Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology What tex Stuff from host
Speaker 1: books dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland, and joining me in the studio is
Speaker 1: my friend Ariel Casting. She's rejoined the podcast where a
Speaker 1: couple of episodes we are going to cover uh, cutting
Speaker 1: edge technology. Swords. Yeah, I made a pun. Uh So yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about swords and for for people like
Speaker 1: myself and an Ariel, this is beyond something that we're
Speaker 1: just 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 some
Speaker 1: times called for. Uh. And also I have a body
Speaker 1: type where rapier works better than a big old sword.
Speaker 1: But we both are interested in this sorce stuff. Actually,
Speaker 1: Ariel and I first met working for the Georgia Renaissance
Speaker 1: Festival back in two thousand and one, I believe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so two thousand one we started working there too. I
Speaker 1: had been there a couple of years. An Arie Old
Speaker 1: joined the cast and she jumped right into doing combat
Speaker 1: as soon as possible, whereas I was, I decided that
Speaker 1: was not for me. And it was one of those
Speaker 1: things where both of us have this interest in the topic, uh,
Speaker 1: and you know, we both like the whole swords and
Speaker 1: sorcery stuff too. So when I said let's let's cover
Speaker 1: something and we started talking about the possible topics, swords
Speaker 1: was one of those things that it's a technology that's
Speaker 1: been around for longer than longer than written history. In
Speaker 1: some cases possibly that's debatable, but we'll get to that.
Speaker 1: So to start us off, Ariel, can you walk us through.
Speaker 1: Let's say you're looking at your typical sword, like a
Speaker 1: Viking sword. Let's say, what are the parts of a sword?
Speaker 1: All right, So there are lots of different kinds of swords,
Speaker 1: but um, they all basically are made the same way
Speaker 1: with the same pieces. So you've got the blade, you know,
Speaker 1: the part that you hurt people with, and then you've
Speaker 1: got the hilt, which I guess you can hurt somebody
Speaker 1: with a help, but it's not as fun um. And
Speaker 1: a lot of hilts also have a guard which protects
Speaker 1: your hand uh from other people's swords, um, which I
Speaker 1: personally know is a good thing because I've been cut
Speaker 1: open on the hand by a sword before. So there
Speaker 1: was actually a day where Ariel was doing stage combat,
Speaker 1: got hit in the hand, had to go and get
Speaker 1: stitches or staples, stitches, stitches, and then came back and
Speaker 1: finished the day. Yep, yep, worth it, so worth it.
Speaker 1: But so yeah, so a guard is really important. Um.
Speaker 1: And then you've got a pommel which is at the
Speaker 1: very base of the sword, and that helps keep the
Speaker 1: sword from slipping out of your hand, because when you're
Speaker 1: gripping on a sword and you're swinging it around, your
Speaker 1: hand gets really sweaty um. And it also acts as
Speaker 1: a counterweight which balances the sword. Otherwise you're using far
Speaker 1: too much muscle and strength to try to finesse the
Speaker 1: sword around. Um. Yeah. And that speaking from experience, that
Speaker 1: can get very tiring, even with the pommel. But if
Speaker 1: you didn't have that counterweight helping you with those uh,
Speaker 1: those moves, then just the your wrist would get exhausted
Speaker 1: and your forearm in order to control the sword while
Speaker 1: making those swings, you'd be very quickly become an ineffective swordsman. Now,
Speaker 1: the hilt in the pommel, the back end of the sword.
Speaker 1: The decorative part um is called furniture because it's furnishing
Speaker 1: the sword um and really interesting. In ancient Europe, the
Speaker 1: hilt of the sword was the entire back end from
Speaker 1: the guard to the pommel, and in North and Viking
Speaker 1: culture it just meant the lower hilt in the upper hilt,
Speaker 1: which was like the pommel and cross guard, but not
Speaker 1: the actual grip. Now so so the parts that were
Speaker 1: on either side of the actual grip interesting. And when
Speaker 1: we talk about blades blades also we can break that
Speaker 1: down a little bit more. Blades typically have six and
Speaker 1: sometimes seven different areas to them. Uh. First, you have
Speaker 1: the edge. This is the important part of the sword.
