Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and how the tech are you? It's time for a
Speaker 1: classic episode. This episode originally published on July eight, two fifteen.
Speaker 1: It is called Swords the Real Cutting Edge Technology, and
Speaker 1: my good friend Ariel Casting joined me as co host
Speaker 1: on this episode. You can hear me and Ariel talk
Speaker 1: about geeky stuff on a podcast called Large Nerd Drown Collider.
Speaker 1: If you have not checked it out, you definitely should
Speaker 1: because we have a lot to say about geek culture
Speaker 1: and nerd news and we always take two geeky properties
Speaker 1: and then say what would happen if you mash these
Speaker 1: up together? Well, in this we're not mashing things up together.
Speaker 1: We're sly sing him apart with swords. Hope you enjoy
Speaker 1: this classic episode of tech stuff. For people like myself
Speaker 1: and an aerial, this is beyond something that we're just
Speaker 1: interested in. The both of us have done stage combat,
Speaker 1: some extensive stage combat. Ariel, I think you prefer the
Speaker 1: broad sword to the rapier. I do. Yeah, the bigger
Speaker 1: the better. You're crazy. I'm more okay, fine, I'm more
Speaker 1: of a rapier person because I think finesse is sometimes
Speaker 1: called for uh. And also I have a body type
Speaker 1: where rapier works better than a big old sword. But
Speaker 1: we both are interested in this source stuff. Actually, Ariel
Speaker 1: and I first met working for the Georgia Renaissance Festival
Speaker 1: back in two thousand and one. I believe that's correct. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so long time ago two thousand one we started working
Speaker 1: there to I had been there a couple of years
Speaker 1: an Ariel joined the cast and she jumped right into
Speaker 1: doing combat as soon as possible, whereas I was, I
Speaker 1: decided that was not for me. And it was one
Speaker 1: of those things where both of us have this interest
Speaker 1: in the topic. Uh. And you know, we both like
Speaker 1: the whole swords and sorcery stuff too. So when I
Speaker 1: said let's let's cover something and we started talking about
Speaker 1: the possible topics, swords was one of those things that
Speaker 1: it's a technology that's been around for longer than longer
Speaker 1: than written history. In some cases, possibly that's debatable, but
Speaker 1: we'll get to that. So to start us off, aerial,
Speaker 1: can you walk us through Let's say you're looking at
Speaker 1: your typical sword like a Viking sword. Let's say, what
Speaker 1: are the parts of a sword? All right, so there
Speaker 1: are lots of different kinds of swords, but um, they
Speaker 1: all basically are made the same way with the same pieces. Uh.
Speaker 1: So you've got the blade, you know, the part that
Speaker 1: you've hurt people with, and then you've got the hilt,
Speaker 1: which I guess you can hurt somebody with a help,
Speaker 1: but it's not as fun. Um. And a lot of
Speaker 1: hilts also have a guard which protects your hand uh
Speaker 1: from other people's swords, um, which I personally know is
Speaker 1: a good thing because I've been cut open on the
Speaker 1: hand by a sword before. So there was actually a
Speaker 1: day where Ariel was doing stage combat, got hit in
Speaker 1: the hand, had to go and get stitches or staples, stitches, stitches,
Speaker 1: and then came back and finished the day. Yep, yep,
Speaker 1: worth it, so worth it. But so yeah, so a
Speaker 1: guard is really important. Um. And then you've got a
Speaker 1: pommel which is at the very base of the sword,
Speaker 1: and that helps keep the sword from slipping out of
Speaker 1: your hand because when you're gripping on a sword and
Speaker 1: you're swinging it around, your hand gets really sweaty. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: And it also acts as a counterweight which balances the sword.
Speaker 1: Otherwise you're using far too much muscle and strength to
Speaker 1: try to finesse the sword around. Um. Yeah, and that
Speaker 1: speaking from experience, that can get very tiring, even with
Speaker 1: the pommel. But if you didn't have that counterweight helping
Speaker 1: you with those uh those moves, then just the your
Speaker 1: wrist would get exhausted and your forearm in order to
Speaker 1: control the sword while making those swings, you'd be very
Speaker 1: quickly become an ineffective swordsman. Now, the hilt in the pommel,
Speaker 1: the back end of the sword, the decorative part um
Speaker 1: is called furniture because it's furnishing the sword um and
Speaker 1: really interesting. In ancient Europe, the hilt of the sword
Speaker 1: was the entire back end from the guard to the pommel,
Speaker 1: and in uh Norse and Viking culture it just meant
Speaker 1: the lower hilt in the upper hilt, which was like
Speaker 1: the pommel and cross guard, but not the actual grip. Now,
Speaker 1: so so the parts that were on either side of
Speaker 1: the actual grib interesting, and when we talk about blades
Speaker 1: blades also we can break that down a little bit more.
Speaker 1: Blades typically have six and sometimes seven different areas to them. Uh. First,
Speaker 1: you have the edge. This is the important part of
Speaker 1: the sword. This is the actual cutting side of the blade. Now,
Speaker 1: some swords are single edged, like the katana is a
Speaker 1: single edged sword. A lot of different um uh swords
Speaker 1: and throughout the ages have been single edged. But others
Speaker 1: are double edged swords like long swords and a lot
Speaker 1: of short swords, and even some swords like pas or Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true, they technically have three, although those tend to
Speaker 1: be used more for stabby stabby than cutty cutty. And
Speaker 1: then you've got the tip that would be the stabby
Speaker 1: stabby part. You've got the back of the sword. Now,
Speaker 1: the back only exists if you have a single edged blade.
