Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXV

[Kiero]

Large plates in the ancient world were made of bronze, which is costly and less abundant than iron.

Bronze requires lower temperatures to manufacture than steel, so the infrastructure required is less. The only costly input is the tin, because it doesn't occur as widely as iron and coal/charcoal (which often occur together) and is rarely present where copper is.

I'm also rather skeptical about bronze being comparatively costly, when they used hundreds of kilos of it at a time to cast warship's rams. There were thousands of warships roaming the Mediterranean in the years running up to the eventual dominance of Rome.

The Romans managed to have large numbers of lorica segmentata made, but they were extremely rich and had better and larger infrastructure than any Western medieval kingdom. However, they later swapped to mail. This could be due to a cost/benefit ratio, to the decentralisation of production, or to the fact that many Germani were in the army, and, since they often used mail, they may have influenced Roman choice of armour.
You can take a look to the East, like Constantinople, and see if they had different tastes in armour, compared to the West.

The Romans used mail (lorica hamata) in huge numbers before lorica segmentata was adopted, I wouldn't be surprised if there were still tens of thousands of heirloom sets hanging around when they switched back to mail.

Furthermore, auxiliaries continued to use mail, and I'm extremely dubious about any assertion that lorica segmentata completely replaced lorica hamata (which had been in use for a good couple of centuries by the time the former appeared).

[Brother Oni]

My question mainly relates to severe stalls and recovering from them, I've read what i can find and it's obvious that some loss in altitude is allways involved i the process of recovering from such a stall. But i can't find much info on what kind of aircraft characteristics commonly affect this, (obviously given what's possibble under a wide range of designs there's not going to be any hard and fast rule, i'm looking more for general trends, not to mention pilot skill and reaction times are going to play a very large part), is a bigger or heavier aircraft going to need more altitude to recover in, what about stall speed, you'd kinda expect and aircraft with a low speed to need little altitude but maybe that dosen;t hold. What about how dragy the aircraft is compared to contemporaries.

I don't anything about the science involved, but the value you're looking for that determines the altitude loss during unpowered flight is the glide ratio.

Even a Boeing 767 has a glide ratio of 12:1 (it goes forward 12 metres for every 1 metre lost) and pilots have been able to land them with both engines out: Gimli Glider.

Some digging indicates that the glide ratio is directly related to the lift to drag ratio, which is determined primarily by the wing shape and by the overall aerodynamic profile of the craft.

As for recovering from a stall, it depends on what cause the stall in the first place, whether it's both your engines failing from a mechanical fault causing complete loss of fuel (or something's shot up your engines), or your jet engines have suffered a flameout, putting your aircraft into an unrecoverable flat spin.

[Carl]

I don't anything about the science involved, but the value you're looking for that determines the altitude loss during unpowered flight is the glide ratio.

Even a Boeing 767 has a glide ratio of 12:1 (it goes forward 12 metres for every 1 metre lost) and pilots have been able to land them with both engines out: Gimli Glider.

Some digging indicates that the glide ratio is directly related to the lift to drag ratio, which is determined primarily by the wing shape and by the overall aerodynamic profile of the craft.

As for recovering from a stall, it depends on what cause the stall in the first place, whether it's both your engines failing from a mechanical fault causing complete loss of fuel (or something's shot up your engines), or your jet engines have suffered a flameout, putting your aircraft into an unrecoverable flat spin.

Ahh to clarify what i'm talking about as it was a one line comment in my first post.

I'm talking about stalling in the context of an aircraft performing a sharp maneuver that sheds so much velocity it forces a stall. Specifically in the context of dogfighting aircraft maneuvering for position on one another. I've got more gentle stall mechanics represented nicely i the system that lets you trade altitude for maneuvering or forward velocity. But since sudden battle damage affecting aircraft parameters or some unexpected other circumstance could leave an aircraft that's skimming the envelope below it's stall speed i need to represent that but i've got a fairly simple list of aircraft parameters to use to relate it to though and i'm not sure how exactly the number relates to any of them.