Speaker 1: 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: throughout the ages have been single edged, but others are
Speaker 1: double edged swords like long swords and a lot of
Speaker 1: short swords, and even some swords like paz 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: tavy 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 know, a scimitar, for example,
Speaker 1: is sharpened along the front side, but not the back side,
Speaker 1: So the back you don't since you don't have two edges,
Speaker 1: you do have a back on that one, whereas with
Speaker 1: a long sword. You know, your typical long sword had
Speaker 1: an edge on either side, so you don't have a
Speaker 1: back on that type of sword. Yeah, there's the flat
Speaker 1: of the blade that refers to the sides, not the edges.
Speaker 1: So if you were to slap someone with the flat
Speaker 1: of the blade, it would sting, but it wouldn't cut them, right,
Speaker 1: You just do that to be a jerk. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: actually that's a go to move from stage combat because
Speaker 1: you usually there's a usually it's the cocky hero who, uh,
Speaker 1: while dodging a villain's attack, will slap them on the
Speaker 1: rear end with the flat of the blade. And and
Speaker 1: by the way, that does sting, Yes it does. Then
Speaker 1: you have the fuller. Now, the fuller is a narrow
Speaker 1: groove that runs down the blade of lots of different swords.
Speaker 1: Not all sorts have these, but a lot do. Sometimes
Speaker 1: 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's 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 gutter that that channel actually adds structural integrity
Speaker 1: to a blade, so it is able to maintain its
Speaker 1: shape while still being a little flexible um, and is
Speaker 1: able to cut through stuff without breaking. And I guess
Speaker 1: 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. The aerial is
Speaker 1: the mountain. But I I need more, uh you know,
Speaker 1: a light sword I appreciate. Next, we have the tang. Now,
Speaker 1: the tang is the part of the blade that is
Speaker 1: actually covered by the hilt uh so a sword. If
Speaker 1: you were to strip the hilt away, um and take
Speaker 1: away the guard, take away the pommel, you would see
Speaker 1: a blade that on the base of it turns into
Speaker 1: almost like a rectangular solid steel um usually steel because
Speaker 1: we're talking about steel today, but solid steel tab essentially
Speaker 1: that If it's a full tang, it's pretty much the
Speaker 1: width of the blade and runs all the way down
Speaker 1: to where the pommel would attach. If it's a partial tang,
Speaker 1: it's maybe about half the width of the blade. It
Speaker 1: can even be more narrow than that. UM And at
Speaker 1: any rate, this is what the grip fits on top of.
Speaker 1: It's what the guard attaches to. There's actually um a
Speaker 1: shoulder on some on some blades where that's where the
Speaker 1: guard will attach. Where it won't go beyond because your
Speaker 1: card wouldn't be much use if it just went wing
Speaker 1: right off the end of the blade. It would be
Speaker 1: you know funny that one time, I prefer a full tang.
Speaker 1: I know that I have thought plenty of time with
Speaker 1: swords where the tang was not quite big or long
Speaker 1: enough and it's just kind of floppy and there. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can actually if it's not if the if the
Speaker 1: handle isn't properly fed to the tang, it it's loose.
Speaker 1: You can feel it rattling, and that's that means you
Speaker 1: have less control and also you're doing a lot more work.
Speaker 1: And also it's not it doesn't it just feels unsafe.
