For you students out there doing a report on the history of welding, let me first say this… I have generally found the earliest history of welding to be sort of boring. But I keep in mind back to high school when my ears perked up in history class at the first mention of longbows. So I will attempt to make this intriguing by talking about swords and airplanes. This is truly a lot more like the history of metallurgy.

I will save the history of welding for Part 2. Let’s get the boring stuff out of the way 1st. None of these dates are difficult facts and I’m likely going to omit some important terms like “Paleolithic” but that’s how we roll up in here.

So here goes.

From the incredibly beginning of mankind, up until about 8000 BC was recognized as the Stone Age. Up until about 8000 BC, stone was employed to make cutting tools and spear heads and things like that. Despite the fact that copper was discovered during the Stone Age, it was too soft to use for tools and weapons.

CLICK HERE for over 1100 pages, charts and diagrams that explain everything you need to know about how to weld and the history of welding.

Around 3500 BC, someone discovered that adding tin to copper produced a significantly harder metal than pure copper and that began what exactly is known as the Bronze Age. Bronze swords and knifes had been used until around 1500 BC when the method of refining iron ore into useable iron was discovered.

Then began the Iron Age.

So this timeline gives a basic view of what makes up the Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age. Boring right? Well think about this… not each country, tribe, or race discovered iron at the identical time.

Let’s say you’re living within the city of Troy. You might be a foot soldier and you might have the latest and greatest bronze sword at your side. You believe you might be high tech. Your shield is also made out of bronze and easily stops the strongest of blows from other bronze swords.

You are getting ready for battle when you get a report from a scout that the neighboring Trojans have developed a magic metal sword which will cut your sword in half and that will penetrate your shield. You shrug it off as war propaganda but that small tidbit of facts lingers inside the back of your mind. It’s time to go to war now. Your adrenaline is pumping, war cries are heard, horns are blown and you rush the enemy.

You anticipate certain victory but if you start tripping over your own soldiers and notice they’re holding shiny bronze swords that have been cut in half, you bear in mind the story about the magic metal.

Oh snap! It is a poor day for the guys with the bronze swords when they go into battle against iron swords. I hope things are becoming a bit less boring…

CLICK HERE for over 1100 pages, charts and diagrams that explain everything you need to know about how to weld and the history of welding.

Now quickly forward to 2009. A fighter pilot flying an F 22 raptor is about to engage in a dogfight. He knows you’ll find limits to just how much throttle he can give to out maneuver his enemy. An excessive amount of throttle under the wrong conditions will overstep the turbine blades and make them soft and unstable and perhaps even blow up the motor.

And what if his enemy is flying a fighter jet that uses a new alloy that would allow for a boost of various hundred degrees before they reached overheats condition? He could put the hammer down without worrying about overheating. Would that give a pilot a distinct advantage? It might be just like a bronze sword against an iron sword. The more issues alter the extra they remain the same.