Other Jimness > Cinder Spires Spoilers

Why not bronze?

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knnn:
Maybe someone with a search function can check this out, but I don't think I've seen any reference to bronze in the book.

Given that iron gives you so much trouble, I would have thought that it makes sense to use bronze.  It is after all a copper-tin alloy and therefore I assume would be free of iron-rot.  It's also nearly as light as iron (for equal strength), and quite durable.  Sure for things where every last strength per gram counts I could see you sticking to iron despite the risk, but for guns (e.g. the pistol that Grimm carries around or the big cannon) I would think that bronze would suffice.  At the very least, I would expect it for plates/cups or maybe for everyday tools (so you don't have to worry about the copper peeling off a steel hammer).

Quantus:

--- Quote from: knnn on October 12, 2015, 02:35:05 PM ---Maybe someone with a search function can check this out, but I don't think I've seen any reference to bronze in the book.

Given that iron gives you so much trouble, I would have thought that it makes sense to use bronze.  It is after all a copper-tin alloy and therefore I assume would be free of iron-rot.  It's also nearly as light as iron (for equal strength), and quite durable.  Sure for things where every last strength per gram counts I could see you sticking to iron despite the risk, but for guns (e.g. the pistol that Grimm carries around or the big cannon) I would think that bronze would suffice.  At the very least, I would expect it for plates/cups or maybe for everyday tools (so you don't have to worry about the copper peeling off a steel hammer).

--- End quote ---
It's only mentioned twice:

 "a heavy gate of bronze-bound wood" -ch-25

"The slender girl's fingers felt like cold, hard bronze"  - Ch 33


They have plenty of copper, but bronze requires a hardener alloy, historical Tin (preferred) or Arsenic (toxic), whcih is just another resource that would need to be collected at high-cost and risk from the Surface.  My guess is that it's simply been supplanted by the Copper-clad Steel as their preferred Hard Metal material. 

wyltok:
If anyone has the book on Kindle, could they check if the word "pewter" shows up? It's a pretty common tin alloy used to make household items. If there's enough tin around to make pewter, there should be enough for bronze to be common as well.

The constant reference to copper-coating does make me wonder if there's some issue obtaining tin and zinc beyond those one would expect from obtaining copper (they all have to be mined, after all). There's actually more zinc than copper available in the Earth's Crust, and coating steel in zinc to protect from rust (galvanization) seems to date back to the 4th Century AD and remains fairly common to this day (zinc, however, does not develop as effective a patina as other metals, making it an arguably less efficient option).

Something that occurs to me is that maybe we're not accounting for the difficulties involved in transportation of bulk materials. In the real world, one can make a ship as big as one wishes, since they just need to float on water; in the world of the Cinder Spires, each ship requires at least 2 very complicated crystals just to float. Similarly, in the real world, mankind has been on the top of the food chain since time immemorial, making it simple (relatively speaking) to go prospecting for new mine locations; it occurs to me that in the world of the Cinder Spires, a gold rush simply cannot happen, due to the environmental conditions (of everything trying to kill you).

It wouldn't surprise me if copper-coating is only a local custom, with other spires further away using other materials for the same purpose.

knnn:
The cannons are referred to as having brass in them, and that requires zinc. 

Maybe it's what Quantus appears to be suggesting -- they happen to have a big copper mine nearby and not a zinc/tin one.   That would explain using all the copper-clad stuff; it's the only thing they have.  Other spires might have different mines and have more bronze or zinc coating in their works.

Quantus:
There is a single mention of Pewter:  Bridget wakes up in the ship infirmary with a Pewter cup in her hands. 

If we are correct that different spires have different mineral resources it would make sense for that kind of ship to have products from other Spires, with materials that arent as natively available. 

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