Speaker 1: As someone who's fought with these as well, No, I
Speaker 1: prefer a full tang sword as well. Also that affects
Speaker 1: the handling of the sword. Uh So if you have
Speaker 1: a full tang sword, it's going to feel different in
Speaker 1: your hand, not just because of whether or not the
Speaker 1: blade is is um steady inside the you know when
Speaker 1: you're holding the handle, but it's also going to mean
Speaker 1: that's going to change the balance of the blade. So
Speaker 1: that's something else. Um. Also, some swords have was called
Speaker 1: a ricosso is that where there's a pretty painting on
Speaker 1: it that's kind of abstracting. No, I mean, you can
Speaker 1: do etchings on swords and stuff, but that is not
Speaker 1: what a ricosso is. A ricosso is an unsharpened portion
Speaker 1: at the base of a blade, just above the guard.
Speaker 1: So if you've ever seen a big sword where you've
Speaker 1: got the big hilt and then the blade when it
Speaker 1: first when it comes out past the guard, you can
Speaker 1: tell it's not sharp for another you know, seven or
Speaker 1: eight inches, that's the ricosso. And those are often used
Speaker 1: for really really monstrous lead big swords where you were
Speaker 1: using it against pikeman or you're using it against mounted cavalry. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you just you you wanted to have the ability
Speaker 1: to grip a little higher on the blade um in
Speaker 1: certain situations, but then again you're risking getting your fingers
Speaker 1: cut off. Yes. Uh. Interesting. You saw some of the
Speaker 1: footage from the E three where they had the Viking
Speaker 1: versus Nights game. The thing that it bugged me was
Speaker 1: that in that game, one of the characters has a
Speaker 1: finishing move where they flip the sword around so they're
Speaker 1: holding it by the blade and they bring bring it
Speaker 1: down almost like the hilt is acting like a bludgeon
Speaker 1: or an ax, but instead of it being a bludgeon.
Speaker 1: They hit a person just at the very base of
Speaker 1: the blade and cut into them to to to kill
Speaker 1: your opponent, and the whole time I'm thinking your fingers
Speaker 1: would be gone. So I have a theory about this, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: because I've been thinking about this and it bothered me too.
Speaker 1: I believe that that king fought so long and hard
Speaker 1: that his blade was so dull that it was safe
Speaker 1: to handle. It was safe to handle, it was no
Speaker 1: longer useful for the purpose it was made for, and
Speaker 1: he had to turn it around. And the only part
Speaker 1: that's sharp now is the bit that's right above the guard.
Speaker 1: So I'm just gonna flip this around. Yeah. Interesting, I
Speaker 1: I like that you're an apologist. I don't know if
Speaker 1: that's true or not. It's probably not. Probably. So we
Speaker 1: wanted to look a little bit too at the history
Speaker 1: of swords, because you know, it's they've been around for
Speaker 1: quite some time. And actually, when you get to the
Speaker 1: point of you know, where were the earliest swords made,
Speaker 1: there there's a lot of disagreement, and it's largely because
Speaker 1: swords are uh there there's not a rough like a
Speaker 1: very clear definition of what is the sword versus what
Speaker 1: is a dagger. Um, generally speaking, you would say a
Speaker 1: sword is longer than a dagger and a dagger shorter
Speaker 1: than a sword. But that's not very satisfying, right, because
Speaker 1: it's like saying a mountain's 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 as Land Tepe, Turkey, and I
Speaker 1: could be completely butchering that that place name, and I apologize.
Speaker 1: It looks like to me, yeah, that's just a total
Speaker 1: guess on my part. So they the weapons they found
Speaker 1: had been forged more than five thousand years ago. However,
Speaker 1: this was one of those cases where some of the
Speaker 1: other experts were saying, well, these aren't really swords, they're
Speaker 1: just long daggers. And again, like sometimes people argue it's
Speaker 1: whether or not the uses for attack or defense because
Speaker 1: a lot of people think of a dagger's defensive weapon. Um.
