Here is some informative article on Battle ready swords, its making and how to identify, sharing is caring
Battle ready swords.I think this would be more relevant in the Beginners forum. Mind if I move it there?
Aside from that, speaking not as a moderator but just another member of the forum... Well, no offense intended to you, billy, (and if you're the author, I do apologize) but I have several serious issues with that article. For the convenience of the audience, here's the text of the article with my commentary inserted:
I've honestly never seen "battle ready" used to denote a sword manufactured using historical methods; most modern swords that could reasonably be described as "battle ready" are, in fact, produced using entirely modern materials, tools and processes. (Most of them are ground from flat stock, rather than forged.)
99% of the time, "battle ready" is just an empty marketing phrase, meaningless filler, like "all natural" or "no chemicals". Just pay it no mind whatsoever. The only place I know where it actually means anything at all is Kult of Athena, who use it to signify swords built to withstand reasonable use - NOT ANY KIND OF ABUSE, but the sort of stresses a sword would be expected to face in actual combat, i.e. they feel confident it won't break when used on things roughly as resistant as human flesh and bone.
This isn't really 100% accurate, but it is a reasonable rule of thumb. You could make a good sword blade out of some types of stainless steel, it's just so much trickier than using carbon steel that it's almost never worth the trouble.
There are also many,
many other types of steel commonly used on high quality, functional swords. And many very different kinds of 10xx, at that. And there's NO type of steel that's considered "the best" for swords - all the varieties in common (or uncommon, for that matter) use have their own advantages and drawbacks, and the quality of the product depends
far more on how well it's made than what exact kind of steel it's made of. Even "the best" steel can produce worthless clunkers, and "the worst" steel be used on true masterpieces.
Most sellers don't mention heat treating simply because it's just generally assumed for any functional sword, especially with well known brands, and quite reasonably so. Unless there's something notably fancy like differential hardening going on, 90% of the time saying that the sword is hardened and tempered would just be redundant - like a car salesman specifying for each car that it does, in fact, feature wheels.
"Full tang" is indeed quite a nebulous term. However, most of the time retailers use it to refer to a
full-length tang that passes all the way through the handle and is peened or screwed to the pommel. What you're talking about there is a slab tang or scale grip (or full-width tang).
Many historical swords with full-length tangs are made with tangs of softer (and tougher) metal welded onto the hard steel blade. Similarly, many modern full-length tangs are made with a piece of threaded rod welded onto the end of the tang (for a hex nut or a screw-on pommel). There's nothing wrong with that as long as it isn't done poorly.
THIS IS NOT TRUE.
Many historical swords of various types have hilts attached to partial-length tangs with a combination of friction and adhesive (mostly wood resin or glue) - South-East Asian dha, Indian tulwar, Nepalese kukri, European seaxes, and so on. Japanese swords use mostly friction from the tightly fitted handle, plus a bamboo peg (sometimes two, mostly on modern ones) as a failsafe.
There's nothing inherently weak or unsafe about this kind of construction.
I personally own several seaxes assembled in this manner, one of them a four-pound monster made after an 8th Century grave find from Sarstedt. All of them are absolutely rock solid, and in order to get their handles off you'd have to deliberately break the wood into pieces and knock the pieces off the tang with a chisel; I know this for a fact because I have actually had to do exactly that to re-hilt one of them.
A "rat tail tang" is a more or less derogatory term (deservedly so) that refers to a long, thin rod sloppily welded to the shoulders of the blade or to a short stub of a tang protruding from them, both the blade and "rat tail" typically of stainless steel. This is seen almost exclusively on modern decorative junk.
The only swords you can "clearly see the tang" on are those with an exposed slab tang (like messers) or a screw-on construction (popular on both cheap decorative crap
and top-quality weapons intended for heavy duty practice alike). Most actually "battle ready" swords have a hidden tang that you can only see if you break the sword apart (which is typically not something you should do).
No, the BEST advice is to do your homework. Read up on the sword and its manufacturer, look around online for reviews, ask around discussion forums for opinions and first-hand experiences. There is no shortcut, no one easy trick invented by an ordinary housewife that sword retailers hate; in order to know what you're getting into, you have to LEARN.
Four halves make two.
