June 16, 2025 • 39 mins
Neil Burridge is an accomplished sword smith and widely considered the greatest living smith of historical replica cast bronze swords and daggers. He has cast and forged hundreds of replica blades from Ancient Greek Mycenaean, to Nordic Bronze Age and Celtic style weapons. I visited him in his workshop to collect a special replica of one of the oldest metal weapons from Britain, the Huntshaw dagger, which he made for me and we chatted about his work and the history of bronze working.
Neil on X: https://x.com/neil_burridge
Starting Heathenry course: https://startingheathenry.thinkific.com/
STJ links: https://linktr.ee/SurvivetheJive
Neil on X: https://x.com/neil_burridge
Starting Heathenry course: https://startingheathenry.thinkific.com/
STJ links: https://linktr.ee/SurvivetheJive
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
M hmm. Today I'm in Cornwall visiting a man who
is quite possibly the greatest Bronze Age swordsmith in the
(00:20):
whole world. M Oh yeah, crazy.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Okay, that turned off in a second, but it's just on.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
It's cooled down.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
So that's early bonzo.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Lovely little is that is that copper? Bronze?
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Bronze copper doesn't do this.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
It doesn't make a thing. Oh lovely really example of
the sword. So you're saying, how did you in the
nineties you cast your first ever bronze sword. Why did
you decide to start working with bronze?
Speaker 2 (01:11):
It started as off as a hobby and then I
did the residential course with Peter Reynolds abuts Rangient Farm. Yeah,
and it just started started as a kind of an interest,
and it developed and developed, and then one day Peter
said you're good at this, Neil. He said, why don't
(01:31):
you come here and play? And that's what started it
for me. We just started experimenting because I had nobody
to teach me, and there was no internet in nineteen
ninety three, so you could go online and watch somebody
do it. And I saw that Iceman program and the
guy tries to cast a copper axe and makes her
(01:54):
out or a hash of it, let's see. Yeah, And
I thought, wow, that's really interest resting, and I followed
it through and I taught myself by hook or by crook,
because it's not really books on teaching you how to
do prehistoric metalwork, and you have to kind of make
sort of a thousand mistakes to be worldly wise.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Most of them it is European Bronze Age swords are
going to be Mediterranean and Central European. That how soon
is it that you started making and looking at British
Bronze Age weapons.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
I'm trying to think back. The years have passed. Yes,
it's that's a good question. You're stretching my memory right back.
Originally a lawyer who worked pretended to be a druid
at the weekend at Butts Ancient Farm. He said, can
(02:53):
you make me a bronze sword so I can do
ceremony with it? And I thought, I never made one
of those. Let's have a crack. So I engineered my
humble casting technology to make this sword. And it really
struck me the cudos in it that everybody's got. Oh
my god, there's a bronze's sword, and I thought, oh,
(03:17):
it's my leged this and he's one of those little
things that sort of created my future and interest and
I've actually built it up. So I keep one sword here,
hidden in the cupboard somewhere, just to remind me that
I used to make rubbish. And I was.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Now, how far you've come since? An?
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Yeah? Yeah, because one thing Peter Reynolds taught me was
always be humble about what you know and what you do,
and don't get big headed. He took me down a
couple of times beautifully in front of a crowd.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
People not familiar maybe with the differences. I just wanted
to because you've done some Mycenean swords and like you've
done British ords. What's the main difference. How would someone
identify like a British type of Bronze age sort of
dagger or sword from a from a contemporary Mediterranean one
(04:16):
like from Myceni or something.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
That's a big question. There's no is the answer. Every
every step in sort of metalworking in this early time,
they all seem to follow the same road. It might
be in a different place, but they they all gradually
work towards you know, basically it starts off as knives
become daggers, Daggers become dirks, dirks become rapiers, and rapiers
(04:42):
finally become sword and then the last major important step
is the addition of the handle on the end of
the casting. Yes, so the technology develops, but obviously in
the Mid Mediterranean it starts so much earlier, So it
starts with copper metallurgy, and that gradually spreads across Europe.
(05:06):
And it really is gradually. I think it's six hundred
years between the Iceman's ax and the aims pree archer.
It's something that staggering, so that my personal feeling is
what becomes a weapons technology is not shared and it's
only when people move with the technology, they leap frog
(05:28):
across Europe and arrive here and bring it on their backs.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
So a lot of British bronze stuff I've seen in
older literature as well, like looking at the hunts or barrow,
the people talk about, oh this is that this is
from They attribute like a spearhead type to a tang
type from the Mediterranean, and they attribute the blade to
probably a Central European influence. Do you think it's that's
(05:54):
likely that it's like developed these are techniques of metalworking
that have been imported for elsewhere in Europe, or that
they were native developments that just happened to follow a
similar pattern.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
I think it all follows a similar pattern. That there's trade,
there's people come in to Cornwall and trading. There's no
doubt that Cornish tin was traveling down into the Mediterranean,
and more recent researcher is kind of making that look
the most definitely possible scenario. So ideas and people travel
(06:32):
and people would see things, and they would come back
and they say to the smith, I won't believe what
I've seen. I've seen this rapier but it had a
handle on the end, and the smith goes, oh, that
doesn't make any sense, and then people start experimenting. So
there's obviously influences from outside, but it's not in this country.
(06:56):
There's a sword that was cast in the Rhythm River
with them up in Lancashire, Lincolnshire, and it's probably one
of the earliest swords to have a fully tanged handle
on a blade on a leaf blade, and everybody must
have seen it and thought that is the future of
(07:17):
the sword and copied it. So what was sort of
more indigenous type of blades suddenly starts springing handles. They
go from what's called the Balanoba sword. It was the
leaf sword, but it gains a handle.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Is this called a leaf sword? This one, this British
one you've made.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Yeah, this one is very classic, so it's not.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
In the middle of it.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Yeah, we always can go like that. So this is
more a sort of classic York Park. There's bigger ones later,
but when they first develop there, it's the leaf sword,
and it's the way they're made, I think, is what
changes the handles because the blades are similar, because I've
(08:03):
said it before that if you went around a hack sword,
all the handles off all the swords in the museums
and then laid them out on the floor, all the
blades will look similar. But the handles is just what
causes the identification of the sword. So something changes, and
what you find is earlier swords are cast through the
(08:24):
tip like this, So if they add a handle on
the casting and they've got to keep it very delica
otherwise the mass of the handle will cause casting problems
in the blade. So later on somebody goes, well, why
are we casting it through the tip? Why don't we
cast it through the hill, because then it's the shortest
(08:45):
distance to the thickest point of the blade and we
get a better sword. And once that happens, you get
this transition sort of Wilburton type swords cast through their
tip to you park swords cast through the hill.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
What sort of period are we talking about for this
transition to.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
It's summer around one thousand and nine hundred and eight
hundred BC. Everybody keeps moving the goldposts every few years.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
So I know that they've talked in a recent paper
about they're pushing back the lightly date of these like
Dirk style large daggers in the West Country of England
and like showing that metalworking was probably earlier. What's that
period of like pre sword use of dirks or large daggers,
Bronze daggers.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Is basically Middle Bronze Age.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Years ago.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Yeah, so they're basically stretching the dagger longer and longer
and longer, and then they classify them as dirks, and
then they go even longer to long skinny blades and
call them rapiers. And that's the time of the Bronze
shield as well. And it's also the time of bigger spears.
