Bronze to the Limit: Destructive Testing of a Ewart Park Sword

Neil Burridge, a highly skilled maker of Bronze Age swords, sent me an unpolished version of a Ewart Park type sword for hard, abusive testing to get an idea of the material's limits.

The link to the full video of Neil explaining the sword:

I used it to chop hard wood with, tested the cutting performance on soaked newspaper rolls, cut into a wooden shield, and attempted to parry a steel gladius with it.

Considering how hard and unusual those tests were it held up very well. The wood chopping made the blade bend as it twisted inside the log, but straightening it was quick and easy. The advantage of softer material is that it bends rather than breaking, which is obviously simpler to fix.

It suffered a lot from the contact with the steel sword, but that is of course to be expected. Modern high carbon steel is much harder than even work hardened bronze, and would also chew up iron and non-tempered steel.
The forged edge of the bronze sword definitely makes a difference. It hardens it enough to keep a good edge even after heavy use.

Review of the bronze Khopesh:

In general I can only recommend Neil's work. He is very knowledgeable and puts a lot of effort into creating beautiful, historically accurate reproductions. Easily the best bronze sword replicas I've seen so far.

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[dashinvaine]

You should bury it in your garden, to confuse future archaeologists.

[pleasebepatientihavesevere]

Blacksmith seems like a bro, I'd drink a beer with him.

[Pellaeon]

"I send my sword to mr. Skallagrim because he knows how swords are used..." Cut to Skall bashing trees with it... :D

[Nomaran]

I honestly think this is one of your best videos. You had an actual sword maker request you test that blade, what an honor! I also learned a bit of history about bronze weapons so it's win win win for all three parties. Thanks to both you Skallagrim and Neil!

[kasonr.]

My god, that blade is so beautiful... Bronze is the best-looking metal, hands down.

[Braeden]

12:03 the only word readable in a Canadian newspaper: "Sorry"

[Tempusverum]

Wow, I had no idea bronze makes such beautiful swords! They look like glistening gold. Bronze is underrated as a weapon metal.

[slamblamboozled]

Hand made bronze sword- aprox £300
Mass produced folding knife- £100-£500

I think knife makers are taking liberties...

[lancerd]

Great to see the part with Neil at the beginning. It's lovely to see a true craftsman talking about his passion. 

One nice thing about a bronze sword was that if it did get damaged to the point of destruction, it was relatively simple to melt it down and re-cast it compared to iron, which couldn't be melted up until the 13th century (and was never cast into swords, afaik). That said, i think I'll stick with steel swords for now - I reckon our ancestors made the right choice in making the switch :) 

[bohdanvondabelsky]

Man speaks softly but hammers heavily.

[nopushbutton]

Those polished swords are so pretty. I don't think I could bear to use them!

[Matthewjohnwilson]

With the amount of views this video got I really hope it helped Neil out. This was a really well done test putting the blade up against a bunch of different challenges. This is a great testament to the quality of his blades. 

[raindog]

Damn! Those polished Bronze swords are

[janegeary]

Even going up against a steel sword armed opponent, the blade would still work for parrying and chopping into the opponent. The damage seen in the vid is inconsequential, it can be fixed in a few hours between battles.

I think I underestimated the material, and kind of want a set of bronze kitchen knives now...

[PyreVulpimorph]

Excellent videos testing out both the khopesh and Ewart Park swords. People really don't give bronze enough credit. As you've demonstrated, even ancient historical alloys and manufacturing techniques hold up very nicely to abuse and the edge still retains it's sharpness.

The Bronze Age didn't give way to the Iron Age because iron was superior, but because it was _cheaper_. Early wrought iron actually had inferior mechanical properties, but the ores for it are about everywhere, you just needed a hot enough furnace. Copper and especially tin are significantly rarer, and complex, interdependent trade networks were necessary to support the manufacture of bronze. When those trade networks became disrupted, the cost of bronze skyrocketed and iron found its economic foothold. The rest, as they say, is history.

Modern bronzes have come a long ways, too, just as steel has. Phosphor bronze, which is really still tin bronze but fully deoxidized with phosphorus, has vastly superior properties to the ancient stuff due to it's purity, and it's actually used as _spring_ material! Also, historical wrought bronzes were limited to 10-12% tin because of the buildup of copper-tin intermetallic crystals that were in fact quite brittle. A cast bronze will have a lot of these brittle crystals, but they can be re-absorbed into the bulk alloy with proper heat treatments. So, a modern bronze could potentially have up to 15.5% tin in it and be significantly stronger for it, but the necessary heat treatments to achieve this concentration tend to be cost prohibitive.

TL;DR, a modern bronze sword can have a hard spring temper and still be incredibly tough, at least as good as medium-carbon steel that's been quench hardened.

[Odood]

I think the biggest lesson learned here is that the basic gladius shape is one of the best a swordsman could hope for. Bronze definitely has its merits, the most obvious being its resistance to magnetic paladins.

[Traderjoe]

Amazing! I think that if a bronze age warrior had met up on the battle field against a Gladius wielding opponent, I think the fight would go a lot better than expected, even though the bronze sword would be badly damaged, I suspect he wild hold his own until it completely failed or, until the Gladius was embedded so deeply within the bronze that the bronze wielder might be able to wrest the embedded sword from the others hand. Neil work is amazing!

[stannisthemannis]

The biggest flaw of bronze swords is that you can't "unscrew the pommel to end them rightly"

[newhampshirebound]

It's even softer than I expected. Extremely interesting. You've intrigued me to revisit some history to understand the implications. I appreciate the channel and the great explanations of different swords with the history perspective. Great stuff man.

[nystagmushorizontalis]

I have to say one thing
Bronze swords, when polished are extremely beautiful
Tho I'm a big fan of bronze colours som maybe that's why