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Post by Elheru Aran on Jan 15, 2013 21:48:27 GMT
Hey all,
So a recent piece has come into my hands (the Windlass charay/salawar yataghan/Khyber knife). Its size is surprising-- almost 30", blade ~23", maybe 3lbs! This is a genuine short sword rather than a knife. Yet, it still handles in somewhat of a knife-like fashion, as the brass castings used on the hilt are quite heavy, bringing the balance point back to just about the junction of hilt and blade.
That got me wondering: is it really a very big knife, or does it cross the line into sword, albeit a small one?
What do you guys think? Where do you draw the distinction? What makes a knife (or dagger, let's be fair) a knife, as opposed to a sword?
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Post by Timo Nieminen on Jan 15, 2013 23:27:12 GMT
That's a sword.
I don't think you can pick a good all-purpose length separating knives from swords. You could say something like if the blade is under 12", it's a knife, and if the blade is over 24" it's definitely a sword (maybe about 20" is a better cut-off length for this?). In between, some stuff you could say one way or another, but other things are pretty much hybrid knife-swords.
The European Medieval solution was to classify by hilt construction rather than size, making very large Kriegmessers etc. officially knives. perfectly adequate for legal purposes (of the time), but not a good functional classification. They'd call a salawar yatagan a "knife".
But overall construction is OK as a guide. Take two weapons with 16" blades. If one is built like a large knife, and the other is built like a small sword, why not call them knife and sword respectively? This doesn't always work so well if you get really tiny "swords" or immense "knives" (like yours).
A solution: it's both a sword and a knife. "Knife" is a really, really broad category, from craft knives and scalpels through to big bowies and bolos (even if we exclude "swords"). What does it hurt to include machetes and knife-like swords in a broader category of "knife"? (Or go Chinese; then they're all "dao" (except daggers).)
(The Windlass Khyber knife is about double the weight of antiques; about 20-25 oz seems normal for that size. The whole point of a T-section blade is to keep the weight down.)
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