Parameters for the curious are:

Structural limit for the airframe in terms of velocity. Thrust to drag induced maximum level flight velocity. Thrust and Drag values, (the former is a maximum value, the later is an absolute value at the baseline velocity (10)), Stall Speed, and whilst i haven't worked through that part, probably a maneuverability rating.

The way i'm planning on doing it is by having the aircraft loose a number of altitude levels, (somewhat modified by pilot skill), automatically, if it dosen;t hit the ground as a result it recovers and continues forward at it's stall speed on the same heading but at a lower altitude. But i need a way to figure out what the drop should be off my other statistics. Lacking a clear game-mechanic reason to do it a specific way i'm looking for real world information to try and form a foundation to build a usable game mechanic off of.

[The Jack]

Large plates in the ancient world were made of bronze, which is costly and less abundant than iron. The Romans managed to have large numbers of lorica segmentata made, but they were extremely rich and had better and larger infrastructure than any Western medieval kingdom. However, they later swapped to mail. This could be due to a cost/benefit ratio, to the decentralisation of production, or to the fact that many Germani were in the army, and, since they often used mail, they may have influenced Roman choice of armour.
You can take a look to the East, like Constantinople, and see if they had different tastes in armour, compared to the West.

I don't think this answers my question. If large plates were made of bronze, which is "costly and less abundant than iron" then surely they could just make more plates with iron, which they didn't for hundreds of years.

[Deepbluediver]

The Romans used mail (lorica hamata) in huge numbers before lorica segmentata was adopted, I wouldn't be surprised if there were still tens of thousands of heirloom sets hanging around when they switched back to mail.

Furthermore, auxiliaries continued to use mail, and I'm extremely dubious about any assertion that lorica segmentata completely replaced lorica hamata (which had been in use for a good couple of centuries by the time the former appeared).

A lot of the pictures I see of the stereotypical roman armor show people with bare arms and legs- would it be reasonable to assume that actual Roman soldiers also used greaves and bracers for additional protection? If so, what sort of materials were they typically composed of?

[Haighus]

I was under the impression lorica segmentata was not simply better than hamata, but possibly simply more cost-effective for an economy with lots of freely available low-skill labour like the Roman empire. Didn't frontline officers (like centurions) continue to use hamata in frontline roles when the legionaries were using segmentata, suggesting the mamata was considered to be superior in protection?

Also, I am pretty sure Galloglaich will dispute the assertion that the Roman Empire could outproduce any medieval kingdom :D Early medieval perhaps...
Venice seems to have been capable of outproducing the Roman empire by itself in it's heyday with the Armoury.

I don't think this answers my question. If large plates were made of bronze, which is "costly and less abundant than iron" then surely they could just make more plates with iron, which they didn't for hundreds of years.

See Kiero's post above- bronze only really got very expensive once tin became very scarce (it was pricy by the medieval era for sure), but was reasonably common in the ancient world. It is still less abundant than iron though, which is one of the most common elements in the Earth's crust.

Bronze is very easy to make large, complex shapes out of, like breastplates. That is because it had a reasonably low melting point, and could be cast into moulds easily (this is the reason most cannons until the 19th century were bronze). Iron needs very high temperatures to cast, and generally has a very high carbon content once cast making it overly brittle, so it is far harder to make large iron/steel objects as they need to be forged or very high temperatures need to be possible.

So the price of bronze is independent of the ease of working it into shapes, and this is largely why bronze was discovered and widely used before iron was.

[Kiero]

A lot of the pictures I see of the stereotypical roman armor show people with bare arms and legs- would it be reasonable to assume that actual Roman soldiers also used greaves and bracers for additional protection? If so, what sort of materials were they typically composed of?

I've never seen Roman bracers in any era, besides the manica for the sword-arm which occasionally appeared. Pre-Marian legionaries might wear a single greave (bronze or iron) on their left shin, but rarely on the right as well. They relied primarily on their shield to protect arms and legs - a scutum is pretty large after all.

I was under the impression lorica segmentata was not simply better than hamata, but possibly simply more cost-effective for an economy with lots of freely available low-skill labour like the Roman empire. Didn't frontline officers (like centurions) continue to use hamata in frontline roles when the legionaries were using segmentata, suggesting the mamata was considered to be superior in protection?