They develop in some huge spears in that period, and
(09:58):
then there's a transition and where they go to sort
of more hill cast swords. Spears start to get smaller,
and yeah, there's a there's a tipping point and the
sword becomes a primary weapon rather than being the spear
being the primary weapon.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
I remember people used to think that that some of
the bronze blades had to be ceremonial because they would
definitely just bend if they were used in any combat.
That went. That's gone out of fashion now right, People
don't think that anymore.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Yeah, thanks to young student who did. I helped him
do some of the swords for his tests, and but
he originally did one on with a rapier and he
went into on his PhD. He went in and basically
did test cuts on dead pigs in an abati and
(10:53):
he wrote his paper and he basically said they were
lethal weapons of combat. Yeah, and I thought, yeah, he's right.
Why would they go through so much industrial manufacturing on
the blade? They were just for show. They just cast
it and polish it and everyone would go around go
and shiny. But they do a huge level of really
(11:15):
complex forging on these.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Swords that stops and bending.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
It stops and bending makes the edges super hard and
huge investment at time. They're super complex, and you think, wow, and.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Do you do that when you when you're in your blades.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Some of my work I do well, especially with a
blade you're gonna get today. That was me exploring how
they put the lines in parallel to the edge of
the blade. But then they forge a step or two
steps along the edge of the blade, and they're widened
the blade towards they're hilled, so the line gets further
(11:53):
and further away from the by hanmering it. Yeah, it's
all forged, and it may have even been done with
stone tools. I'm not absolutely sure.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
That a bone, I suppose or no, a bone.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Won't touch bronze.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
Not hard enough.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
No, it's got to be hard material. I mean, it
took me a while to kind of make a scrape on.
So it's one of those things where you make one
and it's okay, and you make ten you start to understand.
By the time you make fifty you're a master and
you think, yeah, I know how this works.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
How many bronze blades have you made in your life?
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Do you know I think it must be getting towards
three hundred.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Yeah, that's quite quite profounders.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
You may have made more bronze blades than anyone alive.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
But since the Bronze Age. Yeah, and I cast them
one at a time, so I'm not like an industrial
foundry where I melt twenty kilos and I have twelve
molds running along the workshop floor and they basically suspend
the crucible poor than one at a time from the
same crucible. You're all minor cast one at a time
(13:00):
and go custs. So I might do a run if
I'm running molds and reheat every time and reload the
mold and reload the the clay molds like I use
stone molds. So I've been doing that for ages.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Because I've seen it in some clay molds in museums.
They did do that sometimes, right, Yeah, those would only
have one or two uses or something.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
One or two uses, and they take quite a lot
of time. You've got to make the impressions two impressions,
a bit like taking a simplify it down. If you
took a sausage and you get two slices of buttered
bread and you put it around the sausage, take a
print at the sausage, peel the bread apart, leave the
(13:46):
print in, but take the sausage out. That's what the
mold's like. So you take an impression of the blade
from both sides, and then you've got to carefully dry
it so it doesn't distort. And then once it's dried,
you can put the two halves back together again like
an east d egg, and then you could put a
clay wrap around the outside bit like putting the foil
(14:08):
on an east drigg, and then you can fire it,
so you'd offer your mold up heart and pour the
bronze in when it fired out.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
And what's what's the copper tin mix about?
Speaker 2 (14:22):
It depends where you go. If you spin your or
throw a dart in the Mediterranean, it could be anything
up to twelve percent with a g and swords. Yeah,
and if you go Britain, it's usually somewhere around ten
percent with two percent lead and the rest copper.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Use less tin at the source of the tin.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
No, it varies, it's not that that's the middle. So
some sorces you will get lower down and some sorts
you'll get higher up. And also one larte thing is,
the analysis of crowded objects is quite difficult. So unless
the drilling holes in it the dreaded bronze, it's very
hard to get a super accurate reading of the alloy.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Okay, so not certain, but they're somewhere around ten percent
it's going to be.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Yeah, it's a ballpark figure. If you throw a dart,
that would be somewhere near the middle.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
And when you do it, you do like do it?
You do it like my eye? Or do you No?
Speaker 2 (15:22):
No, I have my recipes and I basically you use
copper wire, tin and lead and are vary depending what
the object is. Smith's I have a few secrets.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Yeah. Well I'm very excited to see what's in this
wrapped case here the hunt your dagger?
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Yeah, I suppose you've never actually seen it?
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Have you not seen it yet? Very excited?
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Do you want to open it?
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Wow? So the just pask made this wonderful sheath which
has a calf skin interior, and here's the blade. Wow.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
So that me hammering around. It's kind of lost now
you can barely see it, but it looks like a
day just hammering one step in the blade, just trying
to understand how it got thicker there and thinner there.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
That's beautiful. Do you know what The mix of tin and.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Copper was about twelve percent, so that that was pretty
hard going.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
Wow, it's very nicely in the handbay.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Yeah, I've done the podole in the sort of style
of the Hambleton down one. Yeah, very similar kind, which
is the amber and goldpins. So and if so this
kind of I'll tell you across Tory about bronzes. It
(17:01):
reacts beautiful with your fingerprints.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
So they'll all come on to it, will they.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Yeah, I'll teach how to remove that, but yeah, I
try the temptation not to touch it. Crumbs, Yeah, shiny thing.
That's why I wrap it all in paper and stuff
in the workshop. It's very hard to keep everything clean.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Yeah. So you think this was a native style rather
than the Central European style, because the actual information sheet
at hunt Shaw at hunt was an iron age hill
fort there near to the barrow where this was the bronze.
A's barrow where this is found, and the people behind
it wrote that it was based on the Central European type.
(17:43):
But I'm not sure that's true.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
No, I personally wouldn't agree with that, just by the
number of that type found here, and the few Central
European type buns are completely recognizable as not being British.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
What's the main difference between the Central European and the British.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
The decoration like this is pretty unique, it's not sort of,
it's not reminiscent of European finds. They also tend to
have a lot more on European finds, a lot more
decoration into the blade, the pecking and things and yeah,
the pecking, no no, no, these sigzags. They tend to
(18:27):
put sort of line work into the blade itself. There
are a few here that have line work. Pretty rare.