Speaker 1: But but I mean, when it comes down to it,
Speaker 1: we at least know which came first, the dagger of
Speaker 1: the sword. Yeah, yeah, the daggers came first, or or
Speaker 1: even a knife. But if you would consider a dagger
Speaker 1: or a knife a sword of a sort um, then
Speaker 1: you can't even go back to the Stone Age because
Speaker 1: there were sharpened wood and bone and clinton stone knives
Speaker 1: and daggers then yeah, and uh, I mean when we
Speaker 1: talk about daggers versus knives, even that gets confusing, right
Speaker 1: because some people will argue that a knife has a
Speaker 1: single cutting edge and a dagger has two cutting edges,
Speaker 1: but it all depends upon But then a sword has
Speaker 1: a single or double and there's some people who are like, well, no,
Speaker 1: this is a knife, that's a dagger, that's a dagger,
Speaker 1: that's a knife, and and it's you know, so I an'tway.
Speaker 1: The reason why we're saying it's hard to nail this
Speaker 1: down is because language itself is complicated, so finding the
Speaker 1: specifics are trick. But getting back to that awesome archaeological
Speaker 1: find over in Turkey, the swords predated the next oldest
Speaker 1: find by about a thousand years. Yeah, a millennia passed
Speaker 1: between these weapons and the next oldest weapons that had
Speaker 1: ever been found. Um. Some means the swords would have
Speaker 1: been 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. Um so, and smithing
Speaker 1: started with copper and then turned into bronze. Yeah. In fact,
Speaker 1: the copper that was are the swords that were found
Speaker 1: were a copper alloy, right, yeah, yeah, they were a
Speaker 1: copper alloy. They had mixed arsenic with it. Um and
Speaker 1: not so if you if cut me a die from poison, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: it wasn't. It wasn't poisoned blades, although they might have
Speaker 1: poisoned their blades, I don't know. Um. They did it
Speaker 1: to change the metal, to to change its chemistry, and
Speaker 1: it made it actually stronger, and it made the copper
Speaker 1: because copper is pretty soft it made it hold its
Speaker 1: shape and hold its edge. And then also three of
Speaker 1: the swords were inlaid with silver. Yeah, so they fancy
Speaker 1: they were there, fancy swords. They weren't just you know,
Speaker 1: old like hackneyed, kind of gross little things. Right, So
Speaker 1: 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, And they were made
Speaker 1: of bronze, which is alloy of copper and tin um
Speaker 1: and and the argument stems from the fact that a
Speaker 1: sword has to be strong in order to be used
Speaker 1: the way it's meant to be used, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: slicing into people or hacking things apart or whatever. Um
Speaker 1: and soft metals just don't work for that. So copper
Speaker 1: wouldn't work so well for that, especially in longer blades
Speaker 1: like sword blades as opposed to daggers. Yeah, that's it's
Speaker 1: absolutely true. Uh, that's why you know, until we got
Speaker 1: a better understanding of what alloys were. And we'll talk
Speaker 1: 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 wire so that you can run
Speaker 1: electricity through it, because it's also a great conductor. But
Speaker 1: that's also the trautback 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 edge, we mean that the metal
Speaker 1: has to be a special kind of hardness. It has
Speaker 1: to be hard enough so that when you give it
Speaker 1: an 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 and it had a little like arrow extending behind it.
Speaker 1: They used the hammer they hit the arrow so that
Speaker 1: the head of the tip of the arrow would press
Speaker 1: against this metal, and the copper just buckled. And then
Speaker 1: they the bronze and they did the same thing and
Speaker 1: the bronze pierced through the metal. So it showed that
Speaker 1: bronze is a much stronger material than copper, So wasn't
Speaker 1: Copper was mostly used in weaponry as a way of
Speaker 1: giving more weight to stuff like maces and clubs. So
Speaker 1: 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
Speaker 1: it um, making it an alloy, which we've already kind
Speaker 1: of talked about a little bit um. And sometimes the
Speaker 1: thing they added is another metal. So in the instance
Speaker 1: of bronze, which is kind of what pennies really are,
Speaker 1: it's uh, copper and tin um. And then sometimes like
Speaker 1: with iron which makes steel, it's a metal and a
Speaker 1: non metal like iron and carbon. Right, So when you
Speaker 1: have an alloy, you've got two main things you're thinking about.
