eli5 How were such intricate items like suits or armour and castle decorations made in the medieval era when they lacked advanced metal processing and precision tools we have today
In: 249
Buddy not ever one was wearing suit of armour. They were rara and for the super rich. For a comparison go to home of a ultra rich and see the type of gadgets they have . They have cutting edge technology just being made for them . Same analogy.
Sanctuary/essuare is only s tiny sub continent, land locked in two sides and struggling too maintain its autonomy.
The people back then had the possibility to melt metals, so they could pour it into molds already.
Molds could be made from metals that would melt at a higher temperature and they could also be made out of sand.
For the latter they could have used wood to cut decorative shapes into, press the wood into really dense sand and then pour the molten metal into the imprint that the wood left in the sand.
Also they had hammers, anvils and many other basic tools and they knew how to use it.
The pyramids were built roughly 4,500 years ago. With possibly some sort of copper tools, copper drills, and sand/quartz as an abrasive. Built to a degree of accuracy that modern houses lack.
With that in perspective, metal work is relatively easy, provided you can gather enough metal. Just heat, bang, heat, bang, etc.
We could re-make armor today relatively easily. No one is tackling re-building a pyramid because it would cost in excess of a billion dollars, even with modern tools.
[Here](https://youtu.be/fHFpKAv2Sk4) is a master armorer starting with a flat sheet of metal and turning it into a fully realized set of armor mostly by hitting it with a hammer against round pieces of metal.
I’m starting on Part 2 because Part is just Adam and Terry chatting. If you’re interested it is a good watch, just doesn’t show any of the actual building.
He does use some modern tools like a sharpie to mark the outline, a blowtorch to heat the metal etc. But, I think it’s pretty clear how easy it would be to substitute medieval tech for any of those. He’s also using aluminum because it’s costume armor, not actual battle armor, but the techniques for steel wouldn’t be fundamentally different.
Practise, a lot of practise. Collective Generations worth infact.
Back then you wouldn’t just become a blacksmith, you were apprenticed to one at a very young age, and in time, of a couple of decades at least if you were skilled and successful, you’d become a blacksmith. The blacksmith who you were apprenticing under went through the same thing as you, as did his master, and his master before him spanning back centuries. The skilled and the successful ones are those who went on to teach and get a long line of successors.
Maybe consider the question from another angle: how could we possibly have made all of the precision tools we have today if we couldn’t master something as simple as curved metal plates, interlocking metal rings, and decorations? Consider that modern machinists measure by the 0.001″ (or micron, for you clever European folks).
It’s like any other core resource related trade: we do it for a really, really long time and we get good at it, and then we learn how to do it even better and raise the bar. On and on it goes until we get from horseshoes to machining hydraulic shafts that are within +/-0.005″ in diameter over the entire length of a multi-foot shaft.
Latest Answers