So I did it kind of fine but safe.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
So do you think if someone wants to use this
for because I heard read some people think they were
used for skinning and processing animals, not just for combat.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
But no, they're kingly status.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
If you were a kingly guy and you needed to
skin something, would you not make use of this rather
than having to use a upstone noise? I mean they wouldn't.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
These are these are super status. I always say that
blades go through four stages development. First, they're a functional
tool and people make it. Then people start making tools
that are far more beautiful than they need to be,
and they gradually become a piece of art. And when
(19:25):
that happens, swords become or metal work becomes status and
it shows who you are and your level of status.
And then the final sort of phase of blades and
stuff is this kind of spiritual realm that you see. Yeah,
I mean the common one is Luke Walker's Light Saber.
(19:47):
It's a spiritual sword men. It's copied from a kurous
Our film. But swords go into the spiritual realm, yes,
Excalibur and they might never existed, but they create that
spiritual realm. And that's I find an interesting that swords
have a birth, a life, and a death and how
(20:09):
they die it's not really understood.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
They killed sort of bents sometimes, weren't they before they
were to end the life of the sword.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Yeah, there's an incredible world of most if you go
to a museum in London, most of the blades are
found in the Thames, so there's no grades from that period.
So people are being cremated on the river bank and
then the worldly goods cast in. Some of their goods
must be kind of given us an offering because I
(20:39):
like the idea that rivers preserve the name of goddesses.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Yeah, I think that's definitely true in some cases.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Yeah, so the water offerings and giving swords to goddesses,
I just love it all. It's just fantastic.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
Well, I won't be giving this one tore anytime, suitings.
I don't want to keep it for a bit. Yeah,
it's lovely. Well, how what sort of force would be
required to bend a blade like that? Like if I
if I want to try and drive it through someone's
an armored man he was wearing like a bronze age
armor of some kind, thick leather or something. Would that
(21:17):
likely to break the blade?
Speaker 2 (21:19):
The blade's very tough. Years back, another student I did
a project with. We wanted to a project on breakages
of bronze. So when we met up, I gave him
a hammer and a pile of miscasts and I said,
and break them up. And he came back at hour
later and he went, that was surprisingly hard. And I said, yeah,
(21:42):
bronze doesn't yield that easy. The myth of the sword
snapping in combat, it's nonsense. So he did his PhD,
wrote beautiful PhD, absolutely amazing, and he's now curator at Edinburgh.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
It's got Matt Knight at the Museum of Scotland.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
Museum of Scotland and with their research and a combination
of my metalworking skills and his kind of view of
what needed to be explored, and that created a mind
blowing paper. And he's got a couple of films on
(22:20):
YouTube and it just shows that Bonds was broken in
special ways. It wasn't just case of smashing it up
to make a scrap hoard. Sometimes things had to be
broken in a way that everybody approved of. So it
was like a community coming together. The objects were taken
and they were broken in a way that fulfilled all
(22:43):
the important steps of breakage before depositing. And as mind blow.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Yeah, yeah, it's definitely ritual all the way from the
creation construction. What about maintaining such a blade because I'm
not used to bronze compared to steal it. Can you
sharpen it the same way you would to steal blade?
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Yes, you have to use fine stones. And there were
wet stones because I had a guy in America who
was doing videos with my swords and they never seemed
to blunt, and he was being really brutal to them.
I said, how do you keep the edges up? And
he said I sometimes he used the steel and then
(23:28):
if they need sharpening a bit more, because he said
the edges distought slightly. He was drawing the edge back
with a steel and then just a fine bit of wetstoning,
and it just kept them so sharp he could shave
his arm with them. Because I don't do test cards
(23:49):
and I know nothing about sword fighting, I know enough
to know when somebody's making it up and telling a
load of porkies. But occasionally you see you meet people
who are really skilled in an understanding in the way
swords were used, and they'll find them quite interesting. Have
a friend and he explained why the swords were so light,
(24:13):
because you see bronze A swords, they're very light. Most
of them fall somewhere between that six hundred and eight
hundred gram weight. You do get bigger ones and they
do reach a kilo, but they're comparatively rare, but most
of them a fairly light. So if the sword is light,
(24:34):
the fighting style is very athletic. It's not case. It's
not like Viking reapman, where you keep banging their opponent shield.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
So the choreography in Troy where they're jumping around and stuff.
Isn't that far off the mark Ben.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
I reckon, It's pretty close. And there's also that tiny
little carved stone and it shows two warriors doing really athletic.
It's an agate, isn't it. It's called the I forgot that.
The combat aga is what they call it. And it
(25:09):
shows two warriors fighting with muss and air and swords
and they are and no, it's much earlier types, more
type g's, and more rudimentary, and the portrayal is like
in Troy and yeah, yeah, so super athletes that probably
(25:37):
trained and kept themselves in peak condition. So I think, yeah,
that part of Troy I think is right. And the
dynamical so the fighting was right, I mean they are.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Why would people voluntarily move away from such a like
an effective lightweight metal to iron. It must be just
because it's cheaper to source and produce, or do you
think there are a technical benefits to iron and steel? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (26:03):
I think the earliest iron swords are slightly longer than
bronze swords. I think it's the same as the sea
people's were turning up menacing the Egyptians with long copper swords.
I think every technology takes a while to embrace the
(26:24):
new material, so I'm not I'm not absolutely sure. The
only thing about bronze is it probably had quite a
complex supply chain and the people who controlled it probably
did very nicely out of it. And iron is far
more readily available. So once you've got the technology to
(26:45):
recover iron, obviously it's easier. But you only get iron
in the richest graves first, like Tutin Carmun, the house
that Kingly graves near the salt Mine Kings, Celtic kings,
and iron turns up. And there is one super early
(27:05):
iron sword in National Museums Wales and it's a iron
Mindelhme sword and it most probably came from Housta, so
it's definitely the oldest iron sword in the country. But
it comes from a cauldron and wash people gonna hate me,
know because I can't say the name in Welsh, but
(27:27):
I think it's called the Linn Fower Horde, and it's
a cauldron and in the cauldron are sickles and spears,
some made in bronze, and the mirror image made in iron.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
That's very interesting, some kind of other worldly quality to
one of the metals.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Yeah, one represents one portal and the other one the other.
The mirror image fascinating.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
I hadn't heard of that. And then on the subject
of like the other world and what you're talking about
the life of the Blade as well, I want to
come back to the hunt or blade. The This was
in a barrow, as many weapons had been deposited in
barrows since the step the days of the Protender Europeans.
(28:14):
But so these ones that are buried with a dead
man are not usually killed like the ones that are given.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
That's later, So this is early. So to take that
with you in your grave, I mean that's I mean,
it makes throwing rolls, royces and swim pools look really boring.
