Bronze, Iron and paying for it

[Anders]

According to RAW, bronze has CF +3. I don't like that, because it means that a labor-intensive item, like a sword, gets its cost increased by more per pound than a labor-cheap item like a mace. So I nicked a rule from p.LT39.

It works as follows:

a) assume that the cost of iron per pound is insignificant.
b) assume that the metal part of a sword is the whole weight, that the metal part of an axe/mace/polearm/etc. is 4/5 the weight of the finished weapon, and that the metal part of a spear/arrow, etc. is 1/5 of the finished weapon.

These assumptions are not entirely realtistic, but unless they're grossly wrong I assume you will tell me. You always do. :)

Multiply the metal weight by the cost of bronze ($50/lb. in my campaigns) and add that to the cost of the weapon.

[Tyneras]

If You have LTC3, you can find the labor cost of the mace and apply the cost increase of bronze to just the materials.

[Varyon]

I've been modifying Better Fantasy Armor for my purposes, and one thing I've done is broken costs down to materials and labor, using the LTC3 guidelines to determine how the split occurs. I have bronze being x9 materials cost (I have iron as $7.50/lb and doubled for steel, bronze as $135/lb) and x0.5 labor cost (bronze is easier to work than iron/steel). Further CF modifiers simply use the original base cost - I don't think it's any easier to make a Fine sword out of bronze than it is to make it out of steel (Very Fine may well require steel, but as this is armor for DF I just ignore that).

Note the above works out to around +5.5 CF for Bronze Scale, +1 CF for Bronze Mail, and +0.5 CF for Bronze Plate. Using GURPS' normal assumption of ~$65/lb for bronze, the above becomes +2 CF for Bronze Scale, +0.2 CF for Bronze Mail, and essentially no change for Bronze Plate.

EDIT: Adapted to your setting, you're looking at a Thrusting Broadsword ($45 materials, $555 labor) reducing in price to $430 ($150 materials, $280 labor); if you don't decrease the labor price, you'd instead add $105. Your "ignore the price of iron/steel and add the price of bronze" solution is probably good enough, honestly.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Varyon

x0.5 labor cost (bronze is easier to work than iron/steel). .

That's probably not true for edged weaponry. There's a lot of fussy effort that has to go into producing a viable sharp edge with bronze in an area called "work-hardening". If you don't do a lot of it and to the right degr3ee your edge can be either too soft or too brittle.

It's fairly likely that this is a large part of the reason bronze weapons vanished over a very short period of historical time while bronze armor pieces endured many centuries longer.

I'm also somewhat dubious about a cast iron mace head being that much harder to produce than a cast bronze one. the advantage to bronze is the comparative ease with which it is worked into complex shapes and mace heads are usually non-complex.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

That's probably not true for edged weaponry.

It's probably an oversimplification for most items - most of the cost of plate armor is probably getting the shape right, which probably isn't much easier with bronze than steel, and while bronze is probably easier to draw into a wire, that's probably the least amount of time spent making mail. I've been considering dropping the labor modifiers outright, or possibly breaking labor up further into material-independent and material-dependent subsets, but that's likely too much work and complication.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

I'm also somewhat dubious about a cast iron mace head being that much harder to produce than a cast bronze one. the advantage to bronze is the comparative ease with which it is worked into complex shapes and mace heads are usually non-complex.

Casting iron is pretty hard, it's largely TL4 technology. It's even harder if you don't want the product normally called cast iron, which contains a lot of carbon lowering the melting point but leaving it really too brittle for a decent mace head - even stone is probably a better material than cast iron for something like that.

Even these days when you can cast low carbon steel affordably, quality hammers are normally drop forged.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Anders

According to RAW, bronze has CF +3. I don't like that, because it means that a labor-intensive item, like a sword, gets its cost increased by more per pound than a labor-cheap item like a mace. So I nicked a rule from p.LT39.

It works as follows:

a) assume that the cost of iron per pound is insignificant.
b) assume that the metal part of a sword is the whole weight, that the metal part of an axe/mace/polearm/etc. is 4/5 the weight of the finished weapon, and that the metal part of a spear/arrow, etc. is 1/5 of the finished weapon.

These assumptions are not entirely realtistic, but unless they're grossly wrong I assume you will tell me. You always do. :)

Multiply the metal weight by the cost of bronze ($50/lb. in my campaigns) and add that to the cost of the weapon.

Of course you shouldn't simply multiply by the total weight of the weapon! You need to use the specialized rules for cheap and fine weapons in the Basic Set. They seem to take what you're talking about into account, at least approximately.

Bill Stoddard

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Casting iron is pretty hard, it's largely TL4 technology. .

.....and yet flanged maces with iron heads became popular in Europe in the 12th century. this of course is TL3 and not 4. Perhaps iron can be cast without being "cast iron" in the 19th century sense.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

.....and yet flanged maces with iron heads became popular in Europe in the 12th century. this of course is TL3 and not 4. Perhaps iron can be cast without being "cast iron" in the 19th century sense.

Or perhaps a flanged mace isn't cast in the first place; it might be individual flanges welded onto bar steel.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

.....and yet flanged maces with iron heads became popular in Europe in the 12th century. this of course is TL3 and not 4. Perhaps iron can be cast without being "cast iron" in the 19th century sense.

Are they cast? AFAICT from a quick look at museum descriptions, flanges are brazed or even soldered into grooves in the head. I'll admit that doesn't sound very strong either, and museum pieces tend to lean a lot more to decorative than functional examples, but still.