take a bunch of recruits with modern steel and send them against a bunch of old grizzled veterans with rusty swords, you'll see what happens. the sword doesn't make the man, the man makes the sword.
This title says forged "iron" and the video even shows a chart differentiating between iron and steel, but the people in the video constantly change between using the words iron and then steel. So we still have no idea whether the sword is actually made of very low carbon iron (or very low carbon mild steel) or higher carbon steel (eg. medium carbon steel).
The sword is probably a mixture of hard steels and softer irons. A lot of the skill of a blacksmith is getting the carbon composition of the iron right for the application and it is just done using the charcoal in the forge, working the iron and judging its colour as it heats and cools
@@davidwright7193 If it was a mixture of different soft and hard steels, then they would have used the jacketed lamination technique that sandwhiches a soft steel inside outer layers of harder steel. They do not do this in the video. The video suggests they are using a single type of pure steel given how they show the forging techniques and how at 5:00, they still they substitute their poor quality ore with a modern piece of metal ingot. They said "substitute my bloom with a comparable piece of iron." This in all likelyhood means they are using high quality, high purity modern monosteel ingots. Modern monosteels are ultrapure with a consistent and even distribution of carbon, so it should not have any sort of poor quality patches/weak spots where some parts are wrought iron and some parts are higher carbon steel.
@davidwright7193 If it was a mixture of different soft and hard steels, then they would have used the jacketed lamination technique that sandwhiches a soft steel inside outer layers of harder steel. They do not do this in the video. The video suggests they are using a single type of pure steel given how they show the forging techniques and how at 5:00, they still they substitute their poor quality ore with a modern piece of metal ingot. They said "substitute my bloom with a comparable piece of iron." This in all likelyhood means they are using high quality, high purity modern monosteel ingots. Modern monosteels are ultrapure with a consistent and even distribution of carbon, so it should not have any sort of poor quality patches/weak spots where some parts are wrought iron and some parts are higher carbon steel.
@@Intranetusa However that isn’t what the finished sword consists of. The outer layer will be of a higher carbon content than the core if they have used a charcoal forge or lower if they haven’t. The processes of heating and hammering change the makeup of the iron. If you are trying to make a good blade you don’t want a uniform block of metal you need the outer edge hard and the body much softer. You get that in part by heating the billet in charcoal which means the outer layer absorbs carbon from the charcoal. If you don’t get the outermost layer to pickup at least some carbon then just hammering it will be driving the carbon out. When you actually get iron out of a bloomary smelt what you end up with is a mixture of iron, carbon and slag. You then have to work it while hot to smash out the slag and the carbon to get wrought iron. That is what makes it “wrought” which is after all just an old past tense form of “work”. Much of the skill of a blacksmith is in controlling the amount of carbon that goes into the iron and comes out of it as a piece is worked. All the old methods of sword making be it pattern welding through to the Japanese folding methods were about getting a good mixture of properties into the blade. When they get rid of his useless mess of slag with a bit of iron and replace it with a modern ingot they are pulling a fast one as that ingot is nothing like the wrought iron you actually get from working a lump of cast iron into a bar.
@@davidwright7193 They are using modern monosteel ingots with modern forges in the video. That means everything will be fairly pure and the carbon will be uniform and the result is all steel. They are not intentionally case hardening iron in a long enclosed process (which only increases the carbon of a very thin outer layer anyways). You don't need the outer edge hard and inner layer soft to make a good sword either. That is only a requirement for laminated swords. With tempered spring steel swords, the entire sword can have a similar level of hardness - both outer and inner layer are mostly similar. So the video creators have no reason to interchangeably use iron and steel like that when they are using modern pure monosteel as they should be perfectly aware of the type of steel they are using. And even if they were using jacketed laminated techniques that don't use monosteel, they still should not be mixing up iron and steel as the softer center is going to be higher end of the mild steel category.
Fascinating. Great work from all concerned. And this makes the work of ancient blacksmiths, who didn't have access to hydraulic presses or electric grinders, all the more admirable.
What most people don't know is bronze swords were still being used well into the iron age, simply because they were the more superior weapon until smiths figured out how to grade the different parts of the bloom and laminate the different types of steel with iron...such as on swords used by the Vikings, Samurai, and other warrior cultures who forged composite blades.
And now, to test the cutting power, pineapples and watermelons. *Laughs in Skallagrim chopping watermelons with a completely blunt sword* By the way, it's just a waste of food.
@@ignasmaciulis1095 It sure looks cool in a slowmotion. Although I'd say seeing the sword vibrating while getting stuck in a hard target would be even more interesting. Especially with a bendy material like bronze
It is important to note; ancient bronze would have used things we do not use today. Because they are poisonous metals. Like arsenic. Leaving ancient bronzes a bit closer to iron, plus the comparison here would be analogous to a very expensive iron blade for the early iron age, since well. Wrought iron was the first stuff we really could make, and low carbon steel and Wrought iron equivalents don't really cut the mustard to make historical speculations on. They are a bit *less* durable overall and a bit harder and stronger. But good episode; I hope you use your historically accurate iron to mock up another test in the future!
This is such a cool show. I really like how down to earth the sword caster and blacksmiths were. Looking forward to the next chapter in the series, rock on 😎
It's a cool video, but I've noticed a few things that's not accurate. to avoid bending, bronze age swords mostly had a thick spine to make it more rigid. Also, bronze should be a bit harder than wrought iron: 60-258 on the Vickers scale compared to 30-80. (but definetely not as hard as even low carbon steel which is around 130-600). It wasn't iron's superiority that prevailed, but the availability (compared to tin, required for bronze) and the requirement of only one material instead of two. After the bronze age trade collapse and the smelting technologies improvement, iron was cheaper and easier to make than bronze, so it became the main metal to use, but not because it was a superior material at the time.
the purpose of this series was that he noticed that the stuff he made was made with modern tools and wanted to do a series where he actually made everything. And every episode he slowly drifts from that goal. But now he is Using modern furnaces,power tools etc. He barely uses materials that he got from scratch either he's using tons of store bought material.
so this might be skipping a few generations, but he probably has all the materials to make highland bagpipes. I honestly just wanna see Andy attempt to play some scottish hornpipes lol.
I think he didn't get the airflow high enough up to liquefy it so that the impurities flowed out enough. Those early iron techniques are really hard to work with also the amount of muscle work involved is really high when you don't have a hydraulic hammer and the lower the temperature of your furnace the worse it gets. Jumping as fast as possible to a firebrick furnace seems naturally^^
Seeky Unbounded has he ever gone back and done something correctly? All his results used modern technology because he couldn't get it to work using ancient technology. I'd say he's still stuck in the stone age.
@@seekyunbounded9273 cause he does the jack of all trades thing where he learns a new thing every week or whatever, not selling it, just doing it to make a video the way I see it lol no concerns of extreme accuracy or quality, just to do it pretty much. But now I sound like im drinking hatorade...maybe just a sip...