You just say that it's a cliche. But to be
buried with your fabulous bronze dagger, I mean that is
(28:43):
the pinnacle of metalworking and that super super prestigious.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
That was pretty much the largest metal item you could
have at.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
That point, only for the chosen few. So they're obviously.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
Not just a normal local farmer in that grave.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
Then, no kingly graves, so they must have some kind
of afterlife. Yeah, it must have. Yeah, they must have
felt the dagger would go in use in the next life.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Would you like to be buried with one of your blades?
And if so, which one?
Speaker 2 (29:16):
No believe it or not?
Speaker 1 (29:18):
No? I would you wouldn't? You would rather they are
accessible for other people.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Yeah, my own spiritual beliefs. Stone, encompass, swords.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
You don't need it. You won't be needing it where
you're going.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
No, I think the gods will let me in just
by the s.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Yeah. Well, blacksmiths have such important places in mythology as well.
That was ordsmiths and things like Whyland and people like that.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Yeah, imagine because people have this vision of Itineran swordsmiths,
and I think it comes from early writing and Aquarian
writing saying that they used to cripple the I think
they seen blacksmiths in Indian villages crippled. I don't know
if it's soup like Whyland or Violin is crippled.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
He's crippled by his king forcing him to make things.
And I think the in the Middle East, the Egyptian
or like some of the Middle Eastern blacksmith gods, was
a cripple as well. So there's this idea that there
was an ancient association with the early smithing with being disabled,
and then people tried to explain it is maybe they
were breathing in so much lead that it caused disabilities,
(30:30):
and then people associated black.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
I think it's just repetitive straining that sounds mord or
maybe accident cutting yourself or something.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
Yeah, Well, because my own personal view of bronze smithing,
especially towards the late Bronze Age, it's state sanctioned weaponry,
so you have a huge skilled team of craftsmen working together.
So the bigger the kingdom, the bigger the craftsman. Honestly
(31:01):
don't have I think it's an itinerant sword maker wandering
of the land. As a romantic as it sounds, I guess.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
That couldn't happen until iron like locally, locally you could
source local metal. There's no way you could have someone
like that because the Bronze the portrayed of the components
to make bronze with such a like elite, elite dominated activity.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
Yeah, warfare is a state dominated activity, so you have
to create the supply the craftsmen. I mean, the Egyptians
are a good sort parallel view. They had huge collectives
of craftsmen working on after sort of life stuff for
the Pharaoh. It become quite a burden towards the end
(31:43):
of the sort of Egyptian sort of glory time that
he had like five hundred craftsmen. The support and everything
was starting to get a bit expensive. But yeah, I
think it's very skilled teams and you get you get
that beautiful snapshot of molds, crucibles, metal spillings in Daynton
(32:04):
in Devon, which was probably the most complete smith collection
that you could find, because you just don't find it
if you go to crucibles. I think there's something like
somewhere around seventeen to twenty something possible crucibles from the
(32:24):
Bronze Age. Well, it must have melted sort of five
or six tons of bronze in the whole of the
British Bronze Age if you look at what's dug out
of a great ormond things. So where are all the crucibles?
They obviously had a way of making things that reused
all the parts. Clay molds are still not prolific, so
(32:48):
they must have reused a lot of stuff crushed it
up as grog for the next set of molds. So
there's no easy picture of of metalworking in the Late
Bronze Age, except crucible finds, mold finds.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
The stone crucibles are quite rare as well, are they
or less rare than the clay ones.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
You don't get stone crucibles here as far as I know.
The stone mold, yeah, stone molds, Yeah, there tends to
be a much earlier period of that early Bronze Age stuff,
because I think the first clay mold is getting towards them.
Beginning of the Middle Bronze Age takes time, which is
really strange. So you would have thought that if rapiers
(33:33):
were all cast in stone molds, and there's eleven hundred
of them, I think there's only about four or five
or six that are actually look like they came from
the same mild. The rest are all random.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
And I wanted to ask it about your your life
here in the West Country, in the home of tin.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
We've already looked at the beautiful tin stone, beautiful tin.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
Stone that was put the cornwall parts of Devon on
the global map at the time, where so we know
now that people all the way in Levant and Egypt
places like that were using tin to make bronze that
came from this part of the world. So does it
have you think a spiritual significance for you, as a
a bronze sword maker to live in the area where
(34:19):
the ground, the ground sources the actual material with so
many bronze blades around the bronze as world were made for.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
The answer is, bizarrely yes, I do. I think it's
the chances for me living somewhere and doing what I do,
and then I'm never far from tin or Copper. It's extraordinary.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
I mean, it was never a choice to move to Cornwall.
It was always a choice to do what I loved.
But Cornwall was just something that happened. Moved here about
twenty five years ago and it was just a chance thing.
A holiday in Cornwall. Yeah, so.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
British people come to Cornwall for their holidays a lot.
It's like the Florida of the British isles in the sense.
But it has a sort of magical quality and I
wonder if it's something to do with the tinge in
the ground or I.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
Think no, I think that's definitely down to some guiding
light in the That's why I kind of make comments
on my Facebook posts about yeah, the God's favor of
me and things like that. I don't actually believe in God,
but you believe in there are forces and there are
things that you feel have guided people in their beliefs
(35:35):
and structures in their lives. So yeah, so there with
God's will that I be here.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
Yeah it's fake.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
Yeah, they're also I've just been so incredibly lucky because
when I started doing this, there was no one actually
doing it for a living. You get the occasional archaeologists
who cast three or four things write a whole PhD
on it, but that was it. There wasn't a lot
(36:05):
going and then I just fell into it as an
interest and developed it. So I feel the gods have
guarded my life and blessed my work and the knowledge
that I've learned because I had no classic training in
(36:26):
bronze casting, so I didn't really know how to do it.
So I've been just completely focused on bronze matworking.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
Would you like to have an apprentice to pass on
some of your skills.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
I've got my son, and for years I kept him
away from being a struggling craftsman, but he actually gets
a lot of enjoyment out of it, and he gets
why I do my craft and he helps me. Over
the last year or so, it's been quite difficult for
me with that major health problem, and he's come in
(37:01):
to help me, and it struck me that he's so
relaxed with it. For me, bronze casting is kind of
stressful because it's like going into the realm of the
gods yea, where to him, he's far more relaxed over.
It doesn't get all tense and he's he's probably done
about ten castings now and he's never spilled a drop.
(37:23):
He doesn't get tense, and he just watches me and
he just does it, and I think, wow, that's impressive.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
Some Burrid's blades continue with him in the future.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
Yeah, when it comes back from Australia, it is keen
to get stuck in again. I've got a sword there.
I can show you if you want to, a.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
Short of it, and I'll cut to it now and
after short of it.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
Thank you very much Neil for producing so many wonderful
blades for the world and continuing this ancient the skills
art form so then everyone can learn more about the
past through these beautiful items.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
Yeah. I mean it's a life journey and I've been
very lucky to be guided and do what I do,
and turn of events recently means I'm still here for
a long while.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
Very glad that you recovered from your illness.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
Yeah. Yeah, so it's going to take another couple of years.