Yep, I get the impression the segmentata was about cheap-to-mass-produce armour, not better. Centurions often continued to wear mail or scale (lorica squamata).

Also, I am pretty sure Galloglaich will dispute the assertion that the Roman Empire could outproduce any medieval kingdom :D Early medieval perhaps...
Venice seems to have been capable of outproducing the Roman empire by itself in it's heyday with the Armoury.

At the end of the Republic, there were 50 active legions, each of around 4,500 men. Which medieval kingdom could equip, train and feed nearly a quarter of a million men?

[Vinyadan]

I don't think this answers my question. If large plates were made of bronze, which is "costly and less abundant than iron" then surely they could just make more plates with iron, which they didn't for hundreds of years.

The ancient world couldn't produce pig iron and didn't have blast furnaces, which severely hindered what you could do with iron.

@Kiero: you're right, IIRC the two types of lorica can be seen on the Trajan Column, used by different troops. I didn't mean to say that segmentata completely took away mail, it's a good thing you clarified.

About bronze and its cost, once you have the adequate infrastructure, the costs for iron products should become lower. I think that a point that could interest the asker is whether bronze plate was weaker than iron mail, and, if it wasn't, what sort of disadvantage it had (like cost or weight or needing specific skills) to be phased out. I mean, I generally assume bronze to perform worse than iron, but I remember having read something in these discussions about bronze occasionally being the outperformer (but maybe that was about XIX century artillery?), plus there's the mail vs plate factor. IIRC one essay I read gave bronze hoplitic armour resistance to penetration up to around 40 J.

In 5th century Athens, bronze cost 2-6 drachame / kg. I couldn't find any info about cost of iron. Later, I can check for Roman-era values. There's an article like that floating around, about Roman Egypt, that should have such info.

OK, I've found it: wrought iron, 100 lbs: 6 talents, 316 AD. 1 copper talent = 36 silver drachmae. (The cost of living in Roman Egypt, by West). Unfortunately, I couldn't find what he exactly means by talent (copper talents? silver talents?)

Something that came to my mind is how quality of metals varied based on location of extraction, so iron from Noricum and that from Eastern Spain was exceptionally good. I wonder if bronze had a similar variance. I know that there were different kinds of bronze, like black bronze from Corinth (I think?), but I am not sure of whether that depended just from how it was worked.

Concerning outproduction: this will vary based on product. I think that the largest difference was with buildings. Compare how absurdly large the Thermes of Titus or the Domus Aurea were, and how little time it took to build them. Then take a look at how many centuries it took for every Gothic cathedral to be built. Think of how Constantinoples was founded. It took six years. I think that that would have been beyond the ability of any Medieval kingdom. They also managed to send food to a bloated city like Rome. That was a constant concern, feeding a concentration of something like 1 million mouths.
Of course, Venice probably had better ships than Rome. Many medieval kingdoms must have had hugely improved technologies. Rome however had the advantage of existing before the massive crises of the 450-550 century, which more or less halved the population of Europe. It's an interesting thought exercise, I think.

[Kiero]

A random article I found on trying to assess the weight of a ship's ram said 3 talents of bronze was equivalent to around 77kg of it.

I think it's a myth that iron is intrinsically better than bronze. Well-worked bronze is going to be better than poor quality iron, it's just slightly denser (about 10% heavier on average). Aren't there some examples of exceptional Chinese bronze that's better than low-grade steel?

The advantage iron has, when you've got the infrastructure for it, is that it's cheap. The Romans liked doing mass-production of cheap gear when they moved into the Marian era (after all if the state is paying for all this stuff, corners will be cut and bulk discounts arranged).

[Deepbluediver]

Unfortunately, I couldn't find what he exactly means by talent (copper talents? silver talents?)

A talent is both a measure of weight and of value: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talent_(measurement)

It sounds like a talent of copper and a talent of gold would both weigh the same, but saying something was worth as much as a talent of gold would make it much more valuable than something worth a talent of copper.