Bronze definitely held a edge in being castable, wich is a way quicker process of manufracture. But it also limited the size and shapes. It was very hard or outright impossible to forge. And the resources were a lot more limited to get, as you needed tin and copper. With Iron you had to use forging. Wich while a longer process, also offered a lot better control. Casting was not possible until closer tot he modern age. But the resources (Iron and Carbon) were comparatively easy to get.
the video was good, there are not many videos on the theme "bronze vs iron" however, they did not do justice to the bronze sword, it was thin too much compared to the iron sword that looked more robust on its blade, the hardening work of the bronze blade was done halfway. Anyway, it was a good video !
I like the sword talk for real! swords are secondary weapons for foot soldiers and last resorts for some unless they had a short dagger wich is great in very close combat
@@jakob4644 Coins are not the same as swords, they are just both made of metal. The easiest way to make a coin is to pour a glob of molten metal on a surface and stamp it before it cools in a rough circular shape, there was little need to innovate from that for ages. Regardless, of when it truly started in China though, the oldest sand cast piece, a bronze frog from ancient Mesopotamia, is 3,200 years old.
You should DEFINITELY do a video on how to make a smith's file!! I realized when the smith said "which would normally be done with a file, but... we have a belt grinder." That I could picture how to make a hammer, a pair of tongs, but I couldn't come up with how one makes a file!
I love how you didn't actually show a comparison between the two different blades by chopping the same objects, and instead acted all silly and played fruit ninja. VINE STARS! Loved it. Im dyslexic so sorry if i missed the thumbs up button. They both look the same to me
2000 years later two swords get discovered by archeologists: BRONZE SWORD: hey iron heeeeeeeey heyyyyyyyyy we got found strong Bro!!!! IRON SWORD: scattered pile of rust desingrated beyond repair BRONZE SWORD: Cries in loneliness in a museum...you were the strongest one... joking aside, great video :D and i recall from my college education in history of the great Pineapple-watermelon war told centuries later by the Greek Coconout Cocohomer xD a true epic tale !!!
Differences in bronze vs. early iron equipment are less impactful on battle outcome than strategic (recruitment, training, supply lines, morale) and tactical (unit composition, troop movements, communications, surprise attacks, fire, fortifications). If bronze fights iron, but the bronze civilization was able to field 20% more men, the boost from that will more than compensate for softer equipment. Or if bronze happens to be well-fed because they encamped first, that's a huge advantage. Or if bronze is defending and had time to recon and set up some field fortifications like stakes or abatis. Or if bronze has a well-regulated system of swapping out men from the shield wall with reserves. To put it another way, imagine you have a bronze sword and a guy comes up to you well-trained with his stout stone club. One good hit on your head and you're dead. Your bronze sword has a lot of advantages, but it doesn't make you invincible, or even make the outcome certain. Which is all just saying that AoE is extremely simple and bamboozled you into thinking it was teaching you anything.
Bronze still had clear advantages! There were reasons the Romans used it widely. The iron needs regular care and will rust quickly. While the bronze sword can go on a shelf. And a bent bronze sword can be repaired on the battlefield while iron shatters.
I am way late to this party, but I don't think this is a very fair comparison for a bunch of reasons that can be grouped into two categories. A) Your 'iron' sword is arguable of very high quality--much higher quality than what it is being used as a stand-in for and take note of how 'long' your bronze-age expert felt your blade was and understand that this is partly to blame for weakness to bending. B) Your sword vs sword test isn't reflective how how swordspersons duel one another. Even with high-quality weapons (perhaps especially with high-quality weapons since they are so expensive) you would never expect to see them wailing on each other like they have metal clubs. These things are sharp and flicking strikes to the hands, wrists and elbows would be the primary attacks since they are the closest things for you to hit and they also keep you as far away from their sword as possible. Any time you would bring you sword full on overhead to wind up a huge strike, you would lose. Either you invite a pre-emptive attack or your huge telegraphed and committed swing is readily evaded and you are run through before you can finish your strike.
Way too "polite" in saying how "it definitely worked, just not efficiently". It didn't work. They needed to re-smelt it... and do it correctly this time. That's not at all what a "parry" is and you're not going to "snap their sword" if it's copper or bronze. As someone with knowledge of history and these weapons and materials, this is excruciating to watch.
Hmm. I think through a combination factors what you had here was a very good quality piece of iron going up against a comparatively less good quality bronze sword (no disrespect to the smith who cast it....maybe a *bit* of disrespect to your slightly wonky work hardening :P ) - haven't watched all the videos you've done but I am curious whether it was a comparable alloy to the contemporary ones - I know they got very specific in tailoring the alloy to its use. On the iron side, good quality homogenous iron existed, and even steel tools could be produced back in the bronze age, but doing so was rare and less consistent. By the time the iron age is in full swing hey could make pretty decent ones, but a good quality bronze tends to be superior - though IIRC more so for something like armour, mechanically speaking - I have certainly seen a top class bronze naue ii cut through steel plate (under favourable conditions, but the fact it did it at all was astounding) which judging from the performance here I'm not certain this one could do (though granted that was made by possibly the world's best bronze bladesmith we have today) As for parrying with the flat of the blade....kinda sorta but not like that. A full on strike to the flat of the blade is far MORE likely to bend it than to the blade's edge (thats basic mechanics, there's a lot less depth of material to deform). If you want to block the enemy blade you want to do it with the edge, its not onyl less likely to bend the blade its also a MUCH stronger barrier (for slightly more complex mechanical reasons) The disadvantage of course is edge damage, but we do see edge damage like that on artefacts. Using the flat of the blade would be for a *deflection*, so you're doing it at a slight angle and not taking the brunt of the impact, just giving the incoming strike a slight nudge and letting it skid off. The real advantage of iron is the logistics, and not needing tin (which has onyl a few large sources in the entire Mediterranean) Once you get to actual steel though, yeah its better
As a learning Blacksmith I found this interesting and lotsof great information. As a gardener them mellons wasn't ready to pick or eat, So glad I raise my own. Great video, Thanks
WHY DID YOU PARRY WITH THE FLAT SIDE!?!?!?!? Thats the weakest side of any sword! Bronze, Copper, Iron or Steel. You use the blade to parry! That has the most force.
Now making a sword from 6-2 Ti & Maraging Inox, compound welded & twisted together would be a challenge, but if possible, would make the ultimate sword. Love that bronze sword found in Czechia with the cast in 8 sided handle, great for grip.
Actually this isnt bronze, it's copper. Bronze is a mix of copper and tin and has different propperties than plain copper. The true test should compare the real bronze(copper+tin) and the orychalk(copper+zinc) which were the main alloys of the bronze age with the forged iron which is technically steel
I take my risks cooking bacon and eggs in the nude. At least the worst I'll get is a nasty blister, you could lose half a leg on a bad day at the forge!
An army of 15th century plate-armored French heavy cavalry, some English longbowmen, and some crossbows, vs any Bronze Age army of a similar size. Now that would be a slaughter.