Speaker 1: It can be more than two, by the way. You can.
Speaker 1: In fact, there's some types of bronze where they add
Speaker 1: magnesium and some other stuff to it, but the basic
Speaker 1: ingredients are are copper and tent. But your primary primary
Speaker 1: material is called the main metal. So with bronze, that
Speaker 1: would be copper. Most of bronze is made up of copper.
Speaker 1: That so it's called the main metal, or the base metal,
Speaker 1: or even the parent metal. So the other stuff is
Speaker 1: called the alloying agent, not the annoying agent, which is
Speaker 1: what mine is the alloying I don't have an agent,
Speaker 1: so I can say that the alloying agent. So the
Speaker 1: parent metal can be or more of the overall substance.
Speaker 1: It can be less than that to uh, and the
Speaker 1: alloy maybe as little as one percent. The alloying agent
Speaker 1: may be as little as one percent or even less
Speaker 1: of the overall. When we start talking about steel, we'll
Speaker 1: be talking about some really amazing like you have to
Speaker 1: be super precise with adding the carbon to your iron
Speaker 1: in order to get usable steel. So most alloys are
Speaker 1: solid solutions, so that means the different atoms of material
Speaker 1: are just mixed together, but aren't chemically bonded to each other.
Speaker 1: The easiest way to imagine this is let's say that
Speaker 1: you actually let's say you've got a little dish and
Speaker 1: you pour pepper and salt into it. Now, the salt
Speaker 1: and pepper aren't chemically bonded together. You could, with enough
Speaker 1: patients and a fine enough pair of tweezers, pick out
Speaker 1: all 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 tweetsers and still separate it. Would you'd
Speaker 1: be wondering why I'm making you do this, and the
Speaker 1: answer is because you know, you know why. But a
Speaker 1: few 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 signs,
Speaker 1: yes you would. Uh. So, the atoms and an alloy
Speaker 1: are in a structure called a crystalline lattice. So if
Speaker 1: 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, well, we'll we'll talk about Let's
Speaker 1: imagine that you're talking about the bronze and you've got
Speaker 1: copper balls, and you've got ten balls like T I
Speaker 1: N not T E N, and you lay out the
Speaker 1: cover balls in a grid, and then you remove some
Speaker 1: of the copper 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 bb see one. They actually demonstrated
Speaker 1: how an ancient uh metallurgist 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. So we do
Speaker 1: have copper alloys like the copper arsenic alloy we mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: and bronze was the one that really changed things. Uh that,
Speaker 1: as we've said, like an alloy of copper and tin,
Speaker 1: sometimes you have other elements in there. It's more flexible
Speaker 1: than copper, it's stronger than copper. It's able to hold
Speaker 1: an edge longer than copper. So this was the first
Speaker 1: time we actually had a material that had the qualities
Speaker 1: necessary to make a sword a practical weapon. Yeah, But bronze.
Speaker 1: The ratio of copper to tin varied by region. So
Speaker 1: in China, Uh, they preferred higher concentrations of tin about
Speaker 1: twenty or so, which made a harder alloy, but it
Speaker 1: was more brittle ye. Um. And because bronze could still bend,
Speaker 1: particularly in places that favored to mixture of around lake 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. Would a had a hilt? Very important. The
Speaker 1: next big material humans used to make weapons from was iron.
Speaker 1: So the Bronze Age transitioned into the Iron Age at
Speaker 1: different times for various regions. I'm just of the Bronze
Speaker 1: Age head transitioned at different times for different regions from
Speaker 1: the Stone Age. So in other words, it wasn't like
Speaker 1: one day there was a Wednesday where everyone woke up
Speaker 1: and said, welcome to the Iron Age. That's not how
Speaker 1: it works. It would have been fun, there'd be a
Speaker 1: great musical involved, but no, it was not that way.