So I'm working at it, and it has given me
that sort of light at the end of the tunnel
to aim for because I love what I do and
I find it just so fascinating.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
Yeah, wonderful, wonderful to be to work creating things.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
Oh crumbs. Yeah, yeah, it's a life journey.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
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M hmm. Today I'm in Cornwall visiting a man who
is quite possibly the greatest Bronze Age swordsmith in the
(00:20):
whole world. M Oh yeah, crazy.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Okay, that turned off in a second, but it's just on.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
It's cooled down.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
So that's early bonzo.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Lovely little is that is that copper? Bronze?
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Bronze copper doesn't do this.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
It doesn't make a thing. Oh lovely really example of
the sword. So you're saying, how did you in the
nineties you cast your first ever bronze sword. Why did
you decide to start working with bronze?
Speaker 2 (01:11):
It started as off as a hobby and then I
did the residential course with Peter Reynolds abuts Rangient Farm. Yeah,
and it just started started as a kind of an interest,
and it developed and developed, and then one day Peter
said you're good at this, Neil. He said, why don't
(01:31):
you come here and play? And that's what started it
for me. We just started experimenting because I had nobody
to teach me, and there was no internet in nineteen
ninety three, so you could go online and watch somebody
do it. And I saw that Iceman program and the
guy tries to cast a copper axe and makes her
(01:54):
out or a hash of it, let's see. Yeah, And
I thought, wow, that's really interest resting, and I followed
it through and I taught myself by hook or by crook,
because it's not really books on teaching you how to
do prehistoric metalwork, and you have to kind of make
sort of a thousand mistakes to be worldly wise.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Most of them it is European Bronze Age swords are
going to be Mediterranean and Central European. That how soon
is it that you started making and looking at British
Bronze Age weapons.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
I'm trying to think back. The years have passed. Yes,
it's that's a good question. You're stretching my memory right back.
Originally a lawyer who worked pretended to be a druid
at the weekend at Butts Ancient Farm. He said, can
(02:53):
you make me a bronze sword so I can do
ceremony with it? And I thought, I never made one
of those. Let's have a crack. So I engineered my
humble casting technology to make this sword. And it really
struck me the cudos in it that everybody's got. Oh
my god, there's a bronze's sword, and I thought, oh,
(03:17):
it's my leged this and he's one of those little
things that sort of created my future and interest and
I've actually built it up. So I keep one sword here,
hidden in the cupboard somewhere, just to remind me that
I used to make rubbish. And I was.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Now, how far you've come since? An?
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Yeah? Yeah, because one thing Peter Reynolds taught me was
always be humble about what you know and what you do,
and don't get big headed. He took me down a
couple of times beautifully in front of a crowd.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
People not familiar maybe with the differences. I just wanted
to because you've done some Mycenean swords and like you've
done British ords. What's the main difference. How would someone
identify like a British type of Bronze age sort of
dagger or sword from a from a contemporary Mediterranean one
(04:16):
like from Myceni or something.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
That's a big question. There's no is the answer. Every
every step in sort of metalworking in this early time,
they all seem to follow the same road. It might
be in a different place, but they they all gradually
work towards you know, basically it starts off as knives
become daggers, Daggers become dirks, dirks become rapiers, and rapiers
(04:42):
finally become sword and then the last major important step
is the addition of the handle on the end of
the casting. Yes, so the technology develops, but obviously in
the Mid Mediterranean it starts so much earlier, So it
starts with copper metallurgy, and that gradually spreads across Europe.
(05:06):
And it really is gradually. I think it's six hundred
years between the Iceman's ax and the aims pree archer.
It's something that staggering, so that my personal feeling is
what becomes a weapons technology is not shared and it's
only when people move with the technology, they leap frog
(05:28):
across Europe and arrive here and bring it on their backs.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
So a lot of British bronze stuff I've seen in
older literature as well, like looking at the hunts or barrow,
the people talk about, oh this is that this is
from They attribute like a spearhead type to a tang
type from the Mediterranean, and they attribute the blade to
probably a Central European influence. Do you think it's that's
(05:54):
likely that it's like developed these are techniques of metalworking
that have been imported for elsewhere in Europe, or that
they were native developments that just happened to follow a
similar pattern.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
I think it all follows a similar pattern. That there's trade,
there's people come in to Cornwall and trading. There's no
doubt that Cornish tin was traveling down into the Mediterranean,
and more recent researcher is kind of making that look
the most definitely possible scenario. So ideas and people travel
(06:32):
and people would see things, and they would come back
and they say to the smith, I won't believe what
I've seen. I've seen this rapier but it had a
handle on the end, and the smith goes, oh, that
doesn't make any sense, and then people start experimenting. So
there's obviously influences from outside, but it's not in this country.
(06:56):
There's a sword that was cast in the Rhythm River
with them up in Lancashire, Lincolnshire, and it's probably one
of the earliest swords to have a fully tanged handle
on a blade on a leaf blade, and everybody must
have seen it and thought that is the future of
(07:17):
the sword and copied it. So what was sort of
more indigenous type of blades suddenly starts springing handles. They
go from what's called the Balanoba sword. It was the
leaf sword, but it gains a handle.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Is this called a leaf sword? This one, this British
one you've made.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Yeah, this one is very classic, so it's not.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
In the middle of it.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Yeah, we always can go like that. So this is
more a sort of classic York Park. There's bigger ones later,
but when they first develop there, it's the leaf sword,
and it's the way they're made, I think, is what
changes the handles because the blades are similar, because I've
(08:03):
said it before that if you went around a hack sword,
all the handles off all the swords in the museums
and then laid them out on the floor, all the
blades will look similar. But the handles is just what
causes the identification of the sword. So something changes, and
what you find is earlier swords are cast through the
(08:24):
tip like this, So if they add a handle on
the casting and they've got to keep it very delica
otherwise the mass of the handle will cause casting problems
in the blade. So later on somebody goes, well, why
are we casting it through the tip? Why don't we
cast it through the hill, because then it's the shortest
(08:45):
distance to the thickest point of the blade and we
get a better sword. And once that happens, you get
this transition sort of Wilburton type swords cast through their
tip to you park swords cast through the hill.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
What sort of period are we talking about for this
transition to.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
It's summer around one thousand and nine hundred and eight
hundred BC. Everybody keeps moving the goldposts every few years.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
So I know that they've talked in a recent paper
about they're pushing back the lightly date of these like
Dirk style large daggers in the West Country of England
and like showing that metalworking was probably earlier. What's that
period of like pre sword use of dirks or large daggers,
Bronze daggers.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Is basically Middle Bronze Age.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Years ago.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Yeah, so they're basically stretching the dagger longer and longer
and longer, and then they classify them as dirks, and
then they go even longer to long skinny blades and
call them rapiers. And that's the time of the Bronze
shield as well. And it's also the time of bigger spears.