Typically you'd have archers or slingers beating up the enemy from a distance, skirmishers riding past and peppering them, super annoying. And then when the two shield walls came together, men would hurl spears first. So you might not even survive to meet the enemy. When they closed to melee, they stabbed each other with spears. Men in the rank behind the shields would stab over the top at the enemy front rank, and that must be done with a spear because it's too far away. So you're pressed in on either side by your buddies, your buds from behind and pressing you forward, and the enemy is trying to shove your whole side backward. All the time, you're gripping your shield and spears are stabbing at your face from like eight angles and your friends' spears are banging into your helmet. You're getting kicked and stomped on, dust is kicked up in the air, men are screaming as they're dying, arrows and stones are flying overhead. Blood runs down your spear haft and it's hard to hold onto. Drums and horns are going off all over the place to give orders, and you have to somehow pay attention to your side's communications and not get messed up by the enemy's. You're also tired because you were marching, cold and wet or else sunbaked, hungry and probably at least a little bit ill, and if you survive your best-case scenario is a plot of land you can farm on until you die from exhaustion. Morale is the first weapon. More men died from disease like cholera, or malnutrition, than in combat. This is because the camp is just a muddy mess of shit, people can't wash up properly, the water is tainted and insufficient, the food isn't properly preserved so it's full of maggots and basically rotten. Sanitation is the second weapon. All the other weapons are tertiary at best. That said, I'd argue that diplomacy is Weapon Zero because you can subjugate an enemy without sending any soldiers and get everything you want if you do diplomacy right. War is the next step in the diplomatic process.
Failure. HTME reset asked simple question; Can one man, using only the tolls he has produced, recreate all the technological steps to advance back into the information age? You have now proven that the technology and skill base for Iron age advancement is beyond you.
Well, beyond his ability to simulate in the time he was willing to spend working on this video in 2020. In a saner year, with more time, he might have done better.
I can imagine how legends about magic swords began: when a bronze age culture was conquered by an iron age culture and saw those blades. Longer, tougher and sharper than anything they could make. Then, when the war was over, one of the most technically inclined minds of the bronze age culture asked a blacksmith of the iron age culture where that metal came from. The blacksmith explained their smelting technique, but added that the first iron came from the sky, enveloped in fire, and when it struck the ground, it created a huge crater with the most deafening noise anyone had ever heard, louder than any thunder. That day, somebody's mind was blown.
It is worth noting that early Iron was of much lower quality than any modern forged steel and in fact it was in many cases even worse than bronze, but the real advantage was that it was dirt cheap as compared to bronze and you could equip with iron weapons much bigger armies than with bronze weapons due to abundancy and availability of iron.
Agree, as long as the opponent is dead, iron is decent enough
@@Hadrian_S stone age lasted even longer. Basically nobody knew how to process iron and how to make tools out of it. It took hundreds of years to discover technology of melting and forging iron.
@@Hadrian_S how does this contradict what I just wrote?
@@Hadrian_S I never said they didn't know how to. The last I checked there was not a single verb "to know" in any of my comments. I said it took time to discover technology. Technology is basically a way how to do things. Technology of processing iron in my world includes melting it first. So they didn't have this technology and it took a lot of time to discover it. I included stone age to demonstrate that it takes a lot of time to move from one set of technologies to another. In case of moving from stone to copper/bronze it took even longer than to move from bronze to iron.
But the idea that they knew they need to melt iron and just didn't know how to do so is dubious. Most likely people didn't even realise that iron ore needs to be melted for some reason. Until at some occasion they reached necessary temperature and some iron ore happened to be inside their furnace (perhaps the furnace walls was made with it). The ore melted accidentally and they were like: "Wow, we can melt this thing too, let's see what can be done with this".
SPQR Ancient Rome and ancient history
2024: "Welcome to the dawn of the nuclear age. Today, we'll begin by mining our own uranium"
Well the Nuclear Age also known as the Atomic Age started back in 16 July 1945 the current age we would be in would be the Information age
John Trujillo the fucked up age
the great decline
These days we hurt people with words putting them into suicidal states - more than using actual weapons. I mean just read the other dudes.
@@John-if9ig Soooo……shall we mine silicon instead?
I love that the two smiths look exactly how every rpg portrays a master Smith and their apprentice
Blacksmiths come in two varieties: Stout and Grumpy or Lanky and Surprisingly Photogenic.
@Path No.
Wearing shorts
@Path It's literally Dragon Age: Origins. Wade and Herren.
@Path Man, who didn't? A shame about the sequel. lol
"It will keel."
Oops, this isn't Forged in Fire.
Yes
In my opinion they should have gotten the pig corpses to test em on. However a bit late for that
Just finished watching a RUclips marathon of forged in fire, then I found this lol
I found myself missing "it's not what the swords do to the material, it's what the material does to your swords. There's a roll, you can hear it *tink tink*. Some dulling but overall good job"
"So, Andy...Let's talk about your swords here..."
Those blacksmiths...one's a dwarf, one's an elf
Lol I'll definitely agree with that!
Makes sense
Ones a dwarf, ones an elf. And none are blacksmiths
And wouldn't you want a blade made by such a pair? Both elegant and strong.
@@Nave6W How do you figure that?
This video is a bit historically inaccurate. During the transition period they would cast iron weapons like they did bronze. Bronze also is slightly harder than wrought iron, which makes me believe they didn't use a comparable metal, and just opted for the lowest carbon steel they had available. They didn't really have any control over the carbon in the iron at the time too, and you would have widely varying levels of hardness. Some of the earliest iron swords were pig iron cast around a bronze core and the blast furnace for melting and casting iron has been around since 500BC. A concave edge was also something that came later on. During the transitional time period iron weapons were generally inferior to their bronze counterparts except in one major aspect, it's much easier to mass produce when you only need one ore.
I kinda like this destructive positive opinion.
@@hanswerner321 The primary difference between iron and steel is that the former is a metal, whereas the latter is an alloy. Iron is simply a metal element that occurs naturally on Earth. In comparison, steel is a man-made alloy that’s made by mixing iron and carbon together. Iron, on its own is not really durable, I would argue it has the same durability as bronze..
I wrote a comment to this, but then I re-read nowknow's comment and saw that he DID already cover logistics and trade as a reason for the transition to iron weapons. Sorry about reiterating what you already said dude,
@Danger Bear I can imagine that a man with a bronze sword is more to fear than that with a iron blade because of that, or possibly if a soldier who had a iron weapon saw a bronze one on the ground they would likely take it for their own
@@zyanidwarfare5634 bronze is way more expensive, due to the rarity of tin. Imagine you're an Aegean merchant, and you wanted to trade for tin. You must either went to British Isles or Afghanistan just for enough tin. Cyprus have some, but it's not enough to supply the entire Mediterranean. This is why the destruction of trade network in the end of bronze age have devastating effects to the civilization there. After bronze age civilization collapsed, people trying to find another way for creating weapon, eventually creating the first iron weapon. Even thought the weapon is not as durable as their bronze counterparts, they don't need to have extensive trade network for creating that. Because of that, the iron began to replaced bronze for weapon (mind you, weapons not armor) in the iron age. Why don't they create armor from iron? Idk, but i could create some educated guess. Iron are harder to forge in large scale, so it would take more time and money to create armor rather than casting bronze armor (this might explain why only philip 2 have iron plate armor). But, celts people have a brilliant idea to create small rings and interconnected it into a shirt, creating mail armor (this might explain why they ditched their bronze armor). In other parts of the world, India subcontinent people began creating steel (known as wootz steel) and they get a lot of profit for that. They trade their steel abroad, eventually reaching the Mediterranean. At this time, steel became prestige and only the richest could afford it. People also began ditching their bronze armor in favor of cheaper brass and linen. Around the 4 or 3rd century bc (maybe) people in Mediterranean and europe figuring out how to create steel, and they began equip themselves with this metal. It's interesting to think if bronze age collapsed never happened. But considering ancient Chinese is a bronze age civilization, and they use bronze weapon for much longer, even alongside new steel weapon, this might also be the case in alternate history.Peace out.
