Low Tech Value of Zinc

[Say, it isn't that bad!]

Originally Posted by Tyneras

It's just been one of those things that sticks in my mind. I've also discovered that the chinese used nickel enough to make cupronickel coins around 1400 BC (isolated in Europe around 1751)but its debatable if they knew what they had. So now my list of ancient metals that will annoy me is zinc, mercury and nickel.

As per the Wikipedia page on "Calamine brass": "..., and metallic zinc was produced directly via reducing-atmosphere smelting in India and China from the 12th century CE onwards."

[Rupert]

Mercury was, and is, refined from Cinnabar. It's not terribly hard, and has been done since 1500BC or before. That handling Cinnabar was dangerous has been known since at least Roman times (but they still used it for cosmetics), though opinions on Mercury were variable.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Tyneras

Mostly to get a rough estimate what brass would cost.

As metallic zinc is not used in production of low-tech brass, the cost of metallic zinc is not relevant (need to know cost of materials and cost of the process).

[Fred Brackin]

The ancients used brass and bronze indiscriminately. Therefore the Law of Supply and Demand will push the prices of bronze and brass to the same level.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

The ancients used brass and bronze indiscriminately. Therefore the Law of Supply and Demand will push the prices of bronze and brass to the same level.

I doubt that, because if it were true loss of access to tin supplies wouldn't have had the very messy effect that it did have on the ancient Mediterranean world.

Also, different alloys of bronze were used for weapons vs armour and everything else, so at the very least they'd have distinguished between 'weapons grade bronze' and 'general purpose bronze' with the latter including what we'd call brass.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

The ancients used brass and bronze indiscriminately.

Actually, it's the reverse; modern use is perfectly happy to call all copper alloys bronze, because there aren't really meaningful differences in modern production methods, whereas low tech brass production was significantly different from bronze production and thus merited a distinct name.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Actually, it's the reverse; modern use is perfectly happy to call all copper alloys bronze, because there aren't really meaningful differences in modern production methods, whereas low tech brass production was significantly different from bronze production and thus merited a distinct name.

There was the confusion caused by the tendency to melt down old bass/bronze things all together to make something new, though. There are some old brass artefacts that have an incredible mixture of additives because of this. However, this doesn't seem to have been done when making things that were under high stress, or were for particular purposes where the exact composition was important (ship fittings and cladding, for example), which suggests that the ancients knew that some alloys were better for certain purposes than others, and tried to use the correct one where it mattered.

[Tyneras]

The words brass and bronze were used interchangeably, possibly for the same reason quantum gets used and misused today.

Brass, bronze and copper are all visually distinct, no metalworker or person who depended on their performance (i.e. fighters) would confuse the materials, whatever they chose to call them. We have surviving (clay) letters complaining about being sent inferior grades of copper and demanding refunds, they absolutely cared about these distinctions.

Brass, while better than unalloyed copper, is mechanically inferior to bronze in ways that matter for weapons and armor. Kings that want to stay kings aren't going to ask for brass weapons.

If you are making an art piece (that will likely be painted, or the color doesn't matter) or household item that won't be used in combat and the price is right, then melting down and mixing whatever scrap you have makes sense, hence the weird mixes.

As far as the price goes, looking at a few maps it seems that zinc deposits are spread farther and more evenly than tin deposits. I'm thinking that I might take a different strategy of figuring out average travel distance from source to demand, with a multiplier for when demand exceeds supply.

Given zinc is roughly as common as copper in the earths crust and well distributed, giving it the same ballpark price doesn't seem unreasonable. Zinc as a pure(ish) metal doesn't seem to be available until TL 3 or 4 metalworking (9th century India).

[Celjabba]

Originally Posted by Tyneras

Given zinc is roughly as common as copper in the earths crust and well distributed, giving it the same ballpark price doesn't seem unreasonable. Zinc as a pure(ish) metal doesn't seem to be available until TL 3 or 4 metalworking (9th century India).

As far as setting a price go, the difference between "pure zinc" (not available) and zinc ore (used as it is in making brass and other alloys) is academic, imho.

LTC3 setting a unique price for soft metals (copper, lead and zinc ore) make sense since they are about equally common.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by Tyneras

In GURPS Low Tech Companion 3 (p. 22) it states:

Are there any similar numbers for zinc? I ask because brass was common, and zinc is much more abundant than tin but also a pain to work with at low TLs as I understand. Mercury would be handy to know too.

I don't think I have ever seen a price for zinc before the 18th century. It just was not something which was used on its own in the way tin was used to coat copper and iron and lead was used for vessels and pipes and roofs. And words for copper, bronze, and brass are often interchangeable because the customers did not know or care about the metallurgy, just what they could do with this grade of metal from this supplier this season.

Medieval writers often just say latoun / ottone for "copper alloy."