[Yora]

I think it's a myth that iron is intrinsically better than bronze. Well-worked bronze is going to be better than poor quality iron, it's just slightly denser (about 10% heavier on average). Aren't there some examples of exceptional Chinese bronze that's better than low-grade steel?

What I heard is that it's only at the end of the middle ages that we get steel with superior material properties over bronze, which allowed for plate armor and very large swords. But in applications like cannon making bronze continued to be the material of choice for a good while because structural failure on those things would be absolutely disastrous. Iron cannons became common late in the 17th century and bronze cannons were still used in the 19th century. Bronze cannons could be made with thinner walls, which made them lighter than steel guns of the same caliber and length.

Bronze is a marvelous material, if you can afford it. Though there are some applications appearing at the end of the middle ages where the properties of stee made it a necesary choice. The notable exception is mail, which is already time consuming to make with iron and would be much worse if you tried doing it in bronze. Though there is brass mail from Malaysia or the Philippines, because the jungle makes rusting a huge problem that you don't get with copper aloys.
But in the end, "there is a quality in quantity". Being able to outfit larger armies greatly beats minor differences in blade strength.

Something that came to my mind is how quality of metals varied based on location of extraction, so iron from Noricum and that from Eastern Spain was exceptionally good. I wonder if bronze had a similar variance. I know that there were different kinds of bronze, like black bronze from Corinth (I think?), but I am not sure of whether that depended just from how it was worked.

Copper and tin are completely liquified during production, which should greatly increase the efficency of removing the slag that floats at the top. Iron melts at higher temperatures, but when this first became possible it resulted in very high carbon cast iron, which is the most brittle of iron aloys. I think it was only in the 19th century that you could get the carbon out of the liquid iron again, which marked the beginning of our modern highly versatile steels. Before that, iron was only softened but never made liquid during steel making and working (shocking, fantasy movies are all wrong!). The less impurities your ore had to begin with, the purer you could refine your steel. With bronze, I don't see any of these issues. In addition to its great material properties, bronze is also amazingly simple to work with. There's of course a lot of skill and experience required to pull of the fancier types of casting, but making a sharpened bronze bar with a handle is really easy as metalworking goes. (Which is why it was developed first.)

[gkathellar]

I feel like it's hard to make any meaningful generalizations about bronze or steel, as both are alloys and are going to be as strong as their metallurgy allows.

For reference, let's look at a parallel: titanium. If you ask most people, they'll say, "oh, titanium, you mean that's stuff that's stronger than steel." And that statement is strictly speaking, true - titanium is stronger, per pound than certain cheap steels - but it's also useless, because titanium is stronger, per pound, than certain cheap steels. In practice, nless you're building prosthetic legs, you're probably going to alloy your titanium with iron which is steel.

My point here is that it's valuable to say, "the Romans could produce lower-quality iron equipment more cheaply than higher-quality bronze equipment," it's hard to go from that to, "bronze is better than iron until the late middle ages," or whatever.

I think it's a myth that iron is intrinsically better than bronze. Well-worked bronze is going to be better than poor quality iron, it's just slightly denser (about 10% heavier on average). Aren't there some examples of exceptional Chinese bronze that's better than low-grade steel?

I'm positive the Sword of Goujian is "better," for a given value of that word, than a knife I buy at Pig Iron Jim Inc's Annual Pig Iron Knife Sale. I'm less positive that the knowledge of such is valuable.

Before that, iron was only softened but never made liquid during steel making and working (shocking, fantasy movies are all wrong!). The less impurities your ore had to begin with, the purer you could refine your steel.

Many impurities are desirable, however, especially when they consist of trace tungsten, molybdenum, titanium, iridium, etc - all far, far too tough to work back into liquefied metal. While removing them may allow for a tightly controlled product, that's not necessarily what smiths wanted.

[Knaight]

In practice, nless you're building prosthetic legs, you're probably going to alloy your titanium with iron which is steel.

It's only steel if it's mostly iron - a bit of iron in a titanium alloy is still fundamentally a titanium alloy. On top of that prosthetic legs are far from the only area where you use mostly titanium alloys. There's aviation, where titanium is essentially a stronger alternative to aluminum in military vehicles. It's one of the options for high end bike frames, again as a stronger alternative to aluminum.

