Great-Bronze

From what I've just read [Is an Iron/Copper alloy possible? (and useful?)], it isn't really possible to make an alloy of copper/bronze and iron... and if it was made it would be a pretty crappy alloy.
I don't vouch for the accuracy of what is written - but they seem fairly certain... I especially like the graph that I don't really understand - not having done metallurgy in the last 30 years [or really ever...]
You could add a dash of Unobtanium [or other none branded mythical element] to make it work...

 

I'm with Sheilawisz on this one. Why do away with iron just to replace it with unobtanium? It seems pointless.
Accept the limitations of bronze - after all it's no handicap if everyone else is in the same boat - and it will help make the setting special. It's too easy to add unobtanium-like metals into fantasy - so it's totally lost any importance and credibility (which I think is important even in fantasy). The few iron weapons that are out there in your world are then incredibly special.

 

Accept the pros and cons of bronze.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngjMtzJ6xgQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFTAdzHbp2I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4qLhq5V2-o

I don't see the point of creating iron-bronze alloy. If it was a viable weapon people will use it. Since we do not have anything of that type...

 

But if you rename bronze, most readers won't understand that you're just showing the same metal's potential. (Okay, you could drop a prominent "Or as the southlanders call it, bronze" reference, but every time you use the cooler name you're distracting from the realism of it.)

It seems to me the whole point of writing about bronze, rather than familiar steel or the unobtanium of your choice, is to explore what bronze can really do and get your readers interested in it. If you change how it works, you have to decide if that's a fun variation on the theme or a distraction; making tin more available might only free bronze up to do what it had already been doing in history, but adding alloys means you're creating whole new territory for it. When are you still exploring bronze and when are you remaking it?

 

Bronze is not a metal, it is already an alloy; and there are literally thousands of different bronzes with different trace elements and different characteristics. Bronze from different regions will be different, because there were no metallurgists checking traces of wolfram or zinc (or whatever) getting into the mix. But with some of them you could quite definitely make a two-handed sword, because I've seen one. It would probably be more brittle than its steel equivalent (though not necessarily than a forged bog-iron (high carbon) blade, nor keep an edge as long, but it could kill people all right. The major reason bronze went out of fashion was cost and availability- economics, not physics.

And iron wasn't understood straight off, either. Smiths were still improving their techniques when firearms were coming in - probably still are. And carbon content, tempering, the particular ore that contained cobalt or vanadium, all 'magic' making for unpredictable results.

 

Bronze age rapier:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVCLhk-RGB4

Edit: ALso
Mass, Weight, Density or Specific Gravity of Different Metals

bronze - lead 7700 - 8700
bronze - phosphorous 8780 - 8920
bronze (8-14% Sn) 7400 - 8900

iron 7850

steel - rolled 7850
steel - stainless 7480 - 8000

Second Edit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1pgDFqJTlE Bronze Halberd.

 

I think its a very interesting idea to let bronze be the main type of metall used in this setting. Would the setting socially and technologically alos be stationed in the Bronze Age or still have moved forward to a late time?

 

Hi,

Why add iron? It's generally not a good mix with copper for some reason. And there are better options. The two best known are probably phosper bronze and tin bronze. However, less well known is aluminium bronze. And in point of fact sometimes aluminium bronze contains trace amounts of iron, as well as silver, nickle, manganese. And I'd add that as Chrispenycate bronze is already an alloy that has hundreds of different possible compositions.

My thought would be to make up a name - say the smith's name who smelts the metal, and then just hint at the recipe. So Psychotickian Bronze, primarily made of copper and tin but with a pinch of aluminium (bauxite), half a pinch of chromite (chromium) and a trace of silver for colour - though of course the true recipe for this wondrous metal is a closely guarded secret!

Cheers, Greg.

 

You could have weapons/armor with iron cores. Although that would be difficult for armor. You could have another made up element that alloys well with bronze but is weak on its own or something. There could also be a way to compress/harden/enchant bronze to make it more durable and stay sharper.

 

Ok, I'll take that as a "yes".

 

Hi Wielder! I'm also setting my novel in a bronze society, I'm making it akin to ancient greece / mediterranean. To get over some of bronze's downsides I'm proposing to introduce orichalcum as the super/magic metal as it already has some mythic foundation with bronze/copper.

One thing to bear in mind is that if iron is rare and copper/tin more common this might change the rocks/look of the world and even the animals. Gone are magnets/lodestone and red rocks (gosh Australia would look different!) and a lot more greens and blues I guess. I remember that Anne McCaffrey in her Dragonriders of Pern series had the animals with copper based green blood rather than red blood from iron in the haemoglobin. But I wonder would this mean that her humans living in Pern would struggle to get enough iron in their diet? I could be dragging too much science into this but it is a world building forum!

 

I followed my nose on the matter of animals with copper based blood and they already exist on the iron-rich planet earth!! Read this:
What Animals Have Copper-Based Blood? | Animals - PawNation

Hmmm, blood that turns blue on contact with the air - weird!