Speaker 1: The back refers to the non sharpened edge of the sword.
Speaker 1: So if you had a h you know, a scimitar,
Speaker 1: for example, is sharpened along the front side, but not
Speaker 1: the back side, so the back you don't since you
Speaker 1: don't have two edges, you do have a back on
Speaker 1: that one, whereas with a long sword. You know, your
Speaker 1: typical long sword had an edge on either side, so
Speaker 1: you don't have a back on that type of sword.
Speaker 1: There's the flat of the blade that refers to the sides,
Speaker 1: not the edges. So if you were to slap someone
Speaker 1: with the flat of the blade, it would sting, but
Speaker 1: it wouldn't cut them, right, You just do that to
Speaker 1: be a jerk. Yeah, And actually that's a go to
Speaker 1: move from stage combat because you usually there's a Usually
Speaker 1: it's the cocky hero who, uh, while dodging a villain's attack,
Speaker 1: will slap them on the rear end with the flat
Speaker 1: of the blade. And and by the way, that does sting.
Speaker 1: Then you have the fuller. Now, the fuller is a
Speaker 1: narrow groove that runs down the blade of lots of
Speaker 1: different sorts. Not all sorts have these, but a lot do.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they call it the blood groove or blood gutter. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's not what a lot of people think it
Speaker 1: is there. I have heard folks say, oh, well, it's
Speaker 1: it's a channel for blood to flow through so that
Speaker 1: when you stab someone, the blood has a place to go,
Speaker 1: so you know, as you're stabbing them over and over
Speaker 1: they continue to bleed out. That's not what that for.
Speaker 1: In fact, it has nothing to do with blood. It
Speaker 1: has everything to do to making a strong sword without
Speaker 1: having to use as much material to make that sword.
Speaker 1: So the the gutter that that channel actually adds structural
Speaker 1: integrity to a blade, so it is able to maintain
Speaker 1: its shape while still being a little flexible UM and
Speaker 1: is able to cut through stuff without breaking. And I
Speaker 1: guess that would mean it would also be lighter weight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you don't have to use as much material. Instead
Speaker 1: of a solid steel sword, where you know, you have
Speaker 1: the whole mass made up like that, you have that channel.
Speaker 1: It means that you use less material. It means that
Speaker 1: less material means less weight. Very important, as it turns out,
Speaker 1: I mean they're not everyone is the mountain in Game
Speaker 1: of Thrones. You know, some some of us mirror mortals
Speaker 1: need a little bit of a rest. I'm the mountain.
Speaker 1: Aerial is the mountain, but I I need more, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a light sword I appreciate. Next we have
Speaker 1: the aang. Now, the tang is the part of the
Speaker 1: blade that is actually covered by the hilt. Uh So
Speaker 1: a sword. If you were to strip the hilt away
Speaker 1: um and take away the guard, take away the pommel,
Speaker 1: you would see a blade that on the base of
Speaker 1: it turns into almost like a rectangular solid steel um
Speaker 1: usually steel because we're talking about steel today, but solid
Speaker 1: steel tab essentially that. If it's a full tang, it's
Speaker 1: pretty much the width of the blade and runs all
Speaker 1: the way down to where the pommel would attach. If
Speaker 1: it's a partial tang, it's maybe about half the width
Speaker 1: of the blade. It can even be more narrow than that.
Speaker 1: Um And at any rate, this is what the grip
Speaker 1: fits on top of. It's what the guard attaches to.
Speaker 1: There's actually um a shoulder on some on some blades
Speaker 1: where that's where the guard will attach where it won't
Speaker 1: go beyond because your card wouldn't be much use if
Speaker 1: it just went right off the end of the blade.
Speaker 1: It would be you know, funny that one time I
Speaker 1: prefer a full tang. I know that I have thought
Speaker 1: plenty of time with swords where the tang was not
Speaker 1: quite big or long enough and it's just kind of
Speaker 1: floppy in the Yeah, yeah, you can actually if it's
Speaker 1: not if the if the handle isn't properly fed to
Speaker 1: the tang, it's loose, you can feel it rattling, and
Speaker 1: that's that means you have less control, and also you're
Speaker 1: doing a lot more work. And also it's not it doesn't.
Speaker 1: It just feels unsafe. As someone who's fought with these
Speaker 1: as well. No, I prefer a full tang sword as well.