They develop in some huge spears in that period, and
(09:58):
then there's a transition and where they go to sort
of more hill cast swords. Spears start to get smaller,
and yeah, there's a there's a tipping point and the
sword becomes a primary weapon rather than being the spear
being the primary weapon.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
I remember people used to think that that some of
the bronze blades had to be ceremonial because they would
definitely just bend if they were used in any combat.
That went. That's gone out of fashion now right, People
don't think that anymore.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Yeah, thanks to young student who did. I helped him
do some of the swords for his tests, and but
he originally did one on with a rapier and he
went into on his PhD. He went in and basically
did test cuts on dead pigs in an abati and
(10:53):
he wrote his paper and he basically said they were
lethal weapons of combat. Yeah, and I thought, yeah, he's right.
Why would they go through so much industrial manufacturing on
the blade? They were just for show. They just cast
it and polish it and everyone would go around go
and shiny. But they do a huge level of really
(11:15):
complex forging on these.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Swords that stops and bending.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
It stops and bending makes the edges super hard and
huge investment at time. They're super complex, and you think, wow, and.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Do you do that when you when you're in your blades.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Some of my work I do well, especially with a
blade you're gonna get today. That was me exploring how
they put the lines in parallel to the edge of
the blade. But then they forge a step or two
steps along the edge of the blade, and they're widened
the blade towards they're hilled, so the line gets further
(11:53):
and further away from the by hanmering it. Yeah, it's
all forged, and it may have even been done with
stone tools. I'm not absolutely sure.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
That a bone, I suppose or no, a bone.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Won't touch bronze.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
Not hard enough.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
No, it's got to be hard material. I mean, it
took me a while to kind of make a scrape on.
So it's one of those things where you make one
and it's okay, and you make ten you start to understand.
By the time you make fifty you're a master and
you think, yeah, I know how this works.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
How many bronze blades have you made in your life?
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Do you know I think it must be getting towards
three hundred.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Yeah, that's quite quite profounders.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
You may have made more bronze blades than anyone alive.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
But since the Bronze Age. Yeah, and I cast them
one at a time, so I'm not like an industrial
foundry where I melt twenty kilos and I have twelve
molds running along the workshop floor and they basically suspend
the crucible poor than one at a time from the
same crucible. You're all minor cast one at a time
(13:00):
and go custs. So I might do a run if
I'm running molds and reheat every time and reload the
mold and reload the the clay molds like I use
stone molds. So I've been doing that for ages.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Because I've seen it in some clay molds in museums.
They did do that sometimes, right, Yeah, those would only
have one or two uses or something.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
One or two uses, and they take quite a lot
of time. You've got to make the impressions two impressions,
a bit like taking a simplify it down. If you
took a sausage and you get two slices of buttered
bread and you put it around the sausage, take a
print at the sausage, peel the bread apart, leave the
(13:46):
print in, but take the sausage out. That's what the
mold's like. So you take an impression of the blade
from both sides, and then you've got to carefully dry
it so it doesn't distort. And then once it's dried,
you can put the two halves back together again like
an east d egg, and then you could put a
clay wrap around the outside bit like putting the foil
(14:08):
on an east drigg, and then you can fire it,
so you'd offer your mold up heart and pour the
bronze in when it fired out.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
And what's what's the copper tin mix about?
Speaker 2 (14:22):
It depends where you go. If you spin your or
throw a dart in the Mediterranean, it could be anything
up to twelve percent with a g and swords. Yeah,
and if you go Britain, it's usually somewhere around ten
percent with two percent lead and the rest copper.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Use less tin at the source of the tin.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
No, it varies, it's not that that's the middle. So
some sorces you will get lower down and some sorts
you'll get higher up. And also one larte thing is,
the analysis of crowded objects is quite difficult. So unless
the drilling holes in it the dreaded bronze, it's very
hard to get a super accurate reading of the alloy.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Okay, so not certain, but they're somewhere around ten percent
it's going to be.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Yeah, it's a ballpark figure. If you throw a dart,
that would be somewhere near the middle.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
And when you do it, you do like do it?
You do it like my eye? Or do you No?
Speaker 2 (15:22):
No, I have my recipes and I basically you use
copper wire, tin and lead and are vary depending what
the object is. Smith's I have a few secrets.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Yeah. Well I'm very excited to see what's in this
wrapped case here the hunt your dagger?
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Yeah, I suppose you've never actually seen it?
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Have you not seen it yet? Very excited?
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Do you want to open it?
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Wow? So the just pask made this wonderful sheath which
has a calf skin interior, and here's the blade. Wow.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
So that me hammering around. It's kind of lost now
you can barely see it, but it looks like a
day just hammering one step in the blade, just trying
to understand how it got thicker there and thinner there.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
That's beautiful. Do you know what The mix of tin and.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Copper was about twelve percent, so that that was pretty
hard going.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
Wow, it's very nicely in the handbay.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Yeah, I've done the podole in the sort of style
of the Hambleton down one. Yeah, very similar kind, which
is the amber and goldpins. So and if so this
kind of I'll tell you across Tory about bronzes. It
(17:01):
reacts beautiful with your fingerprints.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
So they'll all come on to it, will they.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Yeah, I'll teach how to remove that, but yeah, I
try the temptation not to touch it. Crumbs, Yeah, shiny thing.
That's why I wrap it all in paper and stuff
in the workshop. It's very hard to keep everything clean.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Yeah. So you think this was a native style rather
than the Central European style, because the actual information sheet
at hunt Shaw at hunt was an iron age hill
fort there near to the barrow where this was the bronze.
A's barrow where this is found, and the people behind
it wrote that it was based on the Central European type.
(17:43):
But I'm not sure that's true.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
No, I personally wouldn't agree with that, just by the
number of that type found here, and the few Central
European type buns are completely recognizable as not being British.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
What's the main difference between the Central European and the British.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
The decoration like this is pretty unique, it's not sort of,
it's not reminiscent of European finds. They also tend to
have a lot more on European finds, a lot more
decoration into the blade, the pecking and things and yeah,
the pecking, no no, no, these sigzags. They tend to
(18:27):
put sort of line work into the blade itself. There
are a few here that have line work. Pretty rare.
So I did it kind of fine but safe.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
So do you think if someone wants to use this
for because I heard read some people think they were
used for skinning and processing animals, not just for combat.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
But no, they're kingly status.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
If you were a kingly guy and you needed to
skin something, would you not make use of this rather
than having to use a upstone noise? I mean they wouldn't.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
These are these are super status. I always say that
blades go through four stages development. First, they're a functional
tool and people make it. Then people start making tools
that are far more beautiful than they need to be,
and they gradually become a piece of art. And when
(19:25):
that happens, swords become or metal work becomes status and
it shows who you are and your level of status.