I knew it, this whole series was just a way for you to learn blacksmithing.
Gotta beat and fold the metal when it hot for strengthening of the blade
I just clicked on this video because it was on my recommended and I do not regret it.
@@hu4ngming people only folded steel because it had impurities and it pushed out the impurities and it can lose csrbon content and create air bubbles making it weaker also science has proven bloomery steel only needs to be folded twice
couldn't agree more.
And join "forged in fire"
Love that the expert with a fedora hat underlined that swords were a secondary weapon not only in the bronze age but in history. Spears along with bow and arrows have been the predominent weapons of hunting and war for thousands of years before swords even came on the scene, and the short reach of swords and daggers makes them a very last resort weapon.
exactly. If you were a soldier/warrior in the era, the last thing you want is to have to get close and personal to someone during combat. You could end up winning an encounter, but the chance of you coming out of it injured was high... and given the limited medical tech of the time period, even what would today could be considered a light wound, could prove to be lethal back then.
I understand the limitations of the show but you're using modern hemogenous Iron against bronze which i don't think is representative in any meaningful way. The whole downside of iron is that pre-industrial iron and steel were very difficult to homogenize. I think crucible steel was the only pre-industrial steel that was fairly homogenous and it was not commonly available and almost mythical in places like Europe up into the early modern period. so while you used iron of similar carbon content to your bloom iron it's still not in any way a comparable material because you would have to do some metallurgical wizardry to ever get that bloom properly homogenized. I mean without a Bessemer blast furnace that is. I look forward to that episode.
If I remember correctly this was a small "bloomery." The chances of getting good yields at this scale would be very small and even then this was more than enough for a proof of concept for low grade iron/steel. With that being said I too would like to see their attempt at crucible steel.
Imagine this: combine tiny diamonds together with clay. Result is not one big diamond.
@@juhajuntunen7866 proof?
you can work and fold the metal to homogenize it, the real problem is the carbon content, impurities, and tempering. and I think they used a steel with comparable carbon content and didn't temper it.
Was just going to say the same thing; the reason the iron does so well is the high quality homogeneous modern iron.
19:26 for the iron sword vs. bronze sword tests. It is amazing. Thank you for providing this on the internet! Bronze would be destroyed in a fight against Iron. Amazing work all, thank you again!
Can't wait for a crucible steel episode. Earliest example of a sword we have is circa 600BCE, and I can just imagine how much hell you'll go through trying to make it. Good way to recycle your bloom, though, as many recipes used a mix of bloomery iron and carbonaceous material, or bloom and cast iron.
Everything you just said could be a lie and i would believe it cause i dont know shit about history
Crucible steel takes months or even years to master, its not nearly as simple as bloomery iron. that said bloomery iron isnt easy to make either
@@timoverschuren2165 This is why I said "I can imagine how much hell you'll go through trying to make it"
Nah dude, just go Egyptian method. Heat your swords in a hot fire, then stab them into your war prisoners.
@MJF would the iron in blood make high carbon steel, being heated then stabbed into people over and over ? A sword that killed as it was made 🤔
Early iron celtic swords were made out of bog iron, because that stuff was around everywhere in wetlands. But those swords were crazy easy to bend, so what would happen during a fight was that warriors would throw their swords on the ground at some point, and step on them to straighten them out, then pick them back up again and continue. Kind of a crazy thing to think about.
Bloomery steel: crumbles
Andy: time to whip out my era apropriate kiln
*forge
Noice filthy prank
Firify Frankuu. I miss him bro. The internet used to be so entertaining, so full of content, and so many laffs. Now it's full of cancer.
I grew up in the Bronze Age, on a bronze farm. We'd spend every day in autumn harvesting the finest bronze ingots ever grown. Then we would cast swords out of them and sell them to Assyria and Babylon at a dizzying markup. Good times.
How old are you ? 4000 years old ?
You should definitely retry the iron smelting. Iron tools will be incredibly useful for progressing. Some good suggestions in the comments about how to work your bloom. And next time, try to stick with just your bronze age tools
17:03 Mad respect for tasting the fruits while testing the swords. Most people wanna shoot fruit but never stop to taste it.
Definitely. we cut it all up and brought it home - honestly some of the best watermelon I’ve ever had!
I don't think he researched it enough, and I'm not sure he'll do the smelt again unless he improves the bellows, but after you do the melt and break open the furnace to reveal what you've got, you're meant to take it *IMMEDIATELY* and smash the bajeebus out of it for a long time.
Basically what he made was a very soft rock/carbon thing which kind of acts like ceramic. It is also very crumbly, which means it's brittle. But that chunk had lots and lots of tiny nuggets of Iron and Steel strewn throughout it, which you saw when it was broken down (think of it a bit like a chocolate chip cookie, but very dangerous, burnt, and probably not very good for you to eat or even touch).
What you need to do is while everything is still *VERY* hot (as in, get it out of the furnace stack as soon as you stop bellowing) and start smashing it. What you're doing is forcing all the kind of sticky, treacle-like Iron/Steel mix to move around inside the ball, and because it's sticky, it grabs onto other pieces of almost molten hot metal, and after a while, it all consolidates into one ball of metal surrounded by the slag. Because you're hitting it, you're exerting energy on the ball which will keep it hotter for longer, and not brittle like you found out. Once it cools, that's it, it's not going to come back together unless you smelt it all back down together.
But once you've smashed all the tiny bits of metal together and it's cooled, you just give it a quick smash and most of the slag will crumble away! That, or drop it in water, but that sometimes ends up with an explosion, or everything shattering. Both less than desirable outcomes from the experiment.
I hope you do it all again just so you can experience what people went through, and what good historical weapon recreators go through to get a very period accurate piece of _art_
has he ever done anything really to perfection?
the goal of this channel is saddly mostly to emtertain and not to do things on a quality level.
@@BlackDragonWitheHawk It's not a case of doing things to perfection, it's a case of doing things right if you're going to go through all the effort to portray it as "doing it right".
The whole "here's one I made earlier" gets old quick too. The "comparable ingot" wasn't even slightly comparable and if it had less than 10% extra effort put into all of the steps that were went through to doing the whole forge stack thing and bellows, he could've got a really impressive piece of metal that could have been forged into something amazing, or, at least, failed dramatically in an entertaining way. Rather than it depressingly crumbling into a million tiny pieces, it could've shattered into a *billion* tiny pieces at the very end.
I can't help but feel he would've been really disheartened when he went to forge his steel and it just crumbled like, ironically, a cookie, when hit with a hammer. Just 10% extra effort could've turned an "aww, that's disappointing" into a "WOW! That was amazing!"
