bronze.

Copper, on its own, is too soft, I think.

brass is a name for Zinc-alloy type of bronze.

Bronze. Brass is much softer and copper is, like, tinfoil soft.

Brass, MM. It's an alloy, and harder than even bronze, which is also an alloy. Each have copper in them, but copper alone is much too soft to work either as armour or a functional blade.

BWAH!!

BWAH!!

Nonetheless, much as I lurve Bev, she is wrong wrong wrongitywrongity wrong on the hardness of brass -- the reason it's used for instruments and plumbing and the like is that it's so malleable.

Okay, so I've got two bronze, one brass.

Or, what amych said.

Who I was going to rec as a sabre consultant, since I am not. StY is a long-time martial arts student, knows Japanese swordwork, and we have had extensive conversations about it, and he's available for consult when I need it. H was a college fencer and has been my consultant in random knowledge. But my sabre is merely decorative in function at the moment, and has an intentionally blunted edge, and I am clueless as to how one would wield it.

The blades I lust after are 12th century European two and three-handed broadswords and Scots claymores--relatively blunt iron blades of very little finesse. I imagine a sort of edged bludgeon.

Wikipedia supports bronze.

I am with amych on Bronze (=copper+tin) vs Brass (=copper+zinc). Hey, I didn't study The Bronze Age for nothin'. Also of interest: [link] which shows tensile strength and hardness of various copper alloys.

Bronze it is.

Thanks, y'all!

Loves me some hivemind.

I repeat, amych knows whereof she speaks--I retract my brass and throw my opinion behind her bronze.

Dude, I JUST taught a lesson on metallurgy, including talk about the Bronze Age. Of course, I know nothing about brass, but I do know that bronze started an age because it was more useful than copper or tin by their lonesomes.