And then the final sort of phase of blades and
stuff is this kind of spiritual realm that you see. Yeah,
I mean the common one is Luke Walker's Light Saber.
(19:47):
It's a spiritual sword men. It's copied from a kurous
Our film. But swords go into the spiritual realm, yes,
Excalibur and they might never existed, but they create that
spiritual realm. And that's I find an interesting that swords
have a birth, a life, and a death and how
(20:09):
they die it's not really understood.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
They killed sort of bents sometimes, weren't they before they
were to end the life of the sword.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Yeah, there's an incredible world of most if you go
to a museum in London, most of the blades are
found in the Thames, so there's no grades from that period.
So people are being cremated on the river bank and
then the worldly goods cast in. Some of their goods
must be kind of given us an offering because I
(20:39):
like the idea that rivers preserve the name of goddesses.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Yeah, I think that's definitely true in some cases.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Yeah, so the water offerings and giving swords to goddesses,
I just love it all. It's just fantastic.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
Well, I won't be giving this one tore anytime, suitings.
I don't want to keep it for a bit. Yeah,
it's lovely. Well, how what sort of force would be
required to bend a blade like that? Like if I
if I want to try and drive it through someone's
an armored man he was wearing like a bronze age
armor of some kind, thick leather or something. Would that
(21:17):
likely to break the blade?
Speaker 2 (21:19):
The blade's very tough. Years back, another student I did
a project with. We wanted to a project on breakages
of bronze. So when we met up, I gave him
a hammer and a pile of miscasts and I said,
and break them up. And he came back at hour
later and he went, that was surprisingly hard. And I said, yeah,
(21:42):
bronze doesn't yield that easy. The myth of the sword
snapping in combat, it's nonsense. So he did his PhD,
wrote beautiful PhD, absolutely amazing, and he's now curator at Edinburgh.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
It's got Matt Knight at the Museum of Scotland.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
Museum of Scotland and with their research and a combination
of my metalworking skills and his kind of view of
what needed to be explored, and that created a mind
blowing paper. And he's got a couple of films on
(22:20):
YouTube and it just shows that Bonds was broken in
special ways. It wasn't just case of smashing it up
to make a scrap hoard. Sometimes things had to be
broken in a way that everybody approved of. So it
was like a community coming together. The objects were taken
and they were broken in a way that fulfilled all
(22:43):
the important steps of breakage before depositing. And as mind blow.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Yeah, yeah, it's definitely ritual all the way from the
creation construction. What about maintaining such a blade because I'm
not used to bronze compared to steal it. Can you
sharpen it the same way you would to steal blade?
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Yes, you have to use fine stones. And there were
wet stones because I had a guy in America who
was doing videos with my swords and they never seemed
to blunt, and he was being really brutal to them.
I said, how do you keep the edges up? And
he said I sometimes he used the steel and then
(23:28):
if they need sharpening a bit more, because he said
the edges distought slightly. He was drawing the edge back
with a steel and then just a fine bit of wetstoning,
and it just kept them so sharp he could shave
his arm with them. Because I don't do test cards
(23:49):
and I know nothing about sword fighting, I know enough
to know when somebody's making it up and telling a
load of porkies. But occasionally you see you meet people
who are really skilled in an understanding in the way
swords were used, and they'll find them quite interesting. Have
a friend and he explained why the swords were so light,
(24:13):
because you see bronze A swords, they're very light. Most
of them fall somewhere between that six hundred and eight
hundred gram weight. You do get bigger ones and they
do reach a kilo, but they're comparatively rare, but most
of them a fairly light. So if the sword is light,
(24:34):
the fighting style is very athletic. It's not case. It's
not like Viking reapman, where you keep banging their opponent shield.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
So the choreography in Troy where they're jumping around and stuff.
Isn't that far off the mark Ben.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
I reckon, It's pretty close. And there's also that tiny
little carved stone and it shows two warriors doing really athletic.
It's an agate, isn't it. It's called the I forgot that.
The combat aga is what they call it. And it
(25:09):
shows two warriors fighting with muss and air and swords
and they are and no, it's much earlier types, more
type g's, and more rudimentary, and the portrayal is like
in Troy and yeah, yeah, so super athletes that probably
(25:37):
trained and kept themselves in peak condition. So I think, yeah,
that part of Troy I think is right. And the
dynamical so the fighting was right, I mean they are.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Why would people voluntarily move away from such a like
an effective lightweight metal to iron. It must be just
because it's cheaper to source and produce, or do you
think there are a technical benefits to iron and steel? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (26:03):
I think the earliest iron swords are slightly longer than
bronze swords. I think it's the same as the sea
people's were turning up menacing the Egyptians with long copper swords.
I think every technology takes a while to embrace the
(26:24):
new material, so I'm not I'm not absolutely sure. The
only thing about bronze is it probably had quite a
complex supply chain and the people who controlled it probably
did very nicely out of it. And iron is far
more readily available. So once you've got the technology to
(26:45):
recover iron, obviously it's easier. But you only get iron
in the richest graves first, like Tutin Carmun, the house
that Kingly graves near the salt Mine Kings, Celtic kings,
and iron turns up. And there is one super early
(27:05):
iron sword in National Museums Wales and it's a iron
Mindelhme sword and it most probably came from Housta, so
it's definitely the oldest iron sword in the country. But
it comes from a cauldron and wash people gonna hate me,
know because I can't say the name in Welsh, but
(27:27):
I think it's called the Linn Fower Horde, and it's
a cauldron and in the cauldron are sickles and spears,
some made in bronze, and the mirror image made in iron.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
That's very interesting, some kind of other worldly quality to
one of the metals.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Yeah, one represents one portal and the other one the other.
The mirror image fascinating.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
I hadn't heard of that. And then on the subject
of like the other world and what you're talking about
the life of the Blade as well, I want to
come back to the hunt or blade. The This was
in a barrow, as many weapons had been deposited in
barrows since the step the days of the Protender Europeans.
(28:14):
But so these ones that are buried with a dead
man are not usually killed like the ones that are given.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
That's later, So this is early. So to take that
with you in your grave, I mean that's I mean,
it makes throwing rolls, royces and swim pools look really boring.
You just say that it's a cliche. But to be
buried with your fabulous bronze dagger, I mean that is
(28:43):
the pinnacle of metalworking and that super super prestigious.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
That was pretty much the largest metal item you could
have at.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
That point, only for the chosen few. So they're obviously.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
Not just a normal local farmer in that grave.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
Then, no kingly graves, so they must have some kind
of afterlife. Yeah, it must have. Yeah, they must have
felt the dagger would go in use in the next life.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Would you like to be buried with one of your blades?
And if so, which one?
Speaker 2 (29:16):
No believe it or not?
