"Battle ready" "cutting rapier"?

I asked whether they would sell me just the guard, and they said no :(

I have heard that they are a bit whippy. Good for fencing, not so much for display or cutting. Even their sharps suffer. There is a review on here about their rapier and they noted that the blade was a bit *too* flexible. 

Their basket hilts have a good reputation though. Maybe the extra width of the blade makes up for it

From their e-mail:

"
We do sell the hilts, I would need a tracing of the hilt shape and the metal thickness with a 10 cm line drawn for scale so I could make the hilt to fit the tang. Cost depending on the hilt £100 to £120."

That answers it. I may get a 3-ring hilt to replace the over-built one on my Munich, or to fit onto a Hanwei rapier. 

May have to spend a bit more getting extra blades, but at least you have the choice. If you are creative you can try to mount a Hanwei tinker blade on it. Buying the guard itself also cuts down shipping costs from across the pond

With my Mort, the blade was to thin in the forte(1/8" 3.17mm) and still with some distal taper. The temper is good because it would of bent and took a set.

The other modern lower end swords, have a thick foible and that's why they don't handle like the antiques.

Usually the antiques have a thick forte and a distal, profile, or both taper and the foible, is around under 1mm to a little over 2mm(depending on the sword). Having a thick forte and a thinner foible puts more mass of the blade closer to the hand and making it more agile. With a lot of the lower end modern swords have thicker foibles spreading the mass through out the blade and the sword doesn't handle as great as the antiques. To fix the handling and making the sword more manageable, they put heavier guards or pommels on the sword, but at the same time the sword becomes heavier and doesn't really fix the performance of the sword. This is why you can have a antique sword with a correct distal taper and a POB4" handle better a be more agile than a modern lower end sword with a POB 2 /12" or 3".

So for basket hilts, the Hanwei Basket Hilt Backsword, is the closet to the antiques in weight, feel, and not being overly whippy. The Cromwell is probably the 2nd best.

Hello All ;

   To Mr. Markusagain :

  I am about to make a lot of enemies on this forum, but the sword you originally posted
about, 

www.celticwebmerchant.com/en/rapier-17th-century.html

  might actually make an excellent combat sword.

  First, the sword has a good two dimensional taper, and, though I cannot see it from the
photos, might also have a slight distal taper.  

  Second,  the blade is made from  EN45, which is a manganese-silicon spring steel that
both takes a temper and can be hardened.  In effect, EN45 is the steel that Japanese 
swordsmiths wish they could make their swords out of.    

  EN45 is tough, flexible, behaves like a spring, and can take a reasonable edge, 
easily well enough to leave a wound as " deep as a well and as wide as a church 
door! " 

   A rapier made from EN45 will be lively and will not bend or  ' take a set. '   It could 
be left blunt and used for fencing, or sharpened and used for  "real ".  And, at the
price posted, you might have two of them, one for each purpose.   

  From what I can see, no renaissance street fighter would have felt  ill-armed 
with one of these blades in his scabbard.   


   The only possible flaw that I can see with this sword is that it might have a
rat-tail tang, and would thus  be too fragile to use.   If you have one already, perhaps
you could dis-assemble it and post a few photos of the tang construction of the blade.
This would give the forum a chance to see how strong the sword really is. 

  As for balance and handling, that is in the hand of the user, and, if the sword is too
slow or is sluggish, this might be addressed by some very careful grinding and re-shaping.


 As for  the grip, if you want, you can get hold of some leather suede thong material, and 
wrap the hilt, using the tuck and pull method to get a endless wrap.   I have done this
with several swords, and have had good results.  

  Again, if you can, post a few photos of the sword's construction for us, as I am very 
curious.


Respectfully ;

Paul R. Ward


Addendum:   For those who have questions about EN45, here is an Indian website for a specialty steel
supplier in India that discusses  EN45, with a lot technical details :

saajsteel.com/en-series-steel-en-45/

The modern manufacturers are simply making more robust swords (with less distal taper) that can take more of a beating, particularly when cutting objects (sometimes incorrectly).  The buyer must judge for themselves what avenue they wish to pursue, and if they are adequately happy with something that is less expensive, less historically accurate, less lively, but more robust.  I've been thinking of doing a grind job on my CS heavy rapier to get the POB closer to the fingers, and I may just buy the Windlass Munich and do the same.  Or then again, I may just be lazy and leave them alone, as they could still put a WORLD of hurt on someone if used defensively (but I would want an off hand if using the rapier). 

Yeah, that Munich is decently balanced, but simply heavy overall, so you would have to take weight off both the guard and blade to keep the balance.  I guess is must be a somewhat difficult trick to produce a lighter weighted sword that can still hold up to cutting yet keep costs down (a riddle that lies in the distal taper, I suppose).  Man, if they just reduced that big guard then the POB would suffer.  You would imagine that more companies would attempt to crack the riddle.

I followed this interesting discussion and googled around a bit.
Key word: ,, Compare rapier and repro ''. This outfit came up: www.historisches-fechten.at/wp-content/uploads/2015/0... and they have a very well done study on PDF. Lots of charts.
The problem is that the PDF cannot be downloaded from the site, but if you click on the link in the google page, you get the PDF. Worth trying to get it I am sure. Very detailed, very German.
Maybe this works:
historisches-fechten.at/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Comparison_of_Period_Rapiers_to_Modern_Reproductions.pdf

What it all comes down to is that the old blades were much thicker, 8mm and up. Having this thick blade they started thinning the blade at certain places to get the balance right. It has a lot to do with nodes and vibrations too. It was important to get the vibration node in the handle just behind the cross guard. In principle one could build the ultimate rapier blade with this PDF. That is what I got out of it. You can file all you want on a repro but it will still not handle like the rapier of old. Maybe a bit better yes. Enjoy the PDF.

Cheers.

And the heat treatment of the blade seems to be questionable!