How I got started making swords is a funny story. I taught middle school science, and one time I assigned my students to research an element and bring in a sample of it as part of their presentation. The girl who was presenting about zinc forgot her sample at home, so I suggested that we could cut a penny in half and melt the zinc out of it with a Bunsen burner. The kids practically jumped out of their seats–“What!? You can do that??” That was my first clue that kids and melting metal were a thing. It so happened that down the hall the Ancient Civilizations teacher was teaching about the Greeks, and was way into the details of what armaments each class of soldier would use, how a phalanx worked, etc. Since I was a hobby blacksmith and knew how to make tools and work with hot metal, I thought it would be cool to show them how swords were cast during the Bronze Age.
Since aluminum has a lower melting temperature than bronze and is easier to come by, it was the logical choice for making swords. And it seemed like a good chance to demonstrate metal recycling, too–I had my students bring in old baseball bats and razr scooters, then we melted those down to make the first sword. The kids just ate it up, and of course everybody wanted the sword, but since there was no fair way to do it, I just gave it to the teacher to add to her weapons collection. There it stood for several years, me just bringing out my sword casting stuff once a year to show the Ancient Civ class. Finally it occurred to me that I needed to scale it up and pour a bunch of swords per class. That was several years—and nearly 1500 swords—ago.
After a while, I upped my game and learned to cast bronze as well, so I added a more advanced bronze casting class. That class covers an amazing amount of ground and is a bit of a marathon, but at the end, everyone leaves with a highly finished bronze sword.
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