Best pure Western cutter?
Jan 23, 2010 16:33:57 GMT
Post by Kilted Cossack on Jan 23, 2010 16:33:57 GMT
Ladies and Gents:
This is a silly question, but I am a silly guy. The question itself, as the subject line alone should indicate, is "What is the best pure Western cutter?"
I could perhaps rephrase this as the "best Western pure cutter" but someone might think I was going on a rampage against moderately priced US motel chains.
By "Western" I mean European swords, from any time from the Sack of Rome by Alaric in 410 AD to the end of the US Civil War in 1865.
By "cutter" I mean a sword for cutting a fifteen pound ham suspended on an iron hook. Just a ham. No cuir boille, no maille, no plate, no kevlar.
By "pure" I mean that I don't care if it would, in a thrust against said aforementioned ham, roll up on itself into a tightly curled ball: I am interested in cutting performance only.
Intuition would seem to indicate that a broad, flat, sharp blade with correspondingly high sectional density would "take the ham" in this kind of competition. In years past (like, umm, last year, before I started paying attention to swords) I would have thought that a late blade would have cut better than the early, crude, sharpened iron crowbars that were carried and wielded by, say, the Vikings or during the earlier Migration Period, but I've learned that what I thought I knew was so much bunk. (That is, early and crude Migration/Viking blades were early, but not crude.) Intuition further says that since every design is a compromise, increased emphasis on the thrust almost necessarily implies decreased cutting ability . . . but intuition, she has led me astray in the past.
So. You're facing a ham on a hook, and you need to cut it, as deeply and easily as possible. What Western sword would you choose?
This is a silly question, but I am a silly guy. The question itself, as the subject line alone should indicate, is "What is the best pure Western cutter?"
I could perhaps rephrase this as the "best Western pure cutter" but someone might think I was going on a rampage against moderately priced US motel chains.
By "Western" I mean European swords, from any time from the Sack of Rome by Alaric in 410 AD to the end of the US Civil War in 1865.
By "cutter" I mean a sword for cutting a fifteen pound ham suspended on an iron hook. Just a ham. No cuir boille, no maille, no plate, no kevlar.
By "pure" I mean that I don't care if it would, in a thrust against said aforementioned ham, roll up on itself into a tightly curled ball: I am interested in cutting performance only.
Intuition would seem to indicate that a broad, flat, sharp blade with correspondingly high sectional density would "take the ham" in this kind of competition. In years past (like, umm, last year, before I started paying attention to swords) I would have thought that a late blade would have cut better than the early, crude, sharpened iron crowbars that were carried and wielded by, say, the Vikings or during the earlier Migration Period, but I've learned that what I thought I knew was so much bunk. (That is, early and crude Migration/Viking blades were early, but not crude.) Intuition further says that since every design is a compromise, increased emphasis on the thrust almost necessarily implies decreased cutting ability . . . but intuition, she has led me astray in the past.
So. You're facing a ham on a hook, and you need to cut it, as deeply and easily as possible. What Western sword would you choose?