Post by TomK on Oct 1, 2010 13:51:48 GMT
Windlass Steelcrafters’ Late Spanish Sword
Review by Tom Kinder of Goose, SC USA.
This sword is a result of my looking for a sword I could use to hit my wife with. No seriously, she wants to do live steel sparring with me and I only had one sword I was willing to blunt so I needed a new sword. We plan on doing sword and shield forms so I needed a single handed sword. I chose this one because, well, because I thought it looked really cool and it came blunt which meant less work for me and less heart-break blunting a beautiful sharp sword.
Vital Stats:
Weight: 2 lbs 14.5 ounces
Overall Length: 39.5 inches
Blade Length: 32 inches
Grip Length: 3.75 inches
Pommel length: 2 ¾ inches
Blade Width: 2 1/8 inches at cross – 1 inch just before point
Distal Taper: not sure, geometry makes it hard to measure, but a little
Point of Balance: 5 7/8 inches from the cross
Center of Percussion: from 19 to 22 inches from cross
Purchased for $179.95 US from Kult of Athena.
First Impressions:
Pretty swanky for a cheap sword! There really is a lot going on visually with this sword. I liked it almost right away. The moment I picked it up and swung it I was a little alarmed by a pinch I received from the edges of the cross-guard. A slight shift of my grip soon corrected this however. The sword was certainly a serious slasher but it also showed a keen and stiff thrusting point and demonstrated good point control. As long as I can keep it from pinching me I’ve found a winner.
The Hilt:
This is really the showpiece of the sword and was the flash that attracted me to it in the first place. I was unable to tell how long the grip was in the web site pictures and nothing I could find told me the length of it. I’m a serious single handed sword fighter and I like my grips short to snug my hand into the hilt (that’s how they should be). Unfortunately I have found that most grips on dedicated single hand swords are about four and a half inches or more long. This gives them a tendency to slide around in my grip and that drives me nuts.
Happily the grip on this sword is a nice snug 3 ¾ inches. The grip is wrapped in a very attractive and comfortable leather cord. The pommel is very large and long and looks like a stylized flame to me, though I’m not sure if that is what it’s supposed to be. The shape of the pommel helps snug my grip into the sword without digging into my hand.
It also is narrow enough to give some cheat room for people with very broad hands. My hands are pretty big and they are comfortable on this hilt so I doubt it would be a problem for most people so long as they understand how it should feel. The cross-guard is beautiful but the vertical ridges tend to bite a little. I don’t mind this as I find if I shift my grip back just a little, to where I really should have it, I no longer get pinched. The pommel was threaded onto the tang very securely with the aid of some sort of thread-locking compound. The tang had the threads cut right onto it instead of welded on which is good.
I am disappointed in the square tang shoulders but I don’t think it will be a major problem. Still it should be a consideration if someone is thinking of putting this sword through heavy use.
The Blade:
This blade appears to be a type XVIII with the classic flattened diamond cross-section, wide base and narrow pointy point.
Some type XVIIIs are hollow ground but that’s not required of the type and this one is flat not hollow. The only thing that it really gets wrong is the almost convex profile type XVIII blades should exhibit by swelling slightly near the center of percussion. This blade narrows steadily and in a straight line from cross-guard to point though it is still pretty fat at the COP. I think we are seeing the limitations of a sub $200 production blade in this. Still I would call the blade shape good and a decent representative of the type. The blade does show some small waviness from hammers or machining that wasn’t super precise, but it isn’t noticeable until you hold it up to very close inspection. My last complaint is that the center ridge line is not in exactly the same spot on both sides of the blade. This is impossible to tell unless you touch the blade and even then you have to be looking for it to notice. I decided that while I will be using it as a sparring blunt I could sharpen up a small portion of the blade to do some cutting for the community.
The Scabbard:
This is the standard Windlass fair with slightly more intricate metal work on the ends but really it’s just another plain-jane leather windlass scabbard. Nothing to see here, move along.
Testing!
Well I must say that sharpening this sword was very easy. The narrow blade geometry with center ridgeline gives the longest possible plane for sharpening. This lends itself well to a razor sharp edge with a narrow cross-section much like the competition geometry katanas. It took me only 30 minutes with a hand file and a few passes with an Arkansas stone to get a razor sharp edge over the last third of one side of the blade.
I missed the sharpened section of the blade on the first cut on the juice bottle but it cut really well on the second cut even after I had spilled more than half the water out of it. This sword is a mean cutter and is fairly tough too. While the steel can, which is 14 gauge mild steel, did cause some pretty noticeable (but not destructive) rolling of the edge, hitting the wooden stand did no damage whatsoever to the edge and it bit DEEP with a very easy swing.
UPDATE! TATAMI!
So, soft targets, medium and even medium-hard targets such as bamboo or wood should be just fine for this sword but I would avoid anything metal. Really this should go without saying but my VA Custom tuned Atrim sword took the same exact cuts on this same can without even getting dull so I think I’ll take a little off of the structural integrity rating. Sorry no tatami yet, I’ve not had the time to prepare any but I’ll roll some tonight and cut it tomorrow and post it here of course.
CONCLUSION:
This sword is well balanced, with enough weight to give it an authoritative cut but still light enough to be smoothly agile with good point control. The sword is tough but not a suber-beast-beater and it cuts like a hot laser. I like it a lot but the discerning eye can definitely see the clues that this is a budget sword; a good budget sword, but still a budget sword after all. I would recommend this sword to anyone who is looking to get a type XVIII that cuts and thrusts well with good handling characteristics but is concerned with not breaking the bank.
UPDATE: new system ratings:
PROS: CHEAP!, well balanced between cut and thrust, based on a historical artifact and a pretty faithful recreation, well done fittings, grip really snugs into the hand giving very firm grip, comes unsharpened, easily sharpened, good cutting power, tough.
CONS: the devil is in the details you can tell it's a budget sword, slightly heavier than I would like (I'd like to take 2-4 ouncs off it), guard can pinch if your grip is off, comes unsharpened (could be a pro, it was for me), edge could be stronger.
old style Ratings:
Historical Accuracy: 4/5 It isn’t a perfect example of the type XVIII but I think that if you showed it to someone from the 15th century they would not consider it to be out of place. accuracy of the hilt has been confirmed, thanks to Luka and Careph.
Fit and Finish: 4/5 it’s good. There are some small imperfections that could annoy the pickier of collectors but it came with no scuffs and a very even polish somewhere between satin and semi-mirror. It fits well into the scabbard and all the parts and pieces fit very well together very firmly with no hint of rattle or slip.
Handling: 4.5 it handles just like I think it should well balanced between cut and thrust.
Structural Integrity: 3.5/5 square tang shoulders and a very narrow profile with no meat (or what on a katana would be called “niku”) make this sword less than a stout beater, but I don’t think there will be any trouble with them failing. It seems to have a great heat treat so don’t be fooled by a less than stellar rating here.
Value for Money: 5/5 I tell you what, for under $200 this is a whole lot of good sword.
OVERALL: 4.25/5 this sword is a whole lot of fun with a cheap price tag. I like it. Let me put it this way: I like it so much I’m tempted to leave this one sharp and buy another for sparring with the wife.