Speaker 1 (29:18):
No? I would you wouldn't? You would rather they are
accessible for other people.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Yeah, my own spiritual beliefs. Stone, encompass, swords.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
You don't need it. You won't be needing it where
you're going.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
No, I think the gods will let me in just
by the s.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Yeah. Well, blacksmiths have such important places in mythology as well.
That was ordsmiths and things like Whyland and people like that.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Yeah, imagine because people have this vision of Itineran swordsmiths,
and I think it comes from early writing and Aquarian
writing saying that they used to cripple the I think
they seen blacksmiths in Indian villages crippled. I don't know
if it's soup like Whyland or Violin is crippled.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
He's crippled by his king forcing him to make things.
And I think the in the Middle East, the Egyptian
or like some of the Middle Eastern blacksmith gods, was
a cripple as well. So there's this idea that there
was an ancient association with the early smithing with being disabled,
and then people tried to explain it is maybe they
were breathing in so much lead that it caused disabilities,
(30:30):
and then people associated black.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
I think it's just repetitive straining that sounds mord or
maybe accident cutting yourself or something.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
Yeah, Well, because my own personal view of bronze smithing,
especially towards the late Bronze Age, it's state sanctioned weaponry,
so you have a huge skilled team of craftsmen working together.
So the bigger the kingdom, the bigger the craftsman. Honestly
(31:01):
don't have I think it's an itinerant sword maker wandering
of the land. As a romantic as it sounds, I guess.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
That couldn't happen until iron like locally, locally you could
source local metal. There's no way you could have someone
like that because the Bronze the portrayed of the components
to make bronze with such a like elite, elite dominated activity.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
Yeah, warfare is a state dominated activity, so you have
to create the supply the craftsmen. I mean, the Egyptians
are a good sort parallel view. They had huge collectives
of craftsmen working on after sort of life stuff for
the Pharaoh. It become quite a burden towards the end
(31:43):
of the sort of Egyptian sort of glory time that
he had like five hundred craftsmen. The support and everything
was starting to get a bit expensive. But yeah, I
think it's very skilled teams and you get you get
that beautiful snapshot of molds, crucibles, metal spillings in Daynton
(32:04):
in Devon, which was probably the most complete smith collection
that you could find, because you just don't find it
if you go to crucibles. I think there's something like
somewhere around seventeen to twenty something possible crucibles from the
(32:24):
Bronze Age. Well, it must have melted sort of five
or six tons of bronze in the whole of the
British Bronze Age if you look at what's dug out
of a great ormond things. So where are all the crucibles?
They obviously had a way of making things that reused
all the parts. Clay molds are still not prolific, so
(32:48):
they must have reused a lot of stuff crushed it
up as grog for the next set of molds. So
there's no easy picture of of metalworking in the Late
Bronze Age, except crucible finds, mold finds.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
The stone crucibles are quite rare as well, are they
or less rare than the clay ones.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
You don't get stone crucibles here as far as I know.
The stone mold, yeah, stone molds, Yeah, there tends to
be a much earlier period of that early Bronze Age stuff,
because I think the first clay mold is getting towards them.
Beginning of the Middle Bronze Age takes time, which is
really strange. So you would have thought that if rapiers
(33:33):
were all cast in stone molds, and there's eleven hundred
of them, I think there's only about four or five
or six that are actually look like they came from
the same mild. The rest are all random.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
And I wanted to ask it about your your life
here in the West Country, in the home of tin.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
We've already looked at the beautiful tin stone, beautiful tin.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
Stone that was put the cornwall parts of Devon on
the global map at the time, where so we know
now that people all the way in Levant and Egypt
places like that were using tin to make bronze that
came from this part of the world. So does it
have you think a spiritual significance for you, as a
a bronze sword maker to live in the area where
(34:19):
the ground, the ground sources the actual material with so
many bronze blades around the bronze as world were made for.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
The answer is, bizarrely yes, I do. I think it's
the chances for me living somewhere and doing what I do,
and then I'm never far from tin or Copper. It's extraordinary.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
I mean, it was never a choice to move to Cornwall.
It was always a choice to do what I loved.
But Cornwall was just something that happened. Moved here about
twenty five years ago and it was just a chance thing.
A holiday in Cornwall. Yeah, so.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
British people come to Cornwall for their holidays a lot.
It's like the Florida of the British isles in the sense.
But it has a sort of magical quality and I
wonder if it's something to do with the tinge in
the ground or I.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
Think no, I think that's definitely down to some guiding
light in the That's why I kind of make comments
on my Facebook posts about yeah, the God's favor of
me and things like that. I don't actually believe in God,
but you believe in there are forces and there are
things that you feel have guided people in their beliefs
(35:35):
and structures in their lives. So yeah, so there with
God's will that I be here.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
Yeah it's fake.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
Yeah, they're also I've just been so incredibly lucky because
when I started doing this, there was no one actually
doing it for a living. You get the occasional archaeologists
who cast three or four things write a whole PhD
on it, but that was it. There wasn't a lot
(36:05):
going and then I just fell into it as an
interest and developed it. So I feel the gods have
guarded my life and blessed my work and the knowledge
that I've learned because I had no classic training in
(36:26):
bronze casting, so I didn't really know how to do it.
So I've been just completely focused on bronze matworking.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
Would you like to have an apprentice to pass on
some of your skills.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
I've got my son, and for years I kept him
away from being a struggling craftsman, but he actually gets
a lot of enjoyment out of it, and he gets
why I do my craft and he helps me. Over
the last year or so, it's been quite difficult for
me with that major health problem, and he's come in
(37:01):
to help me, and it struck me that he's so
relaxed with it. For me, bronze casting is kind of
stressful because it's like going into the realm of the
gods yea, where to him, he's far more relaxed over.
It doesn't get all tense and he's he's probably done
about ten castings now and he's never spilled a drop.
(37:23):
He doesn't get tense, and he just watches me and
he just does it, and I think, wow, that's impressive.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
Some Burrid's blades continue with him in the future.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
Yeah, when it comes back from Australia, it is keen
to get stuck in again. I've got a sword there.
I can show you if you want to, a.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
Short of it, and I'll cut to it now and
after short of it.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
Thank you very much Neil for producing so many wonderful
blades for the world and continuing this ancient the skills
art form so then everyone can learn more about the
past through these beautiful items.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
Yeah. I mean it's a life journey and I've been
very lucky to be guided and do what I do,
and turn of events recently means I'm still here for
a long while.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
Very glad that you recovered from your illness.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
Yeah. Yeah, so it's going to take another couple of years.
So I'm working at it, and it has given me
that sort of light at the end of the tunnel
to aim for because I love what I do and
I find it just so fascinating.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
Yeah, wonderful, wonderful to be to work creating things.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
Oh crumbs. Yeah, yeah, it's a life journey.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
Yeah. Are you interested in worshiping the gods of ancient
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