Quote:
Originally Posted by DanHoward
Today, the primary cost of an item is the labour. In the past, the cost of materials made up the majority of the price.
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Hmmm... that's
quite a bit different from LTC3, where iron is around $7/lb ($14/lb for plate armor and swords, but that's indicated to be due to burning a lot of charcoal rather than using better iron), while armor and weapons made from it are typically a good deal more than that ($20/lb for scale up to $125/lb for plate armor; for weapons, large knives are around $40/lb while a thrusting broadsword is around $200/lb, provided we ignore the idea that 1/3rd of their weights are apparently the sheath). That's at most 35% of cost being from material for such items, with the rest being from labor. If the bronze material is simply 4x the cost of iron, that's only a fairly small increase - +$21/lb, making bronze scale around +100% cost and bronze plate being something around +15% cost (bronze knives would be around +50% cost, bronze swords* around +10%).
Well, unless you're using something else to refer to "materials." Certainly, if your starting material is a sheet of metal from the platers or a sword blank, material cost is likely going to be more than the cost of labor. I suspect this may be the case, as you appear to be treating the materials for mail construction as the iron
wire. Iron wire's high cost is, unless I'm mistaken, a combination of needing to be high-quality iron and, perhaps more importantly, the large amount of labor needed to turn that high-quality iron into strong iron wire.
*Assuming a bronze thrusting broadsword is possible; I've read before there are mechanical limitations to how large a bronze sword can get that an iron sword surpasses, but can't remember if the cut-off was a bit south of a broadsword or a greatsword.