As for other uses, "stronger" is a bit of a vague word - there's a few different material strengths depending on what stress they're undergoing, and on top of that there's a whole bunch of factors that affect break resistance other than strength. For a lot of weaponry good steel is basically a wonder material, far better than titanium.

[Max_Killjoy]

From what I understand, most titanium alloys don't hold an edge well, and titanium is stronger per unit weight than many steels, but it's significantly less dense so you don't generally get the same strength per unit volume, which does matter for things like swords and armor.

Good steel is a bit of a wonder material for swords in particular, as it will be very strong, very "springy" (comes back to shape if bent), and hold an edge well.

If things like titanium were going to be involved in making swords better, it would be as a possible small-percentage alloying material in making the "perfect" steel (see also, vanadium, etc).

[Jay R]

I feel like it's hard to make any meaningful generalizations about bronze or steel, as both are alloys and are going to be as strong as their metallurgy allows.

The crucial generalization about bronze and steel is that pretty much every Bronze Age culture went to steel weapons as soon as they had access to iron ore and the technology to smelt it.

In the real world, the actual steel they could make was deemed superior to the actual bronze they could make, pretty much everywhere.

[Kiero]

I'm positive the Sword of Goujian is "better," for a given value of that word, than a knife I buy at Pig Iron Jim Inc's Annual Pig Iron Knife Sale. I'm less positive that the knowledge of such is valuable.

The point is Centurion Quintus Marcellus' heirloom bronze gladius is going to be a better weapon than the 100 mass-produced iron gladii used by his men.

Even if Fabricatum Decius Hortensius would much rather have iron gladii to outfit an entire legion (of 4,500 men) than a few hundred well-made bronze ones for the same price.

[wolflance]

Several questions for anyone with experience making, owning, or buying armor:

1) How thick (in layer as well as cm/inches, but specifically the later) should a historical accurate gambeson be? What is the weight of a knee-length gambeson of that thickness?

By gambeson, I mean the stand-alone armor used by poorer troops, but I will also appreciate information of padded garment for metal armor.

2) Assuming similar thickness, will there be any difference of weight and protective qualities of multi-layered and stuffed gambeson?

3) Was wearing gambeson on top of another padded garment (aketon), without metal armor in between, historically done? Or troops wore gambeson directly over their normal (non-padded) clothes?

[gkathellar]

The point is Centurion Quintus Marcellus' heirloom bronze gladius is going to be a better weapon than the 100 mass-produced iron gladii used by his men.

Even if Fabricatum Decius Hortensius would much rather have iron gladii to outfit an entire legion (of 4,500 men) than a few hundred well-made bronze ones for the same price.

Okay. It's reasonable to say that the Romans, in that period, had cheap, lower-quality blacksmithing and high-quality, expensive bronzeworking. I just question the generalization.

It's only steel if it's mostly iron - a bit of iron in a titanium alloy is still fundamentally a titanium alloy. On top of that prosthetic legs are far from the only area where you use mostly titanium alloys. There's aviation, where titanium is essentially a stronger alternative to aluminum in military vehicles. It's one of the options for high end bike frames, again as a stronger alternative to aluminum.

True, vehicles construction, and aerospace in particular, loves its titanium. What I'm trying to get at is that when we talk about metals in practice, we're almost invariably discussing alloys. It's hard to say, "steel is like X, and bronze is like Y," because those aren't two things, but rather two classes of thing.

From what I understand, most titanium alloys don't hold an edge well, and titanium is stronger per unit weight than many steels, but it's significantly less dense so you don't generally get the same strength per unit volume, which does matter for things like swords and armor.

Good steel is a bit of a wonder material for swords in particular, as it will be very strong, very "springy" (comes back to shape if bent), and hold an edge well.

If things like titanium were going to be involved in making swords better, it would be as a possible small-percentage alloying material in making the "perfect" steel (see also, vanadium, etc).