I didn't read your whole comment but by what I read from the first two paragraphs I agree he should research a little more just to make sure he does it historically accurate
@@isabellac.8351 Eh, you get the gist anyway :)
It’s basically like a forge weld right? Is that why wrought iron has Damascus like patterns when it’s been etched?
I’m 20 seconds in and by the footage that the bronze sword has not been hammer hardened properly.... this example is historically incorrect.... it’s my day job to study Bronze Age weaponary... there seems to be a disruption to the surface of the bronze. This is work hardened by thousands of taps with a hammer to strengthen the edge and flats
Yeah, he mentions polishing out all the divots he made while he was work hardening it - his words not mine lol - so he probably polished off most of what he did harden with the angle grinder trying to smooth it back to an oval profile.
I know they're trying to be true to how it would be in not having an anvil to work on, but he could have found a flat stone instead of one that gouges and chews up the material he's trying to harden on it. Bit more of a research effort and proper preparation peeps!
Also hitting the weak soft part of any metal with the strong, aligned edge of it is gonna cause problems. I dunno why that guy thinks they used the flat of the blade to "block" 😒
Was literally just binging through HTME videos. What a nice surprise to see uploaded right as soon as I was running out of their videos.
same
Nice
Still at 69 likes, Hell ye
Except now you guys now have nothing to watch hahahahaha
Pretty interesting stuff, though I can see why when you had access to tin and copper, you would have an advantage with being able to outfit more soldiers far quicker. Though I could see officers and veteran soldiers receiving iron weapons... Though that sword was made with modern soft steel, not the stuff that you would've seen back in the day, that one bar alone would've been of mythical status in Europe at the time.
You could pour 30 or so swords before finishing one iron/steel blade, and there's the whole argument of "good enough" to kill.
Also it was so much easier that it was even worth importing tin from far-flung places. When the bronze age civilization crashed and trade slowed, metalwork became much more difficult, and it was in that necessity that ironworking technology improved.
I love that bronze age angle grinder.
69 NOICE
The 'bronze' sword wasn't bronze though was it? Just copper from pennies. I think authentic tin bronze would perform a lot better.
I think you should make a second attempt at melting iron, I think you should at least extract a workable amount of iron before you move on to just using modern supplies.
Or... continue not using modern
Should he also hire merchants to go to the Tin Islands to import the tin for the bronze? Gather his own wood, and burn the charcoal, for forge fuel? Should he be eating only food he created himself the entire time?
Bit unreasonable.
@@googiegress /shrug I'd watch it.
@@googiegress Yeah he should have made his own charcoal, primitive tech can do it
Can't wait to see you keep going I'm liking how the series is coming along.
Idk if I'm just on drugs but this level of fruit ninjas is so realistic
Agreed. Seems like they added some lore to it as well
Yeah especially when one if them started melting and the falls of the furnace grew wings
Best line: "He got hit right in the melon."
That’s my dad’s line!!!! Makes sense you liked it.
@@laurenapolis agreed Lauren
When you smelt iron, smash the bloom with a wooden hammer while it’s hot to try to make it easier to forge together later
You have no idea what youre talking about lol
As the Bronze age fighter pointed out: Historical soldiers weren't trained to block with their blades. They had shields for that.
Blocking with a blade puts you in a situation where the opponent is building momentum, and you are not. You might as well be flat on your ass in other words.
That isn't to say that no one ever won a fight because they blocked with their blade, but that's the rare emergency where it's necessary.
At the end of the day: A Bronze wielding warrior could easily kill an Iron one. And no; the Iron one will not be chopping through their blade. The tests here prove Bronze bends; it's not brittle. And only bends if the one holding it makes the mistake of blocking with it.
In that sense, the Iron Wielding soldier could just as easily kill the Bronze one, it all comes down to whichever combatant is more skilled and experienced
@@jaydenlobbe7911 we are talking if they are the same skilled
Im not sure how you came to that conclusion iron is not brittle and just like his tests showed it would have no problem breaking and choping through bronze sword. You are thinking of cast iron, cast iron is brittle and it has over 4% of carbon in it, by comparison spring steel or good steel sword would have no more than .5% of carbon. Iron is very tough its not as strong as steel, but strength and toughness are two different qualities. Strength is defined by how much force or load an object can handle with out bending, taking a set, or breaking. Toughness is the ability of an object to withstand repeated blows, and impacts with out cracking and breaking. Iron is very tough tougher than high carbon steel, but it is not as strong. But ultimately Iron is far superior to bronze, Iron tiped arrows and spears could go through bronze like butter, bronze would deform and bend hitting iron but has no chance of going through.
Bronze is not one metal. Bronze is as varied as steel. And weapons grade bronze age bronze beats iron age iron any day. Bronze wasn't exclusively cast either. In fact, it could be forged at a way lower temperature than iron. It was also heat treated and tempered before it was cold hardened. Cold hardening was just used to reinforce the bevels and the edge. The bronze-clad Greeks didn't curb-stomp the iron-wielding Persians for you to come along and say "Buh! Bronze is bad because we're dumb and don't know how to make it properly! Buh!"
Plus blocking eith your blade gets your posture meter eay above comfort levels
I'm not sure the direct combat between bronze and iron is what makes the former superior. Since most armed combat doesn't last more than a few blows, it seems unlikely that either weapon would break before the battle was decided, however in a contest between armies, one outfitted with iron weapons would see greater longevity in their sword throughout a battle. Whether impacting shields, armor, flesh, or other weapons, the iron weapons will be more likely to remain viable for the next strike. This combined with a longer usable lifetime justified the additional craftsmanship required for iron weapons (and tools)
You're correct, the main factor in a fight between warriors armed with iron and bronze would not be the quality of their weaponry but the skills of the warriors themselves. An ancient veteran warrior could probably beat an average modern man 99 times out of a 100 even if the modern man was armed with a high end modern steel sword. In a fight, if you telegraph your next move then your opponent will easily see it coming. Therefore, loading a big swing to "cut trough the oppenent's sword" could be very foolish. Or it could be your best chance at victory, in a fight, nothings a given: their are too many factors to truly account for like skills, speed, strength, technique, luck, even the direction of the sun.
The real factor that made iron dominant was logistics. It's actually extremely rare for there to be significant deposits of both copper *and* tin in the same place, so the bronze age required extensive and complex world-spanning trade routes to function. Iron meanwhile only requires one ore, which is abundant. That greatly simplifies sourcing raw material for production.
You do know that battles tended to go on for a few hours, right?
@@Ackalan that's true but that is not the scope of this video, this is comparing material vs material in a single engagement to see if one could make the difference. furthermore, take a bunch of recruits with modern steel and send them against a bunch of old grizzled veterans with rusty swords, you'll see what happens. the sword doesn't make the man, the man makes the sword.
This title says forged "iron" and the video even shows a chart differentiating between iron and steel, but the people in the video constantly change between using the words iron and then steel. So we still have no idea whether the sword is actually made of very low carbon iron (or very low carbon mild steel) or higher carbon steel (eg. medium carbon steel).