Speaker 1: Also that affects the handling of the sword. Uh So,
Speaker 1: if you have a full tang sword, it's going to
Speaker 1: feel different in your hand, not just because of whether
Speaker 1: or not the blade is is um steady inside the
Speaker 1: you know when you're holding the handle, but it's also
Speaker 1: going to mean that's got to change the balance of
Speaker 1: the blade. So that's something else. Um. Also, some swords
Speaker 1: have was called a recasso. Is that where there's a
Speaker 1: pretty painting on it that's kind of abstracting. No, I
Speaker 1: mean you can do at you ings on swords and stuff,
Speaker 1: but that is not what a ricosso is. A ricosso
Speaker 1: is an unsharpened portion at the base of a blade,
Speaker 1: just above the guard. So if you've ever seen a
Speaker 1: big sword where you've got the big hilt and then
Speaker 1: the blade when it first when it comes out past
Speaker 1: the guard, you can tell it's not sharp for another
Speaker 1: you know, seven or eight inches, that's the ricosso. And
Speaker 1: those are often used for really really monstrously big swords
Speaker 1: where you're using it against pikeman or you're using it
Speaker 1: against mounted cavalry. Uh And you just you you wanted
Speaker 1: to have the ability to grip a little higher on
Speaker 1: the blade um in certain situations, but then again, you're
Speaker 1: risking getting your fingers cut off. Yes. Uh. Interesting. You
Speaker 1: saw some of the footage from the E three where
Speaker 1: they had the Viking versus Nights game. Uh. The thing
Speaker 1: that it bugged me was that in that game, one
Speaker 1: of the characters has a finishing move where they flipped
Speaker 1: the sword around, so they're holding it by the blade
Speaker 1: and they bring bring it down almost like the hilt
Speaker 1: is acting like a bludgeon or an ax, but instead
Speaker 1: of it being a bludgeon, they hit a person just
Speaker 1: at the very base of the blade and cut into
Speaker 1: them to to to kill your opponent, and the whole
Speaker 1: time I'm thinking your fingers would be gone. So I
Speaker 1: have a theory about this, okay, okay, because I've been
Speaker 1: thinking about this and it bothered me too. Uh. I
Speaker 1: believe that that Viking fought so long and hard that
Speaker 1: his blade was so dull that it was safe to handle.
Speaker 1: It was safe to handle, it was no longer useful
Speaker 1: for the purpose it was made for, and he had
Speaker 1: to turn it around. And the only part that's sharp
Speaker 1: now is the bit that's right above the guard. So
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna flip this around. Yeah. Interesting, I I
Speaker 1: like that you're an apologist. I don't know if that's
Speaker 1: true or not. It's probably not. Probably, So we wanted
Speaker 1: to look a little bit too at the history of
Speaker 1: swords because you know, it's they've been around for quite
Speaker 1: some time. And actually when you get to a point
Speaker 1: of you know, where were the earliest swords made, there
Speaker 1: there's a lot of disagreement, and it's largely because swords
Speaker 1: are uh there there's not a rough like a very
Speaker 1: clear definition of what is the sword versus what is
Speaker 1: a dagger. Um. Generally speaking, you would say a sword
Speaker 1: is longer than a dagger and a dagger shorter than
Speaker 1: a sword. But that's not very satisfying, right, because it's
Speaker 1: like saying a mountain is taller than a hill, like
Speaker 1: you need it would be great to have some hard
Speaker 1: numbers there. Well, there there are some it's kind of
Speaker 1: considered that a dagger is between seventy yeah. Yeah, but um,
Speaker 1: because there is that controversy, like we don't actually know
Speaker 1: when the first swords came about, right the the There
Speaker 1: was a cool find in two thousand three where some
Speaker 1: archaeologists discovered weapons in Aslan Tepe, Turkey, and I could
Speaker 1: be complete com lately, butchering that that place name, and
Speaker 1: I apologize, it looks like a lane to me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's just a total guest on my part. So they
Speaker 1: the weapons they found had been forged more than five
Speaker 1: thousand years ago. However, this was one of those cases
Speaker 1: where some of the other experts were saying, well, these
Speaker 1: aren't really swords, they're just long daggers. And again, like
Speaker 1: sometimes people argue it's whether or not the uses for
Speaker 1: attack or defense because a lot of people think of
Speaker 1: a daggers defensive weapon. Um. But but I mean, when
Speaker 1: it comes down to it, we at least know which
Speaker 1: came first, the dagger of the sword. Yeah, yeah, the
Speaker 1: daggers came first, or or even a knife. But if
Speaker 1: you would consider a dagger or a knife a sword
Speaker 1: of a sort, um, then you can't even go back
Speaker 1: to the Stone Age because there were sharpened wood and
Speaker 1: bone and clinton stone knives and daggers. Then yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: I mean when we talk about daggers versus knives, even
Speaker 1: daggets can using right because some people will argue that
Speaker 1: a knife has a single cutting edge, and a dagger
Speaker 1: has two cutting edges, but it all depends upon But
Speaker 1: then a sword has a single or double And there's
Speaker 1: some people who are like, well, no, this is a knife,
Speaker 1: that's a dagger, that's a dagger, that's a knife, and
Speaker 1: and it's you know, so I do an'tway. The reason
Speaker 1: why we're saying it's hard to nail this down is
Speaker 1: because language itself is complicated, so finding the specifics are tricky.
Speaker 1: We'll be back with more of this classic episode of
Speaker 1: tech stuff after this quick break. Getting back to that
Speaker 1: awesome archaeological find over in Turkey, the swords predated the
Speaker 1: next oldest find by about a thousand years. Yeah, a
Speaker 1: millennia past between these weapons and the next oldest weapons
Speaker 1: that are been found. Um some means the swords woul
Speaker 1: and forged sometime around three thousand, three fifty b C,
Speaker 1: which is at the very beginning of the early Bronze Age.