Hence my comment about impurities being desirable in pre-industrial forges. Even without the incredible furnaces and understanding of materials science that we have in the present day, skilled blacksmiths found ways to exploit the inevitable impurities in the iron they were working with. Japan's iron is a good example - it's riddled with impurities and would be borderline useless for the construction of a European sword, but single-edged Japanese blades, which are typically designed for stiffness and density, make good use of its properties.

[Max_Killjoy]

The crucial generalization about bronze and steel is that pretty much every Bronze Age culture went to steel weapons as soon as they had access to iron ore and the technology to smelt it.

In the real world, the actual steel they could make was deemed superior to the actual bronze they could make, pretty much everywhere.

Except that they weren't making steel for a long time, they were making iron -- and that early iron wasn't superior to bronze for weapons or armor. It was often cheaper and more plentiful, however.

There were people making bronze weapons and armor long well the "iron age", if they had the expertise, the access to the materials, and the wealth to do so.

Iron is not a wonder material that immediately supplants all bronze.

[Xuc Xac]

Iron is not a wonder material that immediately supplants all bronze.

How good is this material for making medieval swords and armor? On a scale from 1 to 10 with 1 being "use something else" and 10 being "the best material we can make today with all our modern technology":
"Iron"/low grade steel is an 8.
Bronze is a 9.
Steel made by people who know the difference between austenite and martensite is a 9.9.

You can kill a person with anything that's a 2 or better.

The crucial generalization about bronze and steel is that pretty much every Bronze Age culture went to steel weapons as soon as they had access to iron ore and the technology to smelt it.

In the real world, the actual steel they could make was deemed superior to the actual bronze they could make, pretty much everywhere.

In the real world, every culture begins purchasing disposable plastic crap mass-produced in China as soon as they have access to it. They aren't doing it for the higher quality.

People in the real world aren't PCs in an RPG who buy whatever has the most pluses regardless of price. Real people engage in cost/benefit analysis (and many of them give more weight to cost considerations than the benefits side of the equation).

[Kiero]

Except that they weren't making steel for a long time, they were making iron -- and that early iron wasn't superior to bronze for weapons or armor. It was often cheaper and more plentiful, however.

There were people making bronze weapons and armor long well the "iron age", if they had the expertise, the access to the materials, and the wealth to do so.

Iron is not a wonder material that immediately supplants all bronze.

Iron also rusts, which bronze does not (it corrodes differently and isn't as sensitive to moisture). Thus ships rams were made of bronze, not iron, and marines weapons were often made of bronze too, since there's little point using iron weapons that will have to be constantly replaced as they rust away.

[Haighus]

It's one of the options for high end bike frames, again as a stronger alternative to aluminum.

It is an option for high-end luxury frames- I don't think a pro team has used titanium frames for at least ten years, and the last one to do so was a bit of a novelty. Everyone else moved onto carbon frames years ago for true high-performance frames.

Titanium is more comfortable than carbon though- the frames are less stiff and much better at absorbing vibration, so they are used mainly for comfort on good road bikes by racing amateurs who don't need the extra few seconds of performance. Comfort is not really a consideration for high-end racing, so carbon all the way for the better strength-to-weight ratio*, stiffer frames and more efficient power output. Carbon is still the most popular amongst amateur racing now the price has dropped.

The other advantage of titanium over carbon is the durability- a titanium bike (or steel or aluminium) is more likely to survive a crash than carbon. Carbon frames tend to be irreparably damaged following a crash, often by the handle bars cracking the top bar. The carbon fibres are designed to be strong in specific directions, which makes them much more vulnerable to unexpected stresses.

*The UCI has an arbitrary lower weight limit on bikes for "safety", but it is hugely outdated by modern material capabilities. This means a pro bike can only go so light, so any additional weight savings from the frame can be used on tech gizmos (like electronic gears) or increasing the stiffness.

[Knaight]

It is an option for high-end luxury frames- I don't think a pro team has used titanium frames for at least ten years, and the last one to do so was a bit of a novelty. Everyone else moved onto carbon frames years ago for true high-performance frames.

Professional cycling is its own thing - a lot of bikes are used for things other than racing, and as you pointed out carbon fiber is fairly fragile. This is particularly true when it comes to mountain bikes, where it's only a matter of time (and often not that much) before you wreck.