The sword is probably a mixture of hard steels and softer irons. A lot of the skill of a blacksmith is getting the carbon composition of the iron right for the application and it is just done using the charcoal in the forge, working the iron and judging its colour as it heats and cools
@@davidwright7193 If it was a mixture of different soft and hard steels, then they would have used the jacketed lamination technique that sandwhiches a soft steel inside outer layers of harder steel. They do not do this in the video. The video suggests they are using a single type of pure steel given how they show the forging techniques and how at 5:00, they still they substitute their poor quality ore with a modern piece of metal ingot. They said "substitute my bloom with a comparable piece of iron." This in all likelyhood means they are using high quality, high purity modern monosteel ingots. Modern monosteels are ultrapure with a consistent and even distribution of carbon, so it should not have any sort of poor quality patches/weak spots where some parts are wrought iron and some parts are higher carbon steel.
@davidwright7193 If it was a mixture of different soft and hard steels, then they would have used the jacketed lamination technique that sandwhiches a soft steel inside outer layers of harder steel. They do not do this in the video. The video suggests they are using a single type of pure steel given how they show the forging techniques and how at 5:00, they still they substitute their poor quality ore with a modern piece of metal ingot. They said "substitute my bloom with a comparable piece of iron." This in all likelyhood means they are using high quality, high purity modern monosteel ingots. Modern monosteels are ultrapure with a consistent and even distribution of carbon, so it should not have any sort of poor quality patches/weak spots where some parts are wrought iron and some parts are higher carbon steel.
@@Intranetusa However that isn’t what the finished sword consists of. The outer layer will be of a higher carbon content than the core if they have used a charcoal forge or lower if they haven’t. The processes of heating and hammering change the makeup of the iron.
If you are trying to make a good blade you don’t want a uniform block of metal you need the outer edge hard and the body much softer. You get that in part by heating the billet in charcoal which means the outer layer absorbs carbon from the charcoal.
If you don’t get the outermost layer to pickup at least some carbon then just hammering it will be driving the carbon out. When you actually get iron out of a bloomary smelt what you end up with is a mixture of iron, carbon and slag. You then have to work it while hot to smash out the slag and the carbon to get wrought iron. That is what makes it “wrought” which is after all just an old past tense form of “work”. Much of the skill of a blacksmith is in controlling the amount of carbon that goes into the iron and comes out of it as a piece is worked. All the old methods of sword making be it pattern welding through to the Japanese folding methods were about getting a good mixture of properties into the blade.
When they get rid of his useless mess of slag with a bit of iron and replace it with a modern ingot they are pulling a fast one as that ingot is nothing like the wrought iron you actually get from working a lump of cast iron into a bar.
@@davidwright7193 They are using modern monosteel ingots with modern forges in the video. That means everything will be fairly pure and the carbon will be uniform and the result is all steel. They are not intentionally case hardening iron in a long enclosed process (which only increases the carbon of a very thin outer layer anyways). You don't need the outer edge hard and inner layer soft to make a good sword either. That is only a requirement for laminated swords. With tempered spring steel swords, the entire sword can have a similar level of hardness - both outer and inner layer are mostly similar. So the video creators have no reason to interchangeably use iron and steel like that when they are using modern pure monosteel as they should be perfectly aware of the type of steel they are using. And even if they were using jacketed laminated techniques that don't use monosteel, they still should not be mixing up iron and steel as the softer center is going to be higher end of the mild steel category.
The Great Fruit Wars lore is getting deep. I dig it!
Love it too
Fascinating. Great work from all concerned. And this makes the work of ancient blacksmiths, who didn't have access to hydraulic presses or electric grinders, all the more admirable.
this man really going to confuse archaeologists Edit wow 300 and i have bad grammer in this Post wow
*is
we have found a rare bronze sword for some reason and an iron sword, a FREAKING WORKING GUN, A NUKE at a random house
@@billanonymous3825 *William
@@billanonymous3825 quick tip, you can edit comments
press the three dots and then edit
@@user-tf4zk9zs8w thank you
What most people don't know is bronze swords were still being used well into the iron age, simply because they were the more superior weapon until smiths figured out how to grade the different parts of the bloom and laminate the different types of steel with iron...such as on swords used by the Vikings, Samurai, and other warrior cultures who forged composite blades.
Everyone knows when you get your first iron you make a pickaxe, smh
😂
Ikr! It only takes me like a minute to go from punching a tree to iron too, like what's taking him so long?
@@RAD-RC yeah, after that is the easy diamond armor
But it also implies that you can just smelt iron in a regular furnace with coal / charcoal, right?
@@YuriyNasretdinov Same oven you use to bake delicate cod, same amount of fuel needed too
The fruit scene was hilarious, is it sad how I empathized with them once you had the Google-y eyes on them?! 😂
"Time for the real test. The coconut."
*Laughs in Skallagrim chopping into branches*
And now, to test the cutting power, pineapples and watermelons.
*Laughs in Skallagrim chopping watermelons with a completely blunt sword*
By the way, it's just a waste of food.
@@ignasmaciulis1095 It sure looks cool in a slowmotion.
Although I'd say seeing the sword vibrating while getting stuck in a hard target would be even more interesting. Especially with a bendy material like bronze
The only way to properly deal with a coconut is to end him rightly with your pommel
*Laughs in shooting the swords with AK-47 tier rounds*
@@bigolbigmoose9550 what do you mean tier? That’s not how ammunition works.
It is important to note; ancient bronze would have used things we do not use today. Because they are poisonous metals.
Like arsenic.
Leaving ancient bronzes a bit closer to iron, plus the comparison here would be analogous to a very expensive iron blade for the early iron age, since well. Wrought iron was the first stuff we really could make, and low carbon steel and Wrought iron equivalents don't really cut the mustard to make historical speculations on.
They are a bit *less* durable overall and a bit harder and stronger.
But good episode; I hope you use your historically accurate iron to mock up another test in the future!
This is such a cool show. I really like how down to earth the sword caster and blacksmiths were. Looking forward to the next chapter in the series, rock on 😎
It's a cool video, but I've noticed a few things that's not accurate. to avoid bending, bronze age swords mostly had a thick spine to make it more rigid. Also, bronze should be a bit harder than wrought iron: 60-258 on the Vickers scale compared to 30-80. (but definetely not as hard as even low carbon steel which is around 130-600). It wasn't iron's superiority that prevailed, but the availability (compared to tin, required for bronze) and the requirement of only one material instead of two. After the bronze age trade collapse and the smelting technologies improvement, iron was cheaper and easier to make than bronze, so it became the main metal to use, but not because it was a superior material at the time.
shhhh, thats dangerously complicated reasoning for this channel as well as most of the comment section.
the purpose of this series was that he noticed that the stuff he made was made with modern tools and wanted to do a series where he actually made everything. And every episode he slowly drifts from that goal. But now he is Using modern furnaces,power tools etc. He barely uses materials that he got from scratch either he's using tons of store bought material.
15:36 But overall, it kills.
Why don't I see anyone commenting on this? It was such a Forged in fire moment right there hahaha
Joe & Adri are the best!!
No u
They seem pretty cool. Shame they don't have much of an online presence outside of Instagram.
🍆
This blacksmith is so nice and charitable.
HTME 2021: "Welcome to the gun age"
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm truly a tutorial it wil be
Andy actually wanted to make a gun 2 years ago but RUclips banned showing how guns are made.