Speaker 1: The if you think of the ages, the three big ones,
Speaker 1: the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, this
Speaker 1: is at the just at the end of the Stone Age,
Speaker 1: the beginning of the Bronze Age. Some people call it
Speaker 1: the Copper Age because copper was a metal that was
Speaker 1: the first metal that humans discovered. Yeah, um so, and
Speaker 1: smithing started with copper and then turned into bronze. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In fact, the copper that was are the swords that
Speaker 1: were found were a copper alloy, right, yeah, yeah, they
Speaker 1: were a copper alloy. They had mixed arsenic with it.
Speaker 1: Um and not so if you if you cut me
Speaker 1: a die from poison. No, no, no, it wasn't. It
Speaker 1: wasn't poisoned blades, although they might have poisoned their blades. Um.
Speaker 1: They did it to change the metal, to to change
Speaker 1: its chemistry, and it made it actually stronger, and it
Speaker 1: made the copper, because copper is pretty soft, it made
Speaker 1: it hold its shape and hold its edge. And then
Speaker 1: also three of the swords were inlaid with silver. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they're fancy. They were their fancy swords. They weren't
Speaker 1: just you know, old like hackneyed kind of gross little things. Right.
Speaker 1: So it be technically, if if these swords this amazing find,
Speaker 1: if they are, if we got to a point where
Speaker 1: we all said, okay, so these are not swords, when
Speaker 1: would we say swords really got their start. Well, I
Speaker 1: guess most people would say that swords really got their
Speaker 1: start closer to seventeen hundred sixteen hundred BC, which is
Speaker 1: the middle of the Bronze age. Um, and they were
Speaker 1: made of bronze, which is alloy of copper and tin
Speaker 1: um and and the argument stems from the fact that
Speaker 1: a sword has to be strong in order to be
Speaker 1: used the way it's meant to be used, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, slicing into people or hacking things apart or whatever.
Speaker 1: Um and soft metals just don't work for that. So
Speaker 1: copper wouldn't work so well for that, especially in longer
Speaker 1: blades like swords as as opposed to daggers. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: it's absolutely true. Uh that's why, you know, until we
Speaker 1: got a better understanding of what alloys were and we'll
Speaker 1: talk more about what an alloy is in just a second. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, relying on pure metal was tricky because that
Speaker 1: pure metal couldn't stand up to the rigors. I mean,
Speaker 1: you get to a point where you're in combat and
Speaker 1: you are, uh, fighting with your weapons. If your weapons
Speaker 1: are bending or breaking, then obviously you are at a
Speaker 1: distinct disadvantage. So let's talk about some of these materials
Speaker 1: that we use. All right, So copper and alloys so copper,
Speaker 1: as I said, was first metal discovered by humans. It's
Speaker 1: very easy to shape, so that makes it incredibly useful
Speaker 1: for stuff like if you want to turn it into
Speaker 1: cookery or or jewelry, or these days if you want
Speaker 1: to turn it into wires so that you can run
Speaker 1: electricity through, because it is also a great conductor. But
Speaker 1: that's also the Trauback is because it's so easy to
Speaker 1: be shaped, it's also easy for it to bend. It
Speaker 1: won't hold onto an edge very well. When we talk
Speaker 1: about holding onto an we mean that the metal has
Speaker 1: to be a special kind of hardness. It has to
Speaker 1: be hard enough so that when you give it an
Speaker 1: edge and then you hit something, that edge is maintained,
Speaker 1: but soft enough so that you can make it have
Speaker 1: an edge in the first place. So it's a delicate balance.
Speaker 1: So you can sharpen a copper blade, but once you
Speaker 1: use it it becomes dull. And actually I saw a
Speaker 1: really cool demonstration of this. The BBC did a whole
Speaker 1: series about ancient Britain and at one point they talked
Speaker 1: about the the Bronze Age, and they made two arrow heads,
Speaker 1: and one was made out of copper and one was
Speaker 1: made out of bronze. They had a little sheet of metal.
Speaker 1: They put the copper arrowhead against the sheet of metal
Speaker 1: on a and they had a little like arrow extending
Speaker 1: behind it. They used a hammer they hit the arrow
Speaker 1: so that the head of the tip of the arrow
Speaker 1: would press against this metal, and the copper just buckled.
Speaker 1: And then they the bronze and they did the same thing,
Speaker 1: and the bronze pierced through the metal. So it showed
Speaker 1: that bronze is a much stronger material than copper, So
Speaker 1: wasn't Copper was mostly used in weaponry as a way
Speaker 1: of giving more weight to stuff like maces and clubs,
Speaker 1: so for the smashy smashy but not the slicy slice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you may go, well, but pennies are copper, and
Speaker 1: I can't bend a penny, and that's because they're made
Speaker 1: from copper alloys. Around three thousand BC, humans figured out
Speaker 1: how to make copper stronger by adding other stuff to it, um,
Speaker 1: making it an alloy, which we've already kind of talked
Speaker 1: about a little bit um. And sometimes the thing they
Speaker 1: added is another metal. So in the instance of bronze,
Speaker 1: which is kind of what pennies really are, it's uh,
Speaker 1: copper and tin um and then sometimes like with iron
Speaker 1: which makes steel, it's a metal and a non metal
Speaker 1: like iron and carbon. Right, so when you have an alloy,
Speaker 1: you've got two main things you're thinking about. It can
Speaker 1: be more than two, by the way. You can. In fact,
Speaker 1: are some types of bronze where they add magnesium and
Speaker 1: some other stuff to it, but the basic ingredients are
Speaker 1: are copper in ten. But your primary primary material is
Speaker 1: called the main metal. So with bronze that would be copper.
