Giannis vs Polinik on the color of bronze :)

[Matthew Amt]

Most ancient 'bronze' can not be distinguished from brass by the naked eye.

Well, if ancient bronze is anything like the alloys used by Neil Burridge for his swords (copper with 10 to 15 percent tin), the difference is very obvious to me! Unfortunately I seem to have only one small crappy photo of different items side-by-side:



The second, third, and fourth swords from the top are by Neil (I did the hilts). The knife at the bottom I made myself from regular yellow brass stock. Even in this poorly-lit photo you can see the color difference, and it is just as apparent. (The other 3 blades are "mystery meat", don't even worry about them!) Neil is widely recognized for his expertise in ancient metallurgy, so I really don't think he's gotten something significantly wrong. Ancient bronze and modern brass just don't look at all the same to me. How the heck are we looking at supposedly the same alloys and apparently seeing very different colors? It's puzzling...

Copper smelting needs a great deal of fuel, especially if the ore supply is dominantly sulfide. About 300 kg of charcoal are needed to produce 1 kg of copper by smelting 30 kg of sulfide ore. A tonne of charcoal needs somewhere between 12 and 20 cubic meters of wood - and that is a lot of wood!

I used to think the same thing, but Jeroen Zuiderwijk (another recognized expert bronze caster) has recently done some smelting.

http://1501bc.com/smelting/copper_smelting_en.html

http://z8.invisionfree.com/Bronze_Age_C ... topic=1482

Granted, there could be a big difference in ore types and quality, charcoal quality, furnace efficiency, etc. So where did we get those bigger numbers?

More puzzles! Khairete,

Matthew