@@etymologynerd. oh well then fugoisto has a problem he shows how to make flamethrowers even
@@etymologynerd. i remember being confused when those gunpowder and firework videos went nowhere
First he should build a lathe
so this might be skipping a few generations, but he probably has all the materials to make highland bagpipes. I honestly just wanna see Andy attempt to play some scottish hornpipes lol.
you need to make iron hammer, anvil, tongs!, files and axe.
Can't believe he said "advantage", rather than iron age had an edge...
Maybe he said "advantedge" 😄
Is funny that the first time a watch dr.stone the first ting that came to my mind was this Chanel
Andy: While you were partying, I studied the blade!
Got to love the running story of the nation of the fruit people. It's great.
Thank you for the demo ! That was a question that must be asked about ancient warfare !
The main issue with your bloom is that you didn't squeeze out the viscous silica trapped in it.
I dont think he cares
@@ajhproductions2347 why wouldnt he?
I think he didn't get the airflow high enough up to liquefy it so that the impurities flowed out enough. Those early iron techniques are really hard to work with also the amount of muscle work involved is really high when you don't have a hydraulic hammer and the lower the temperature of your furnace the worse it gets. Jumping as fast as possible to a firebrick furnace seems naturally^^
Seeky Unbounded has he ever gone back and done something correctly? All his results used modern technology because he couldn't get it to work using ancient technology. I'd say he's still stuck in the stone age.
@@seekyunbounded9273 cause he does the jack of all trades thing where he learns a new thing every week or whatever, not selling it, just doing it to make a video the way I see it lol no concerns of extreme accuracy or quality, just to do it pretty much. But now I sound like im drinking hatorade...maybe just a sip...
Bronze definitely held a edge in being castable, wich is a way quicker process of manufracture. But it also limited the size and shapes. It was very hard or outright impossible to forge. And the resources were a lot more limited to get, as you needed tin and copper.
With Iron you had to use forging. Wich while a longer process, also offered a lot better control. Casting was not possible until closer tot he modern age. But the resources (Iron and Carbon) were comparatively easy to get.
17:15 mom giving me hair cut
I have to say, putting googly eyes on the fruit feels like a real psycho move
I can imagine boomers in the past saying "back in my time we used real weapons not these iron toys"
No idea what made me search for this.
But this video was very fun to watch.
Powered by a team of nerds
Operating together in flawless sync
Opening doors and curious minds
Providing laughs while making us think
Mom don’t call me a nerd in front of my friends 😩
Andy, please note the first letter of each line. Lauren didn't get it, but I thought you were nerdy enough to figure it out. (Sigh.)
the video was good, there are not many videos on the theme "bronze vs iron" however, they did not do justice to the bronze sword, it was thin too much compared to the iron sword that looked more robust on its blade, the hardening work of the bronze blade was done halfway. Anyway, it was a good video !
"You have to keep your eyes peeled." I see what you did there.
Thank you lol
I like the sword talk for real! swords are secondary weapons for foot soldiers and last resorts for some unless they had a short dagger wich is great in very close combat
The coin shortage happened cause everyone saw HTME's video on making a sword from pennies
Omg amazing conclusion of the blades clashing there
It's only easier to cast than forge, when you use modern casting methods like sand casting.. Which was not done in the Bronze Age...
Sand Casting bronze was around in China 3,300 years ago.
@@Rob_Fordd to my knowledge no. First around about 470 AD for casting coins in China
Even if it WASN'T Widely done, its doable with pre-bronze technology
@@jakob4644 Coins are not the same as swords, they are just both made of metal. The easiest way to make a coin is to pour a glob of molten metal on a surface and stamp it before it cools in a rough circular shape, there was little need to innovate from that for ages. Regardless, of when it truly started in China though, the oldest sand cast piece, a bronze frog from ancient Mesopotamia, is 3,200 years old.
You should DEFINITELY do a video on how to make a smith's file!! I realized when the smith said "which would normally be done with a file, but... we have a belt grinder." That I could picture how to make a hammer, a pair of tongs, but I couldn't come up with how one makes a file!
When do we get to the mithril, adamant, and runite era.
I love how you didn't actually show a comparison between the two different blades by chopping the same objects, and instead acted all silly and played fruit ninja. VINE STARS! Loved it. Im dyslexic so sorry if i missed the thumbs up button. They both look the same to me
2000 years later two swords get discovered by archeologists:
BRONZE SWORD: hey iron heeeeeeeey heyyyyyyyyy we got found strong Bro!!!!
IRON SWORD: scattered pile of rust desingrated beyond repair
BRONZE SWORD: Cries in loneliness in a museum...you were the strongest one...
joking aside, great video :D and i recall from my college education in history of the great Pineapple-watermelon war told centuries later by the Greek Coconout Cocohomer xD a true epic tale !!!
I mean, the last test showed an expected result. Bronze is just much, much softer than steel but still, it's a great video!
If Age of Empires has taught me anything, it's that Bronze Age doesn't stand a chance against the Iron Age unless you plan on a Fast Castle strategy.
Differences in bronze vs. early iron equipment are less impactful on battle outcome than strategic (recruitment, training, supply lines, morale) and tactical (unit composition, troop movements, communications, surprise attacks, fire, fortifications).
If bronze fights iron, but the bronze civilization was able to field 20% more men, the boost from that will more than compensate for softer equipment. Or if bronze happens to be well-fed because they encamped first, that's a huge advantage. Or if bronze is defending and had time to recon and set up some field fortifications like stakes or abatis. Or if bronze has a well-regulated system of swapping out men from the shield wall with reserves.
To put it another way, imagine you have a bronze sword and a guy comes up to you well-trained with his stout stone club. One good hit on your head and you're dead. Your bronze sword has a lot of advantages, but it doesn't make you invincible, or even make the outcome certain.
Which is all just saying that AoE is extremely simple and bamboozled you into thinking it was teaching you anything.
Partypooper
Nice googly eye sneak and smile at 21:10
It just occurred to me: I don’t think you have made a plough. You should make a plough.
Bronze still had clear advantages! There were reasons the Romans used it widely. The iron needs regular care and will rust quickly. While the bronze sword can go on a shelf. And a bent bronze sword can be repaired on the battlefield while iron shatters.
Well, in some cultures it was pretty popular scare tactic to EAT YOUR FRICKIN' ENEMIES
I am way late to this party, but I don't think this is a very fair comparison for a bunch of reasons that can be grouped into two categories.
A) Your 'iron' sword is arguable of very high quality--much higher quality than what it is being used as a stand-in for and take note of how 'long' your bronze-age expert felt your blade was and understand that this is partly to blame for weakness to bending.
B) Your sword vs sword test isn't reflective how how swordspersons duel one another. Even with high-quality weapons (perhaps especially with high-quality weapons since they are so expensive) you would never expect to see them wailing on each other like they have metal clubs. These things are sharp and flicking strikes to the hands, wrists and elbows would be the primary attacks since they are the closest things for you to hit and they also keep you as far away from their sword as possible. Any time you would bring you sword full on overhead to wind up a huge strike, you would lose. Either you invite a pre-emptive attack or your huge telegraphed and committed swing is readily evaded and you are run through before you can finish your strike.
