Today, I found a SOLID BRONZE HEWING HATCHET

if you were wearing protection, you are fine.

the odds of it being beryllium and not marked clearly are very slim.

CuBe tools are pretty much always marked obviously, for the obvious reasons.
 
i will add tho, that grinding brass, bronze, copper, or any other non ferrous stuff is generally not the best idea for a couple reasons. its usually easy enough to manage with a file, especially with a vixen cut. that keeps the dust down and no need for breathing attire. you also have better control of the work being done.

also, nonferrous stuff cakes up in the stones, and can actually cause them to grenade.
 
I don't know anything of use. But from where I sit, a miner's tool makes the most sense. It could have been a custom/semi custom done for a carpenter who was doing mill work, which is pretty much same idea. Looks too ugly to be ceremonial, and I'd think that given how easy it is to engrave and stamp, it would be decorated if it was. it could easily be old-ish, and I would not even be surprised if someone had made it back behind their house. its not like it takes a massive foundry to do, and bronze casting was far more common not that long ago.
 
300Six said:
Good thinking! I'll buy into that theory, but brass head mallets for pounding steel chisels would be easier! Mine timbers would have been mud and rock dust dirty, not much of a user-friendly environment for bronze blades.
Click to expand...

I think you may have missed the point I was making about non-sparking tools. A steel chisel wouldn't be permitted in such an environment, no matter what it was struck with.
 
FortyTwoBlades said:
I think you may have missed the point I was making about non-sparking tools. A steel chisel wouldn't be permitted in such an environment, no matter what it was struck with.
Click to expand...

No I didn't miss the point. If you think about it, the lads chipping and chiseling the coal seams below ground, and installing cribs and timbers, wouldn't have been armed only with wood, brass and aluminum picks and shovels, nor using air-powered equipment that was made entirely of non-ferrous material. Even their carbide lamps produced light from a gas-produced flame! I know very little about coal mining and I can very much appreciate the danger of sparks and coal dust but production seemed to take precedence over safety for a very long time. Presumably proper ventilation and air filtering systems were very high on the list of desirable mine upgrades!
 
300Six said:
No I didn't miss the point. If you think about it, the lads chipping and chiseling the coal seams below ground, and installing cribs and timbers, wouldn't have been armed only with wood, brass and aluminum picks and shovels, nor using air-powered equipment that was made entirely of non-ferrous material. Even their carbide lamps produced light from a gas-produced flame! I know very little about coal mining and I can very much appreciate the danger of sparks and coal dust but production seemed to take precedence over safety for a very long time. Presumably proper ventilation and air filtering systems were very high on the list of desirable mine upgrades!
Click to expand...

No, I'm pretty sure you did miss it. An environment calling for non-sparking tools would not permit the use of steel chisels as they could still cause a spark. This is likewise the reason why grain scoops were commonly made of wood rather than steel. "Oh, but you're just shoveling grain! How could it spark on something so soft?" Well, there are other things in the environment with the potential to cause a spark off the tool. Drop it and it hits a rock or concrete, for instance. Not all environments in these professions have this kind of risk, but some do. And in those environments judged to have such a level of risk, all possible precautions are taken because of the catastrophic damage that can be caused by such an explosion. Even with such precautions in place, detonations still occur from time to time.
 
Test it with a powerful magnet. Copper-Beryllium is non-magnetic. Aluminum-Bronze typically has very low magnetism. You might pick up a little magnetism in AlBr. If you don't find magnetism it might still be AlBr. But if you do find any magnetism then you know it's not CuBe2.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top