[Haighus]

Professional cycling is its own thing - a lot of bikes are used for things other than racing, and as you pointed out carbon fiber is fairly fragile. This is particularly true when it comes to mountain bikes, where it's only a matter of time (and often not that much) before you wreck.

Fair point :D I was talking from a purely road cycling perspective. Carbon frames are still very common for amateur road racers*, even at quite low levels (they start at about £1000 in the UK, which is not a terribly large investment for racing purposes). Mountain is very different. I was under the impression steel was still popular for mountain biking for that very reason (especially downhill racing)? Is titanium used much for mountain frames?

In my experience, people only use high-end frames for commuting if they also mountain bike or road race as a hobby. Tourers would appreciate titanium most I reckon, because of the comfort.

*Including time trialling and road endurance rides, and to a lesser extent cyclo cross.

[Carl]

From what I understand, most titanium alloys don't hold an edge well, and titanium is stronger per unit weight than many steels, but it's significantly less dense so you don't generally get the same strength per unit volume, which does matter for things like swords and armor.

Good steel is a bit of a wonder material for swords in particular, as it will be very strong, very "springy" (comes back to shape if bent), and hold an edge well.

If things like titanium were going to be involved in making swords better, it would be as a possible small-percentage alloying material in making the "perfect" steel (see also, vanadium, etc).

Whilst generally your getting things right it does depend a lot on the alloy, start looking at common titanium alloys vs common steel ones and the titanium usually has worse shear strength, (so it dosen;t handle shear very well), but equal to superior tensile yield strength. However as you noted it doesn't wear well. It's only when you start getting into the fancy alloys and specialised uses titanium really starts to fall off sharply. Thats said good luck finding specific data, i spent an hour or so digging around the web but too many material specifications on the web just don;t have the full characteristics list which makes detailed comparisons tough.

That said common titanium alloy probably would replace many, many steels, (and there might even be a fair number of better titanium alloys we just haven't discovered yet due to titaniums relatively low usage compared to steel), if we could find a way to refine and work the stuff that wasn't a complete unmitigated pain in the backside.

[Knaight]

Fair point :D I was talking from a purely road cycling perspective. Carbon frames are still very common for amateur road racers, even at quite low levels (they start at about £1000 in the UK, which is not a terribly large investment for racing purposes). Mountain is very different. I was under the impression steel was still popular for mountain biking for that very reason (especially downhill racing)? Is titanium used much for mountain frames?

Titanium gets used in higher end mountain bike frames for people who tend to avoid the nastier trails. It's also good for people who favor using mountain bikes on roads, given the way they* tend to ride, where nonchalantly going down short stair cases and through dubious weather conditions is pretty common, as is switching between roads and trails pretty freely, including trails which road bikes would struggle with.

If you're going to be hurtling down a cliff in what is basically a ski course minus the padding provided by snow, you want steel.

[The Jack]

Interesting.

So essentially, people were used to casting bronze, and casting iron wasn't a move you could do, while forging iron was a slow moving art.

Still, if people could forge good swords, they could forge plates/transitional plates, right? Or did the flexibility of mail make up for the inflexibility of the metal it was made from?

From my reading, the quality of ore/method of forging/refining varied greatly, with indian steel being ahead of it's time. So like, did people plates out of quality foreign steels even if the people of their home were struggling with iron?

[The Jack]

Titanium.

From what I understand, Titanium wouldn't be good for blades, given the whole poor edge thing, and it wouldn't be great for blunt weapons, given the whole it's light thing, but it'd be good, if way too expensive, for armour.

1-1 it's about approximately as strong as decent steel, though the lightness might be a small sacrifice of protection, it will have a positive impact on your speed (Steel armour isn't that heavy and won't slow you down with, but it will help tire you and tiredness, or conserving energy to avoid tiredness, would slow you down.)

but, since it's weight is half as much, you could make it twice as thick in important areas without a problem.

