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Originally Posted by kronckew
the last half of 19c india had railroads, maintenance shops for the RR would have had the tools and machinery to service the locomotives, including lathes, milling machines, casting equipment etc. and trained local labour to use them. the first railroad was in 1853, by 1895 they were making their own rr locomotives and cars, and exporting them to the brits in africa.
even today the craftsmen of northern pakistan make precise working copies of modern (and older) firearms arms requiring precision components, as well as the ammunition to feed them, using quite primitive equipment. i wouldn't want to fire one myself, not trusting their heat treating skills that much, but their use against our own troops seems to indicate they work satisfactoraly.
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Right. But we were talking about currency weapons. By the time the railroads, workshops with capabilities to make enfield barrels out of rebar, etc. came along, coinage was in fashion, and, not too much later, paper money.
The point being that a society using a barter system involving metal objects rather than coinage is a bit further toward the "primitive" end of the development scale than one using coins as a medium of trade.
But, were deviating from the real discussion of the blades Trenchwarfare has presented. Modern threads for screws were developed by a group of engineers, different groups emerging in different countries. Go to Wikipedia, search "screw threads" and scroll down to something like "the history of standardization" or some such and you'll get a timeline of thread development. Also remember that the time between the adoption of a thread standard and actual implementation in far away locations could take years.
The earliest threads that evolved in blacksmith's work over centuries are easily distinguished from modern threads. Earliest taps were just filed by eye and are uneven and imprecise.
But, back again to the spear points. As interesting as they appear to be, the fasteners place them into the immediate pre-modern or modern era.
*Please don't make me find examples of primitive threads and do a side by side comparison!