--- title: "Bronze is an alloy" subtitle: "Reconsidering the Bronze Age" author: Seth publish_date: 2025-03-08 08:00 date: 2025-03-08 08:00 hero_classes: text-light title-h1h2 overlay-dark-gradient hero-large parallax hero_image: silver-ring-1600x800.webp show_sidebar: true show_breadcrumbs: true show_pagination: true taxonomy: category: blog tag: [ settings ] --- Recently, I took a blacksmithing workshop. I haven't felt the need to do any more smithing, but it did satisfy my curiosity about the process. Also, it's made me think about metal than I used to. While painting my army for Hattusa, I knew I wanted it to be very clear that they existed in the Bronze Age, which prompted me to do research on bronze. I hate to admit it, but I guess I always thought you just dug for bronze the same way you dig for gold. It turns out that bronze is an alloy using based on copper or tin with metals such as aluminium, manganese, nickel, or zinc, and sometimes even non-metals like phosphorus or arsenic. It makes me reconsider the civilizations between 3300 BCE up to 900 BCE (retrospectively called the "Bronze Age"). I wouldn't blame somebody living 5000 years ago for just grabbing the first metals they found in the ground, applying some heat, and bending it into shape. To me, that alone is pretty technologically advanced, and something I can legitimately admire. But that's not what they did. They took a bunch of different metals, figure out how much heat was required to melt each one down, how each one reacted to heat and cooling, how they combined, and so on. They registered the recipe and called it bronze, and based all of their tooling on it. It's a lot more advanced than I realised. Amazingly, bronze was only eventually replaced by iron because of a [disruption in tin trade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze), not because iron was a superiour product. It wasn't until steel (an alloy of iron and carbon) that there was obvious superiourity to bronze. Then again, bronze is still used today. It may have lost the majority share of our minds and markets, but it's not useless. Not bad for an alloy invented 5000 years ago. ## Painting bronze A trick I often employ while painting miniatures for gaming is to paint metal black, and then dry-brush a little bit of metal paint on top. In context of historical and fantasy games, it makes the metal look aged and worn. In context of science fiction worlds, it makes the metal look stained with black smoke and grime. I own 3 metallic (with metal flecks in the medium) paints: Runefang Brass, Leadbelcher, and Retributor Gold. In real life, there's really nicely polished bronze, and there's aged and oxidized bronze. Citadel sells Fulgurite Copper and several bronzes (such as Warplock Bronze), but I don't own those. Here's what I do instead: * Polished bronze: I use a solid coat Retributor Gold. * Old bronze: Base layer of black with a drybrush of Runefang Brass, or Retributor Gold, depending on how much shine you want it to have. Runefang Brass is pretty muted, while Retributor Gold is very bright. I'll likely buy bronze and copper paint eventually, but probably not before I finish my army of Hattusa. I think that's fine, because most metal pretty much looks the same to me (aside from one being silvery and the other being gold-ish). The next time you paint bronze though, spare a thought for those blacksmiths millenniae ago who invented a substance that propped up technology for thousands of years.

Photo by oğuz can on Unsplash