Speaker 1: Most of bronze is made up of copper. That so
Speaker 1: it's called the main metal or the base metal, or
Speaker 1: even the parent metal. So the other stuff is called
Speaker 1: the alloying agent, not the annoying agent, which is what
Speaker 1: mine is the alloying I don't have an agent, so
Speaker 1: I can say that the alloying agent. So the parent
Speaker 1: metal can be or more of the overall substance. It
Speaker 1: can be less than that to UH, and the alloy
Speaker 1: maybe as little as one percent. The alloying agent may
Speaker 1: be as little as one percent or even less of
Speaker 1: the overall. When we start talking about steel, we'll be
Speaker 1: talking about some really amazing like you have to be
Speaker 1: super precise with adding the carbon to your iron in
Speaker 1: order to get usable steel. So most alloys are solid solutions,
Speaker 1: So that means the different atoms of material are just
Speaker 1: mixed together, but aren't chemically bonded to each other. The
Speaker 1: easiest way to imagine this is, let's say that you
Speaker 1: actually let's say you've got a little dish and you
Speaker 1: pour pepper and salt into it. Now, the salt and
Speaker 1: pepper aren't chemically bonded together. You could, with enough patients
Speaker 1: and a fine enough pair of tweezers, pick out all
Speaker 1: the grains of salt, so they have not chemically bonded.
Speaker 1: And no matter how much you mash the salt and
Speaker 1: pepper and make it into finer and finer grounds, it's
Speaker 1: still going to be salt, right exactly. You you could
Speaker 1: get increasingly smaller tweezers and still separated. Would you'd be
Speaker 1: wondering why I'm making you do this? And the answer
Speaker 1: is because you know, you know why. But a few
Speaker 1: alloys are actually compounds. Now, compounds are different from solutions.
Speaker 1: Compounds mean that the atoms of the parent metal and
Speaker 1: the alloying agent actually do chemically bond. So in this case,
Speaker 1: we would talk about two things that when you mix
Speaker 1: it together and make a third thing. So salt itself
Speaker 1: is sodium and uh, you know sodium and chloride. You
Speaker 1: put those together and that makes salt. You can't separate
Speaker 1: that back out again easily. Right, It's not like you
Speaker 1: can take really tiny tweezers and like, okay, now I'm
Speaker 1: gonna put all the sodium over here and all the
Speaker 1: chloride over here. Now you would have to use fancy
Speaker 1: signs as you would. Uh. So the atoms in an
Speaker 1: alley are in a structure called a crystalline lattice. So
Speaker 1: if you were to look at these with an electron microscope,
Speaker 1: which those are a blast to use, by the way,
Speaker 1: you'd see the atoms of both the alloy and the
Speaker 1: parent metal, and they'd be arranged in some way. So
Speaker 1: some are substitution alloys. These are pretty simple to imagine.
Speaker 1: So let's say that we'll we'll we'll talk about Uh,
Speaker 1: let's imagine that you're talking about bronze, and you've got
Speaker 1: copper balls, and you've got ten balls like T I
Speaker 1: N T E N, and you lay out the cover
Speaker 1: balls in a grid, and then you remove some of
Speaker 1: the cover balls and replace them with the tin balls,
Speaker 1: just a few, like maybe of them. If you're Chinese,
Speaker 1: because that's what the Chinese like to do, then you
Speaker 1: would that that would be a substitution alloy. But some
Speaker 1: of them are called interstitial alloys, and this is where
Speaker 1: the alloying agent fits into the crystalline structure and fills
Speaker 1: up gaps that are in that crystalline structure. So for
Speaker 1: this example, imagine that you have a net and the
Speaker 1: net the the holes in the net are just big
Speaker 1: enough so you could wedge a golf ball into them.
Speaker 1: And so you choose some of the holes, not every
Speaker 1: single one, but some of the holes, and you put
Speaker 1: golf balls through it. That's gonna make the net behave
Speaker 1: differently than it would if there were nothing in those holes.
Speaker 1: The same sort of thing, but on atomic scale. For this. Yeah, Now,
Speaker 1: even though making an alloy makes the metal stronger, there
Speaker 1: there's a disadvantage because it also makes it harder to
Speaker 1: work with. Yeah. Generally speaking, you you trade off malleability,
Speaker 1: which is the ability to work a metal for a
Speaker 1: stronger material. You do um, And so now we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about how you make an alloy. Basic metal metallurgy
Speaker 1: involves melting the components together. So you take your tin
Speaker 1: and you take your copper, and you melt them together
Speaker 1: and you mix it up so they're all nicely mixed
Speaker 1: and thoroughly mixed, and then you come out with bronze.