My man has a sledge hammer casting a sword😂😂😂
Not the pro but the guy learning
(I forgot his name)
It looks so comical
That sword test explains why the Assyrians proceeded to roflstomp their bronze age neighbors after discovering how to forge iron.
Way too "polite" in saying how "it definitely worked, just not efficiently". It didn't work. They needed to re-smelt it... and do it correctly this time. That's not at all what a "parry" is and you're not going to "snap their sword" if it's copper or bronze. As someone with knowledge of history and these weapons and materials, this is excruciating to watch.
Complete with a brutal tale of melon butchery.
Glory to our sacred melon ancestors. Their carnage fueled this show.
Hmm. I think through a combination factors what you had here was a very good quality piece of iron going up against a comparatively less good quality bronze sword (no disrespect to the smith who cast it....maybe a *bit* of disrespect to your slightly wonky work hardening :P ) - haven't watched all the videos you've done but I am curious whether it was a comparable alloy to the contemporary ones - I know they got very specific in tailoring the alloy to its use.
On the iron side, good quality homogenous iron existed, and even steel tools could be produced back in the bronze age, but doing so was rare and less consistent. By the time the iron age is in full swing hey could make pretty decent ones, but a good quality bronze tends to be superior - though IIRC more so for something like armour, mechanically speaking - I have certainly seen a top class bronze naue ii cut through steel plate (under favourable conditions, but the fact it did it at all was astounding) which judging from the performance here I'm not certain this one could do (though granted that was made by possibly the world's best bronze bladesmith we have today)
As for parrying with the flat of the blade....kinda sorta but not like that. A full on strike to the flat of the blade is far MORE likely to bend it than to the blade's edge (thats basic mechanics, there's a lot less depth of material to deform). If you want to block the enemy blade you want to do it with the edge, its not onyl less likely to bend the blade its also a MUCH stronger barrier (for slightly more complex mechanical reasons) The disadvantage of course is edge damage, but we do see edge damage like that on artefacts.
Using the flat of the blade would be for a *deflection*, so you're doing it at a slight angle and not taking the brunt of the impact, just giving the incoming strike a slight nudge and letting it skid off.
The real advantage of iron is the logistics, and not needing tin (which has onyl a few large sources in the entire Mediterranean)
Once you get to actual steel though, yeah its better
As a learning Blacksmith I found this interesting and lotsof great information.
As a gardener them mellons wasn't ready to pick or eat, So glad I raise my own.
Great video, Thanks
WHY DID YOU PARRY WITH THE FLAT SIDE!?!?!?!?
Thats the weakest side of any sword!
Bronze, Copper, Iron or Steel.
You use the blade to parry!
That has the most force.
I think they were doing it wrong on purpose to push them to failure more easily
Parrying with the edge will damage the edge
Thank you Greg for helping this guy go from ooga booga to oogus boogus
God, Lauren is a woman after my own heart.
I love being a part of this so much ♡´･ᴗ･`♡
You lost no simp September
@@laurenapolis do you have an onlyfans
@@olinokalani6881 she has an onlyfeet
Blake Cohen where👀
Now making a sword from 6-2 Ti & Maraging Inox, compound welded & twisted together would be a challenge, but if possible, would make the ultimate sword. Love that bronze sword found in Czechia with the cast in 8 sided handle, great for grip.
Actually this isnt bronze, it's copper. Bronze is a mix of copper and tin and has different propperties than plain copper. The true test should compare the real bronze(copper+tin) and the orychalk(copper+zinc) which were the main alloys of the bronze age with the forged iron which is technically steel
Ah, so it should be titled copper vs steel. Not really a fair test of bronze vs iron after all.
Great. Exactly the clip I wished for. Thx.
You could say iron has a distinct... *edge*
Great casting video again!
Ha! Another man who wears shorts while forging. Nothing like working steel while shirtless in flip flops
I take my risks cooking bacon and eggs in the nude. At least the worst I'll get is a nasty blister, you could lose half a leg on a bad day at the forge!
An army of 15th century plate-armored French heavy cavalry, some English longbowmen, and some crossbows, vs any Bronze Age army of a similar size. Now that would be a slaughter.
"Swords were a secondary weapon in the bronze age..."
Dude; they have ALWAYS been secondary weapons.
obviously. run away screaming at the psyco with a sword is always first
@@NotDrak with your spear in hand you could get him like 8 feet away.
Typically you'd have archers or slingers beating up the enemy from a distance, skirmishers riding past and peppering them, super annoying. And then when the two shield walls came together, men would hurl spears first. So you might not even survive to meet the enemy. When they closed to melee, they stabbed each other with spears. Men in the rank behind the shields would stab over the top at the enemy front rank, and that must be done with a spear because it's too far away.
So you're pressed in on either side by your buddies, your buds from behind and pressing you forward, and the enemy is trying to shove your whole side backward. All the time, you're gripping your shield and spears are stabbing at your face from like eight angles and your friends' spears are banging into your helmet. You're getting kicked and stomped on, dust is kicked up in the air, men are screaming as they're dying, arrows and stones are flying overhead. Blood runs down your spear haft and it's hard to hold onto. Drums and horns are going off all over the place to give orders, and you have to somehow pay attention to your side's communications and not get messed up by the enemy's. You're also tired because you were marching, cold and wet or else sunbaked, hungry and probably at least a little bit ill, and if you survive your best-case scenario is a plot of land you can farm on until you die from exhaustion.
Morale is the first weapon.
More men died from disease like cholera, or malnutrition, than in combat. This is because the camp is just a muddy mess of shit, people can't wash up properly, the water is tainted and insufficient, the food isn't properly preserved so it's full of maggots and basically rotten.
Sanitation is the second weapon.
All the other weapons are tertiary at best.
That said, I'd argue that diplomacy is Weapon Zero because you can subjugate an enemy without sending any soldiers and get everything you want if you do diplomacy right. War is the next step in the diplomatic process.
This is the weirdest cooking channel
Achievement get: Acquiring Hardware
We're gonna build swords just like the ancients did
*breaks out belt grinder*
Failure.
HTME reset asked simple question; Can one man, using only the tolls he has produced, recreate all the technological steps to advance back into the information age?
You have now proven that the technology and skill base for Iron age advancement is beyond you.
Well, beyond his ability to simulate in the time he was willing to spend working on this video in 2020. In a saner year, with more time, he might have done better.
@@princecharon What makes you think he will have more time when he has deadlines and the tens of thousands of people in his region using up resources?
I can imagine how legends about magic swords began: when a bronze age culture was conquered by an iron age culture and saw those blades. Longer, tougher and sharper than anything they could make. Then, when the war was over, one of the most technically inclined minds of the bronze age culture asked a blacksmith of the iron age culture where that metal came from. The blacksmith explained their smelting technique, but added that the first iron came from the sky, enveloped in fire, and when it struck the ground, it created a huge crater with the most deafening noise anyone had ever heard, louder than any thunder.
That day, somebody's mind was blown.
Right now im thinking about how is he going to make a gun when the time comes
Honestly it’ll be easier then the sword
Love watching them big gloves half an inch on that belt sander lol. Gets my adrenaline pumping lol