Speaker 1: The way it worked was that certain certain regions began
Speaker 1: to develop technology with iron more early earlier, not more
Speaker 1: early Jonathan needs more coffee earlier than other regions. Uh.
Speaker 1: In fact, India was a big one. India they started
Speaker 1: working with iron very early, so did UH some other
Speaker 1: areas of Asia. But giving a range of for the
Speaker 1: Iron Age is pretty tough. UM. In general, you could
Speaker 1: say it began around four b C. And Asia minor
Speaker 1: which is now Turkey, Big surprise, that's actually where we
Speaker 1: also found the copper alloy swords. Now, making a sword
Speaker 1: out of iron isn't as easy as it sounds. First
Speaker 1: of all, you have to get iron ore and then
Speaker 1: smelt it so that you can even work with it
Speaker 1: in the first place. So you can't just be like, oh,
Speaker 1: here's my here's a big of iron stick to the ground. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I just pulled it out of the ground. Now I'm
Speaker 1: good to go. No, anyone who's played Minecraft knows you
Speaker 1: gotta you gotta throw that sucker enough furnace first. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And in the good old days, this was called bloomery yeah,
Speaker 1: because it would 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 into it,
Speaker 1: um into the process, and that would add carbon to
Speaker 1: the metal and what you get is a spongey horse
Speaker 1: material called a bloom yep. And uh so this this
Speaker 1: 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, like the
Speaker 1: carbon monoxide given off by the the charcoal would combine
Speaker 1: with the oxygen that was inside the iron, and you
Speaker 1: would get carbon dioxide as a byproduct. So you would
Speaker 1: hammer and shape the bloom, which would help remove some
Speaker 1: of the impurities. Ah. But even then once you had
Speaker 1: shaped the iron, iron actually is, in the grand scheme
Speaker 1: of things, a pretty soft metal. So it also does
Speaker 1: not hold an edge very well. You have to continuously,
Speaker 1: you know, resharpen your blade because you would dull it
Speaker 1: as you would use it. So typically the early iron
Speaker 1: swords were made by heating the bloom. You would hammer it,
Speaker 1: you'd let it cool, and then you'd start that process
Speaker 1: all over again. And this was called work hardening because
Speaker 1: you are actually using physical work, the hammering to get
Speaker 1: the iron into a state suitable for use as sword UM.
Speaker 1: There's a different type of hardening that's used later, but
Speaker 1: the early versions were work hardened swords UM, and so
Speaker 1: these were kind of marginal improvements over bronze swords. In fact,
Speaker 1: you could argue that a bronze weapon might be superior
Speaker 1: in some cases to an iron one. However, iron ones
Speaker 1: became incredibly popular, and it wasn't because they were better.
Speaker 1: It was because ten was relatively rare. Copper was everywhere
Speaker 1: people could find copper, what they couldn't find was ten.
Speaker 1: And since you needed to add the tin to the
Speaker 1: copper to make bronze and then iron, all you had
Speaker 1: to do was heat it up and then smack it
Speaker 1: around with a hammer. Iron one out. Yeah, and yeah,
Speaker 1: you'd want iron over just copper, but you'd want steal
Speaker 1: over both of those. Uh. And that actually brings us
Speaker 1: to the last huge advance and sword making, which came
Speaker 1: about when they discovered that you could add specific amounts
Speaker 1: of carbon to the iron to create the alloy steel um.
Speaker 1: And in the smelting process some carbon would be introduced
Speaker 1: to the iron, the carbon from the charcoal. But it's tricky,
Speaker 1: you know, obviously you're guessing with that, Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: very imprecise, and in fact, there's a lot of there's
Speaker 1: a lot of scholarships suggesting that early steel swords were
Speaker 1: created purely by chance. That it wasn't that someone said, hey,
Speaker 1: I bet if I added some of this stuff to
Speaker 1: some of this stuff, it will be way better. It
Speaker 1: just because of the way swords were made. Some swords
Speaker 1: were more iron and some swords were more steel. Uh.