Speaker 1: So it doesn't always involve melting, but for bronze it
Speaker 1: certainly did. In fact, I saw a really really in
Speaker 1: that same video, the BBC one, they actually demonstrated how
Speaker 1: an ancient uh metall ergist would or even a blade
Speaker 1: smith would create a bronze blades by melting the copper
Speaker 1: and the tin down, pouring it into a mold and
Speaker 1: going from there. So that's pretty cool. We've more to
Speaker 1: say in this classic episode of tech stuff after these
Speaker 1: quick messages. So we do have copper alloys like the
Speaker 1: copper arsenic alloy we mentioned earlier, and bronze was the
Speaker 1: one that really changed things. Uh That, as we've SAIDs
Speaker 1: like an alloy of copper and tin, So does you
Speaker 1: have other elements in there. It's more flexible than copper,
Speaker 1: it's stronger than copper. It's able to hold an edge
Speaker 1: longer than copper. So this was the first time we
Speaker 1: actually had a material that had the qualities necessary to
Speaker 1: make a sword a practical weapon. Yeah, but bronze, the
Speaker 1: ratio of copper to tin varied by region. So in China, uh,
Speaker 1: they preferred higher concentrations of tin about twenty or so,
Speaker 1: which made a harder alloy, but it was more brittle. Um.
Speaker 1: And because bronze could still bend, particularly in places that
Speaker 1: favored to mixture of around late and percent tin. Yeah,
Speaker 1: sword designs also tended to have our sword designs tended
Speaker 1: to have a wide curve shape to them to help
Speaker 1: with the bending, to keep from bending too, I see.
Speaker 1: So that way, if you encounter a force when the
Speaker 1: sword hits something, it distributes it along greater surface area. Yeah.
Speaker 1: A popular design was called the leaf blade sword, which
Speaker 1: had a blade that curved out just a little bit
Speaker 1: before the hill. Right. So if you look at ancient grease, uh,
Speaker 1: and you look at the swords that were produced in
Speaker 1: ancient Greece, you will often see this leaf blade also. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's one that was used a lot in uh in
Speaker 1: Lord of the Rings, Like there are some of the
Speaker 1: Lord of the Rings weapons head sort of this leaf
Speaker 1: blade look to it. And so you've got this kind
Speaker 1: of um blade. It's a short sword typically, so it's
Speaker 1: it's a fairly you know, wide blade that comes out
Speaker 1: tapers to a point, but just before you hit the
Speaker 1: handguard it it curves outward a bit, so it's got
Speaker 1: this sort of leaf shape to it. The pretty cool. Now,
Speaker 1: a sword maker working with this bronze alloy would heat
Speaker 1: it in coals until it was molten um, and then
Speaker 1: it would he would pour the molten mixture into a
Speaker 1: sword mold and then cool it down until the bronze
Speaker 1: was hardened, and then the mold would be broken away
Speaker 1: and you'd have your sword, and then you finish it
Speaker 1: and shape it right right, yeah, Because you would essentially
Speaker 1: have a sword, a a sword shaped hunk of bronze,
Speaker 1: and you would obviously it wouldn't be ready to go
Speaker 1: immediately because you would still need to um. You would
Speaker 1: still need to to sharpen it and shape it a
Speaker 1: little bit. Had a hilt very important. The next big
Speaker 1: material humans used to make weapons from was iron. So
Speaker 1: the Bronze Age transitioned into the Iron Age at different
Speaker 1: times for various regions, just as the Bronze Age head
Speaker 1: transitioned at different times for different regions from the Stone Age.
Speaker 1: So in other words, it wasn't like one day there
Speaker 1: was a Wednesday where everyone woke come and said, welcome
Speaker 1: to the Iron Age. That's not how it work. It
Speaker 1: would have been fun, there'd be a great musical involved.
Speaker 1: But no, it was not that way. The way it
Speaker 1: worked was that certain certain regions began to develop technology
Speaker 1: with iron more early earlier, not more early Jonathan needs
Speaker 1: more coffee earlier than other regions. Uh. In fact, India
Speaker 1: was a big one. India they started working with iron
Speaker 1: very early, so did uh some other areas of Asia.
Speaker 1: But giving a range for the Iron Age is pretty tough. Um.
Speaker 1: In general, you could say it began around four b
Speaker 1: C and Asia Minor, which is now Turkey. Big surprise,
Speaker 1: that's actually where we also found the copper alloy swords. Now,
Speaker 1: making a sword out of iron isn't as easy as
Speaker 1: it sounds. First of all, you have to get iron
Speaker 1: ore and then smelt it so that you can even
Speaker 1: work with it in the first place. So you can't
Speaker 1: just be like, oh, here's my here's a big hunk
Speaker 1: of iron stickles on the ground. Yeah, I just pulled
Speaker 1: it out of the ground. Now I'm good to go. No,
Speaker 1: anyone who's played Minecraft knows you gotta you gotta throw
Speaker 1: that sucker enough furnace first. Yeah. And in the good
Speaker 1: old days, this was called bloomery yeah, because it would
Speaker 1: make like a little bubbly bloom of metal. Yeah. Essentially,
Speaker 1: a blacksmith would use charcoal and bellows to heat up
Speaker 1: the iron ore. Not only would let would this let
Speaker 1: the iron like heat up and become melty, but it
Speaker 1: would add carbon from the charcoal and carbon monoxide uh
Speaker 1: into it, um into the process, and that would add
Speaker 1: carbon to the metal and what you get is a
Speaker 1: spongey pores material called a bloom yep. And so this
Speaker 1: this was different from bronze and that they weren't melting it.
