Hank Reinhardt's The Book of the Sword Read Online Free PDF

how to alloy tin with copper to make bronze and with zinc to make brass. Both these alloys produced weapons of superior strength and hardness. But there was a far better metal on the horizon.
    Iron is one of the most useful metals known to man. It is also one of the most common elements on the planet. In its pure state iron is only slightly harder than copper. But iron is a reactive metal and will combine with many other elements. With the addition of other elements, the properties of iron change drastically. Rarely is iron found that does not have some impurities mixed in with it. Of all the impurities, none is quite so important as carbon. But I get ahead of myself.
    No one knows who first discovered iron, or where. In the past it was believed that the Hittites were the first, but that is being challenged as more and more information becomes available. At the time of this writing, the first makers and users of iron are not known.
    More than likely the discovery was an offshoot of the bronze industry. It is quite likely that iron was discovered while mining for tin and copper. Probably this new metal was initially discarded and considered to be just trash. It was possible that it took quite a while for anyone to pay any attention to the material. However, once its abilities were realized, it quickly supplanted bronze as the ideal metal for swords and other weapons.
    When you compare the different properties of bronze and iron you can see that it took a great leap to make iron into something useful. Bronze can be cast easily; it can be annealed by heating it up and plunging it into cold water, and thin sheets can be easily worked with a hammer. Iron behaves differently. While it will work harden and thus crack under the stress of cold forging, it has to be heated to be annealed, and then must be cooled very slowly. If it were quench-hardened, as they would do with bronze, it would not soften. If by some chance there were some carbon present, it might get very hard. In short, its behavior was quite different than bronze or copper.
    But don't think that once iron was discovered bronze was dropped immediately. Far from it. Just as bronze weapons coexisted with Stone Age ones, so too did iron weapons coexist with bronze ones. Bronze continued to be important in the accoutrements, fittings, guards, pommels, etc., not to mention that maces could still be made from bronze. Even today, brass is still used for modern gun cartridge cases.
    Although it took a great deal of time, someone finally figured out that iron could be quite useful, and then iron weapons began to appear. The Iron Age is generally considered to date from about 1400 BC. But this is a date used more for convenience than for anything else. We are already aware that copper was discovered a lot sooner than was thought, and that might be true for iron as well.
    The Hittites are frequently given the credit for the discovery of iron, and many believe that the brief Hittite Empire was created by their mighty iron weapons. This is highly doubtful. First, there is no direct evidence that the Hittites used iron in abundance. Second, early iron swords were not much better than their bronze counterparts. Although lighter than bronze swords, they would bend just as easily. It probably took some time for methods to be discovered that yielded a steely iron. In the clash of armies it is quite doubtful that this small advantage would have been sufficient to insure victory and conquest. But it is undeniable that at about this time iron weapons and artifacts begin to appear.
    You also have the very likely scenario that the discoverers did not run out and share the information with their neighbors. Undoubtedly the first iron weapons were more curiosities than decidedly better weapons. But in the forging of the blades under heat, some of them absorbed some carbon, and thus came out much tougher than bronze.
    Man's nature has not changed in a few thousand years, and when the ancients