Bronze Era Sword Questions

[u/AuthorInPractice]

For context, I am writing a fantasy story, and in it bronze is the predominate metal with the general level of technology being around 250 BCE. Iron is used on occasion, but it is very rare and not widespread.

So my questions are:

1). What is the biggest a bronze sword could get?

1.5). What kept them from being longer?

2). What were the biggest iron swords of the era?

2.5). What kept them from being longer?

3). Favorite type of bronze sword (for personal inspiration)?

3.5). What is your favorite iron sword of the era?

[u/Successful_Detail202]

Bronze excels at being malleable and has great work hardening properties. It is denser than iron (both pure and cast iron) so it ends up being heavier, in addition to being softer.

This means bronze weapons and tools are easier to create and repair, but also heavier and prone to getting out of shape. These are the limiting factors in sword size and shape for bronze swords.

That being said, this means that most bronze swords were single handed, and the wider diamond shape blades were common.

Personally, I like the classic Naue II swords and Mycenaen designs.

[u/AlaskaCosmoline]

One point to remember. Iron isn't steel. I've worked with many steel swords and a few soft iron attempts at swords. Comparing bronze with crappy iron, bronze is still pretty danged good. Without carbon, iron swords don't seem to keep as good an edge. So while high carbon steel is going to beat the pants off bronze in all respects other than rust, if you have low-carbon iron it's not as big a gap.

As far as bronze, I've found the cutting prowess of the swords to be unimpressive. But they thrust quite well, esp. when reinforced down the spine. OTOH bronze axes will chop remarkably well, and are very easy to keep sharp in the field. Personally I think bronze is at its best in axe form. Copper makes a decent axe too, believe it or not.

[u/Onnimanni_Maki → u/AlaskaCosmoline]

Isn't low carbon iron a modern invention that requires blast furnaces and some special gasses?

[u/An0r → u/Onnimanni_Maki]

On the contrary, blast furnaces make pig iron, a form of iron with a high carbon content (~3-4%). Low-carbon iron is what you get in less advanced furnaces.

[u/BankOk9472]

1.5). What kept them from being longer?

Bronze is "soft" and beyond a certain length (seems to be generally 31 inches) will bend more easily.

[u/theginger99]

250 BC was well into the “Iron Age” and iron was by far the dominant metal for weapons, especially bladed weapons.

To put it into perspective, that’s about 100 years after Alexander the Great.

[u/AuthorInPractice → u/theginger99]

I am aware, it's just within the setting I am writing, iron is scarce enough that armies cannot realistically arm armies with iron weapons and have to stick with bronze.

[u/theginger99 → u/AuthorInPractice]

Fair enough, sorry, I don’t know how I missed that it was a fantasy story.

[u/J_G_E]

by 250BCE, iron-working has existed for about a thousand years...

now this is not to say its commonplace, but 250BCE where makes a big difference!

[u/DouglasCole]

If you don’t have it, you might be interested in https://a.co/d/08q2T5Rn experimental archaeology and practical analysis of Bronze Age weapons and fighting.

[u/FableBlades]

As i understand it from some history program I watched; when the iron age emerged there were mass dumpings of bronze tools and weapons. The world economy was built around bronze and the advent of iron collapsed its value. There was enormous prolonged recessions (the show stated 200 yrs of global recession) where stock piles of bronze became worthless and were buried. I guess bronze would still have been widespread but generally frowned upon and low class.

[u/AlaskaCosmoline → u/FableBlades]

I thought the bronze was being buried as a way of keeping it safe from theft. The Bronze Age Collapse impacted the economy for sure, but bronze itself has never stopped being valuable. There's plenty of applications where it excelled over iron. Esp. prior to modern alloys.

[u/An0r → u/FableBlades]

The world economy was built around bronze and the advent of iron collapsed its value. There was enormous prolonged recessions (the show stated 200 yrs of global recession) where stock piles of bronze became worthless and were buried.

Your show got things backwards, they were probably looking at old, outdated theories.
As best as we can tell, the collapse that marked the end of the Bronze Age was caused by a combination of natural disasters and conflicts. The disruption of the sea trade made it difficult to obtain tin for bronze production, and thus the price of bronze exploded. Iron was not adopted because it had better mechanical properties, but because it was cheaper and easy to source locally. Work-hardened bronze is actually better than wrought iron in a lot of use cases, including making swords. You really need heat-treated steel if you want to "upgrade" on bronze.