Speaker 1: You know, you have to you have to go hot,
Speaker 1: much hotter with iron than you do with copper in
Speaker 1: order to melt it. So they were not getting it
Speaker 1: quite to that temperature. But the blooms, the spongy kind
Speaker 1: of looking stuff. Uh, it had holes in it. And
Speaker 1: part of the reason that holes in it is that
Speaker 1: the iron ore had a lot of oxygen in it
Speaker 1: and that carbon, some of it went, would transfer over
Speaker 1: into the iron, some of it would combine, uh, like
Speaker 1: the carbon monoxide given off by the the charcoal would
Speaker 1: combine with the oxygen that was inside the iron, and
Speaker 1: you would get carbon dioxide as a byproduct. So you
Speaker 1: would hammer and shape the bloom, which would help remove
Speaker 1: some of the impurities. Uh. But even then, once you
Speaker 1: had shaped the iron, iron actually is, in the grand
Speaker 1: scheme of things, a pretty soft metal. So it also
Speaker 1: does not hold an edge very well. You have to continuously,
Speaker 1: you know, re sharpen your blade because you would dull
Speaker 1: it as you would use it. So typically the early
Speaker 1: iron swords were made by heating the bloom. You would
Speaker 1: hammer it, you'd let it cool, and then you'd start
Speaker 1: that process all over again. And this was called work
Speaker 1: hardening because you are actually using physical work, the hammering,
Speaker 1: to get the iron into a state suitable for use
Speaker 1: as a sword. Um. There's a different type of hardening
Speaker 1: that's used later, but the early versions were work hardened
Speaker 1: sore us um. And so these were kind of marginal
Speaker 1: improvements over bronze swords. In fact, you could argue that
Speaker 1: a bronze weapon might be superior in some cases to
Speaker 1: an iron one. However, iron ones became incredibly popular, and
Speaker 1: it wasn't because they were better. It was because ten
Speaker 1: was relatively rare. Copper was everywhere people could find copper.
Speaker 1: What they couldn't find was tin. And since you needed
Speaker 1: to add the tin to the copper to make bronze
Speaker 1: and then iron, all you had to do was heat
Speaker 1: it up and then smack it around with a hammer,
Speaker 1: iron one out. Yeah, and yeah, you'd want iron over
Speaker 1: just copper, but you'd want steel over both of those. Uh.
Speaker 1: And that actually brings us to the last huge advance
Speaker 1: and sword making, which came about when they discovered that
Speaker 1: you could add specific amounts of carbon to the iron
Speaker 1: to create the alloys steel um, and in the smelting process,
Speaker 1: some carbon would be introduced to the iron um, the
Speaker 1: carbon from the charcoal. Uh. But it's tricky, you know.
Speaker 1: Obviously you're guessing with that. Yeah, it's it's very imprecise.
Speaker 1: And in fact, there's a lot of there's a lot
Speaker 1: of scholarships suggesting that early steel swords were created purely
Speaker 1: by chance. That it wasn't that someone said, hey, I
Speaker 1: bet if I added some of this stuff to some
Speaker 1: of this stuff, it will be way better. It just
Speaker 1: because of the way swords were made. Some swords were
Speaker 1: more iron and some swords were more steel. Uh. In Europe,
Speaker 1: they used patterned welding to the early Middle Ages, where
Speaker 1: they would take iron and steel rods of different harnesses
Speaker 1: and twist them and fold them together. And that was
Speaker 1: kind of a pre early way of trying to get that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so when we say the mixture being just right, we
Speaker 1: are talking about tiny amounts of carbon added to the
Speaker 1: iron in order to create steel, typically between point two
Speaker 1: and one point five per cent of the overall alloy.
Speaker 1: That's yeah, that's hard, you know, like you know, it's
Speaker 1: not not the simplest thing in the world to do.
Speaker 1: And it was so tricky that it was pretty latent
Speaker 1: to the medieval era before more than a few swordmakers
Speaker 1: outside of India could produce steel reliably. Um So, if
Speaker 1: you look at the earliest discoveries of steel. Also, steel
Speaker 1: was resistant to oxidation, which means it would not rust
Speaker 1: the way iron would. It can rust, but it does
Speaker 1: so less readily. Um So, it was it was a
Speaker 1: very valuable metal. But in India people had figured out
Speaker 1: how to make it fairly reliably, and outside of India
Speaker 1: it was much more touch and go all the way
Speaker 1: up into the Middle Ages and even into the Middle
Speaker 1: Ages for some areas. So the earliest method of attempting
Speaker 1: to produce steel reliably was called sementation. So they would
Speaker 1: take iron and they put that inside a container made
Speaker 1: from something that had a lot of car been in it,
Speaker 1: and that container would be heated in a furnace. And
Speaker 1: sometimes this would go on for days, sometimes just for hours,
Speaker 1: but sometimes you put it in a furence and leave
Speaker 1: it there for days. During that heating process, some of
Speaker 1: the carbon from the container would migrate and enter the iron,
Speaker 1: and at the end of the process, if everything went well,
Speaker 1: you had steel. Now you see when you said cementation,
Speaker 1: I thought you meant you put the iron into a
Speaker 1: cement block and then you threw it into the ocean.