Speaker 1: In Europe they used patterned welding to the early Middle Ages,
Speaker 1: where they would take iron and steel rods of different
Speaker 1: harnesses and twist them and fold them together. And that
Speaker 1: was kind of a pre early way of trying to
Speaker 1: get that. Yeah, so when we say the mixture being
Speaker 1: just right, we are talking about tiny amounts of carbon
Speaker 1: added to the iron in order to create steel, typically
Speaker 1: between point two and one point five per cent of
Speaker 1: the overall alloy. That's yeah, that's hard. Like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's 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 carbon 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 sementation,
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 those. It's also flexible if you make the steel properly. Obviously,
Speaker 1: if if you put too much carbon in it, it
Speaker 1: can become brittle so that you don't want that in
Speaker 1: either armor or weapons. But with the right amount, it
Speaker 1: was flexible as resistant to corrosion rust compared to iron,
Speaker 1: So it's pretty much the better material to iron in
Speaker 1: every single important way. And out of all the types
Speaker 1: of steel used in all the swords in the world,
Speaker 1: there's probably one steel that is the most legendary, and
Speaker 1: that is Damascus steel. Yeah uh, which wasn't made in Syria.
Speaker 1: It was made in surprise, surprise, India. Yeah they they
Speaker 1: There's some different scholarship on this. There are two different
Speaker 1: types of steel that are referred to as Damascus steel.
Speaker 1: Some of it is patterned steel, which you kind of
Speaker 1: talked about it a little bit earlier. And then the
Speaker 1: other type is woots steel. Yeah, so it's supposed to
Speaker 1: be really really strong. Um, and I say supposed to
Speaker 1: 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. Picture 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 probably an old trailer like leaf spring is
Speaker 1: probat of the the system on a trailer, uh and
Speaker 1: use that as the means of creating a sword, and
Speaker 1: even then starting from a piece of material that is
Speaker 1: roughly 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: used 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 most
Speaker 1: of the most time you would look at it from
Speaker 1: master to apprentice. But as sword making fell out of
Speaker 1: failure favor, there was no need to have an apprentice.
Speaker 1: So you then get to a point where this art
Speaker 1: is largely lost, and you know, some of it has
Speaker 1: been written about, especially as people were puzzling out how
Speaker 1: is it that this one sword is so much more
Speaker 1: boss than this other sword? Uh? So this this has
Speaker 1: been really an interesting discussion. Now it's just the first
Speaker 1: part of our talk on swords and sword technology. In
Speaker 1: our next episode, we're going to go through the process
Speaker 1: of actually making a sword, So we wanted to really
Speaker 1: cover things like the basic parts of a sword and
Speaker 1: the basic materials that swords are made from in this episode,
Speaker 1: because uh, it's just way too much information to cram
Speaker 1: into a single episode. So I'm looking forward to doing
Speaker 1: that next episode. You guys, tune in so you can
Speaker 1: hear how swords were actually made back in the old days,
Speaker 1: as well as some information about how they're made today.
Speaker 1: We'll also kind of go through a few different types
Speaker 1: of swords to uh kind of explain how crazy wide
Speaker 1: a variety there are in these things, and uh, who knows,
Speaker 1: we may end up geeking out about some you know,
Speaker 1: fantasy sword as well. So Ariel, thank you for joining
Speaker 1: me on this episode, thank you for having me, and
Speaker 1: I look forward to us continuing this conversation in mer moments.
Speaker 1: But for everyone else, it's going to be a week.
Speaker 1: And guys, if you have any suggestions for future episodes
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff, whether it's a technology or a company
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Speaker 1: interview or a guest host, please let me know. Send
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