A lot of what I'm reading likens mithril to titanium, which is only flawed in that titanium is common/can't be found naturally, and that I think frodo wore the mail under his clothes, which would be insanely uncomfortable unless dwarves could make rings so smooth that it wasn't a problem. I don't think ultra-fine -almost cloth- is feasible for titanium armour, though then again middle earth didn't have very advanced steel for good swords.

I've always wondered what fantasy materials would actually be good for weapons/armour. "Glass" (Distinguished from actual glass) from The Elder scrolls III was actually a sensible material for armour, since it was light, shock absorbant, and near-indestructible. That sounds awful for weapons but apparently it could hold a phenomenal edge (It was usually constructed with other metals too).

Next couple of TES games kinda ruined it. Oblivion was filling a quota had glass maces despite the aforementioned properties (glass weapons were also heavy because that's how oblivion worked) and Skyrim thought it was being clever when it replaced glass with Malachite, no lore explaining it wasn't actually RL Malachite, which'd be terrible for making anything.

But, y'know, if you grabbed all the lore for different fantasy metals; Adamant, Runite, uru, shadowsteel, ebony, unobtanium... what'd actually make good "medieval" weapons/armour?

[Galloglaich]

Titanium is basically super-aluminum. It doesn't compare to steel for things like cutting. The 'stronger than steel' thing is very misleading - stronger by weight. So is certain types of carbon fiber, but you wouldn't want to make armor out of that. They don't make knives or cutting tools out of titanium. Titanium is also brittle compared to tempered steel.

Part of what makes steel so useful for weapons and armor, and hard to beat to this day for many industrial uses, is that it can be made very flexible / springy, in addition to being very hard. It's that combination which makes swords in particular very effective.

Wearing mail under your clothes was very common in the middle ages, particularly in Italy. They may have had some underclothing beneath the mail.

They also could make mail in the late medieval period which was nearly as fine as cloth. They have some in the Smithsonian you can't stick a pin through. They also could make mail tempered. Of course mail like that is very expensive. By the late medieval period mail often cost several times the equivalent plate armor panoply.

Generally most authentic medieval mail is finer-linked (and much better made) than the re-enactor stuff you can find today. They didn't use "butted mail" either (except in Japan).

Bronze did vary widely in quality and specific alloys with very different properties. However almost all were slightly heavier by volume than iron or steel.

The Chinese got very good with bronze alloys, at a time when people in Central Asia were already starting to use iron. Some Chinese swords from their late Bronze Age are quite remarkable in terms of construction, comparable to pattern welded steel. For example the Sword of Goujian from ~500 BC is like something right out of D&D

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword_of_Goujian



The main problem with bronze or brass though was the need to have two different metals -copper and tin for bronze, copper and zinc (from calamine, usually) for brass, or copper and arsenic. If you have control of sources of both metals, and the ability to transport it to where it was needed, bronze could be affordable. If not it was expensive. The main issue was that they would mine out the local sources of tin etc. and then have to go far afield for it.

The Classical civilizations mined out most of the tin in the Med by around 800 BC and eventually were importing it from all the way in Britain. They even sent a guy looking for where it came from, who seems to have had quite an epic adventure.

G

[gkathellar]

But, y'know, if you grabbed all the lore for different fantasy metals; Adamant, Runite, uru, shadowsteel, ebony, unobtanium... what'd actually make good "medieval" weapons/armour?

That depends on the weapons and armor in question.

Durability is the obvious answer, and for edged weapons in particular you want a low tendency to deform without making the blade impossible to sharpen. Something like a European longsword will want a high degree of flexibility, while a katana will do better with rigid shock-absorbent materials. Anti-armor weapons profit from an especially dense striking point.

Not only are the material requirements for weapons and armor variable, the requirements for different parts of what may at first appear to be a single piece of metal vary. A particularly ancient example exhibits the way a weapon can be designed with a softer body and harder edges. Many styles of fencing divide the blade's length into sections, and the optimal properties for each differ. You can also get very different properties by assembling a weapon out of discrete parts, such as the three-plates-and-a-rod design used in Japanese sword smithing.

So the question is rarely, "what metal is best for weapons?" or even, "what metal is best for this type of weapon?" Rather, it's, "what does this weapon do, and what materials can help it be better at that?"