Speaker 1: That's pretty much the way I would have to do it,
Speaker 1: because I know that I would never I mean to me,
Speaker 1: it's amazing that anyone ever figured this stuff out, Like
Speaker 1: it's a you know, we we take it for granted today,
Speaker 1: but somebody, somebody somewhere in the past had to figure
Speaker 1: out that this is how you make it happen. And
Speaker 1: that is phenomenal. So it's steel is way harder than
Speaker 1: iron or bronze. It can keep an edge longer than
Speaker 1: either of those. It's also flexible if you make the
Speaker 1: steel properly. Obviously, if if you put too much carbon
Speaker 1: in it, it can become brittle so that you don't
Speaker 1: want that in either armor or weapons. But with the
Speaker 1: right amount, it was flexible as resistant to corrosion rust
Speaker 1: compared to iron, So it's pretty much the better material
Speaker 1: to iron in every single important way. And out of
Speaker 1: all the types of steel used in all the swords
Speaker 1: in the world, there's probably one steel that is the
Speaker 1: most legendary, and that is Damascus steel. Yeah, which was
Speaker 1: it made in Syria? It was made in Surprise, Surprise, India. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the the there's some different scholarship on this. There are
Speaker 1: two different types of steel that are referred to as
Speaker 1: Damascus steel. Some of it is patterned steel, which you
Speaker 1: kind of talked about it a little bit earlier, and
Speaker 1: then the other type is woots steel. Yeah. So it's
Speaker 1: supposed to be really really strong. Um, and I say
Speaker 1: supposed to be because we don't know how it's made anymore. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they could figure out how to make tiny amounts of
Speaker 1: carbon with iron to make steel, and we can't figure
Speaker 1: out how to make the boots steel. Yeah. No, it's
Speaker 1: the the especially Essentially the recipe for woots steel has
Speaker 1: been lost to time. So whatever the methodology was, There's
Speaker 1: been a lot of people who have claimed that they
Speaker 1: were able to replicate woots steel, but from everything I
Speaker 1: have read, no one has successfully done so. And so
Speaker 1: it's interesting to me that a methodology that was was
Speaker 1: mastered more than a thousand years ago is totally lost
Speaker 1: to us. Well. I think that's partially because swordmaking fell
Speaker 1: out of practice for a while. Beture, we have guns
Speaker 1: and other things like that, and now with this maker society,
Speaker 1: it's coming back into fashion. Yeah. Actually, one of the
Speaker 1: videos I watched in preparation for this had a guy
Speaker 1: uh fashion a sword he found um leaf springs from
Speaker 1: an old uh probably an old trailer like leaf springs,
Speaker 1: probably the the system on a trailer, uh, and use
Speaker 1: that as the means of creating a sword, and even
Speaker 1: then starting from a piece of material that is roughly
Speaker 1: the size of what you wanted to be. Even then,
Speaker 1: it was incredible to see what kind of work goes
Speaker 1: into making one of these. Yeah, And I mean I
Speaker 1: watched a video as well, and he was talking a
Speaker 1: lot about Viking swords and how the Vikings forged and
Speaker 1: use their swords, and a lot of that knowledge is
Speaker 1: passed by word of mouth, and if it's written down,
Speaker 1: if someone doesn't use it, that piece of parchment or
Speaker 1: paper whatever is gonna degrade. And yeah, yeah, so mostly
Speaker 1: most time you would look at it from master to apprentice.
Speaker 1: But as sword making fell out of failure favor, there
Speaker 1: was no need to have an apprentice. So you then
Speaker 1: get to a point where this art is largely lost,
Speaker 1: and you know, some of it has been written about,
Speaker 1: especially as people were puzzling out how is it that
Speaker 1: this one sword is so much more boss than this
Speaker 1: other sword? Uh so this this has been really an
Speaker 1: interesting discussion. Now it's just the first part of our
Speaker 1: talk on swords and sword technology. In our next episode,
Speaker 1: we're going to go through the process of actually making
Speaker 1: a sword. So we wanted to really cover things like
Speaker 1: the basic parts of a sword and the basic materials
Speaker 1: that swords are made from in this episode because uh,
Speaker 1: it's just way too much information to cram into a
Speaker 1: single episode. That was Swords the real cutting edge technology episode.
Speaker 1: Hope you enjoyed it. If you have suggestions for topics
Speaker 1: I should tackle in future episodes of tech stuff, don't
Speaker 1: hesitate let me know about it. The best way to
Speaker 1: do that is to reach out on Twitter. The handle
Speaker 1: we use for the show is text stuff H s
Speaker 1: W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text
Speaker 1: Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts
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