Bronze Forging

Utility

Bronze is used to make tools, weapons, and sometimes jewelry. Making it was a natural evolution of Copper Forging, because pure copper is quite soft, so people added other metals to copper to strengthen it. The resulting bronze is both harder and stronger than either of the parent metals. Weapons became more durable and held their edges for longer and armor stronger. Daggers, previously made of stone or copper, were able to be made longer over the centuries, resulting in the sword.

Manufacturing

One needs to gather the proper materials first, which include: copper, tin, a stone mold, another container to hold the metal after it has been melted. The copper and tin ingots are added and then melted, allowed to mix together, and then poured into a mold to cast in any shape the forger desires. Should the casting not be adequate, the bronze can be remelted and poured into the mold again or a new mold can be created.

Parent Technologies

Copper Forging

Inventor(s)

No one knows who invented the techniques to make bronze.

Access & Availability

Anyone with a forge, along with the proper tools and material can create bronze. First, one needs sufficient amounts of copper and tin, which are the two ingredients that make bronze. Next, one needs a container to hold the molten metals so it can be poured into a mold to be cast. Copper is dispersed widely throughout the known world, but tin is harder to come by and only deposited in several places in quantities that merit large-scale mining. There are two main types of smiths: magic users and non-magic users. The former, usually Changers, simply melt with metals using Clearstone energy and then cast the bronze. Non-magic users, meanwhile, require a more complex forge and a source of fire to melt the copper and tin.

Discovery

The practice of forging bronze from copper and tin was ancient by the time the Bronze Epoch ended in utter collapse. Humans smithed copper tools and weapons for thousands of years before it was discovered adding another metal would make a stronger and more practical alloy.

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