Leo Todeschini wrote: |
Flanged maces were very often brazed together during construction and this would be a devil to do with pre-heat treated parts and keep the treatment and a devil to do once it is assembled and for it to stay in one piece, so although I do not know for sure, I strongly suspect they were not treated and if they were, I would love to know how.
Tod |
Hi Tod. Im researching medieval flanged mace production at the moment, since there isnt anything much to do these days other than research :D
We can all agree that the flanges were brazed in place using copper or its alloys.
What I wanted to ask is, is there evidence that the pipes were forge welded, like the gun barrels of those times most certainly were?
Everybody told me that there was absolutely no evidence for that and that they were all brazed, just like the flanges.
I find that really odd. It would be easier to forge weld that length of seam than to braze it in my opinion.
The only thing that would explain brazing the handle would be the thickness of the material. If its too thin, it could burn through in the forge...
But that would then make it too weak for a weapon...
Maybe thats why they had wooden cores in, not just to reinforce, but to provide the bulk of the strength for the whole mace?
So, to answer your question on HT, if they could use a spirit blow lamp, like you talked about in another post, to braze the flanges to the handle and the handle itself, why wouldnt they use the same lamps to heat just the very tips of each flange, while keeping the rest of the mace submerged in water or otherwise cooled?
Then you can quench each flange spike separately, and then give it all a proper temper. All this if there was enough carbon for a successful hardening in the first place.
You coulld also do this in a regular charcoal fire, but a constant cooling of the pieces would be critical to success.
But still feasible.
P.S. Thats all I have to say regarding HT, dont know if they did it, but Im sure it could have been done very easily.
I want to get back to the process of brazing flanges again. Can you really do it with those primitive blowtorches you
mentioned,Tod? Or was there a different technique for maces?
Im asking because I need a reliable medieval technology of mace manufacture, I want to do a proper reconstruction
some thay when all of this blows over :)