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Post by patmourin on Sept 18, 2022 19:01:55 GMT
Try castillearmory.comThey make some great blunt sparring rapiers and I do believe they make custom sharps too. Malleus Martialis also makes very nice blunt rapiers for fencing/reenactment. But, I know they can also make semi sharp stuff. They ship straight from Italy so they can't ship sharps. But, they can prep the blade for you so that it's ready to put an edge on it once you receive it. Pat
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pgandy
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Post by pgandy on Sept 18, 2022 19:08:32 GMT
Thanks alientude. I have no doubts another winner, but we shall see. At the moment my fingers are crossed and I'm anxiously awaiting their M1860 sabre and more exactly the field reports there off.
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Post by zabazagobo on Sept 18, 2022 19:38:24 GMT
This really intrigues me. I saw they also published a video demonstration of the prototype cutting bamboo and tatami. Performance looks much better than Windlass or Hanwei from this first demonstration. The stats and design both seem pretty choice too.
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Post by howler on Sept 18, 2022 20:19:31 GMT
Looks interesting. Pretty agile for 3lbs. and good thickness if 7mm. They probably don't measure POB where fingers are but instead a few inches further down towards tip. I'm a lefty but it looks like it would still work for me.
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Nox
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Post by Nox on Sept 18, 2022 20:39:12 GMT
There it is! Been waiting for this since he posted a screen shot of the guard on Facebook. It’s looking good.
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Post by pellius on Sept 18, 2022 20:53:57 GMT
Oh, wow. I hope this handles as good as it looks!
Also.. c’mooooooon LKC falchion!!
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Post by eastman on Sept 18, 2022 20:59:25 GMT
That is looking very likely to be my next rapier purchase. I have a Ribaldo arriving tomorrow, so that will give me a good impression of the LK Chen fit and finish.
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pgandy
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Post by pgandy on Sept 18, 2022 21:11:15 GMT
Hmm, who started the rumour that rapiers couldn’t cut?
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Nox
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Post by Nox on Sept 18, 2022 22:24:44 GMT
Hmm, who started the rumour that rapiers couldn’t cut? Those from the longsword or katana cults 😏 In all seriousness it is probably because there aren’t very many good reproductions with cutting blades on the market. That and the old association of rapier with fencing foils or smallswords.
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Post by skelley on Sept 18, 2022 23:19:29 GMT
Very cool indeed! Not much of a rapier guy myself but looking forward to hearing more. Oh, wow. I hope this handles as good as it looks! Also.. c’mooooooon LKC falchion!! Read my freaking mind! I would love to see them do a Conyers falchion!
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pgandy
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Post by pgandy on Sept 18, 2022 23:45:05 GMT
Hmm, who started the rumour that rapiers couldn’t cut? Those from the longsword or katana cults 😏 In all seriousness it is probably because there aren’t very many good reproductions with cutting blades on the market. That and the old association of rapier with fencing foils or smallswords. My Pilsen rapier will cut, but it’s not up do mats nor bamboo.
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Post by Kane Shen on Sept 19, 2022 1:09:49 GMT
I have the Windlass Christus Imperat rapier, and it's soooooo heavy and soooooo droopy. If you hold the blade horizontally, it bends on its own weight. A quick inspection of its thickness and distal taper can tell you why. At the ricasso the blade is only 4.2mm thick, which is far too thin for a rapier even the fullered ones. It's tapered to 3.4mm past the end of fuller, it's just not enough thickness to maintain its rigidity. For a thrust-centric sword, it is definitely wrong. Its leather sheath in lieu of an actual scabbard is pretty bad too, very floppy, and heavily corroded the blade in a few months basically beyond repair. Keep in mind that I coated the blade with a layer of Renaissance Wax, which caused no other sword in my collection (around 100 now) to be corroded. Not to mention its 3.4 lbs weight. The hilt furniture are just straight square bars without any change of geometry or tapering. It is very uncomfortable to hold as the edges constantly dig into your fingers. On the contrary, LK Chen’s new Saxon Rapier model looks and feels fantastic. It is based on an original housed at the Metropolitan Museum. Weighs 3 lbs with a 40” blade, having a great distal taper starting at 7mm with a hollow ground blade of diamond cross section! Quite rigid for reliable thrusting but can cut bamboo with ease too, as showcased in this video. Hilt furniture looks great too with proper tapering and geometry, likely very ergonomic! The distal taper on LK Chen swords are excellent and this one is no exception. I like the hollow ground diamond cross section, makes the blade properly rigid for a thrust-centric sword but also increases the cutting performance. Very much looking forward to all of their future models! Hopefully they can collaborate with Matt Easton again on creating more medieval sword models, too. But rapiers, sideswords, backswords, sabres are great options too, as they are so rarely reproduced with care in the sub-$1000 market. Very exciting! BTW to answer Brother Nathaniel's question about the base thickness, I don't know why they went with 7mm (no doubt greatly tapered). Many of their models including the Pattern 1860 Heavy Cavalry Saber start at 8mm or more. They work with people who take measurements of the original, so perhaps 7mm is on the original? But based on the performance on that video linked above, it is very rigid in thrusting, and the stiff blade cuts very well against even bamboo. For me, that is a win with a mostly thrust oriented blade. The product page on LK Chen website.
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Arlequin
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Post by Arlequin on Sept 19, 2022 3:34:14 GMT
Love this, hope they keep it up. Had a desire to to get into both sabers and complex hilt C/T swords a few years ago and was pretty disappointed at the lack of options between borderline wall hangers and high end custom pieces. Would be nice them tackle a basket hilt or an Munich townguard sword next
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Post by AndiTheBarvarian on Sept 19, 2022 4:33:27 GMT
My Hanwei Taza tapers from (only) 6 mm to 3 mm but with changes in cross section, fullered hexagonal, diamond, lenticular. 55 % of the mass are in the blade and it's well distributed. Unlike the typical Windlass pattern with a 1lb blade without much taper and a 2 lb hilt. I think it's one of the best production rapiers, at least the best of mine.
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Post by Kane Shen on Sept 19, 2022 5:00:59 GMT
Amazing share! This is the kind of data the sword community needs. If every sword collector and enthusiast measure and organize information like this, instead of some personal 'covfefe's! It shows how grossly modern makers underbuild blades--even the premium makers like Arms & Armor. Starting thickness at 5-6mm simply isn't sufficient for thrust-centric swords! The originals all starts between 8-11mm, and have a great degree of distal taper--usually between 60-80%, whereas lazy modern makers would do merely 30-40% or so. That Windlass rapier is a joke starting at 4.2mm and tapers like 25%. However, I did discover that all the specimens examined in this document have base width (above the ricasso) under 30mm, with the most between 20-25mm. This LK Chen has a base width of 35mm, which makes me think it might technically be categorized as a sidesword or cut-and-thrust Renaissance sword more than a conventional rapier, which could potentially be the reason that the base thickness is at 7mm? Whatever the reason, it would seem that it might end up having 50-60% distal taper, which isn't bad for a cut-and-thrust sword, consider the profile also tapers quite a bit.
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Post by AndiTheBarvarian on Sept 19, 2022 5:13:43 GMT
Distal taper is only one half of a good mass distribution, changes in cross section are usually underrated. F.e. I own a super cheap United Cutlery Honshu double edged ninja sword which has close to zero distal taper and not much profile taper but still a good mass distribution and a good handling The blade starts with a heavy ricasso, changes to single edge backsword and then to diamond double edge. Much better handling than my clumsy UC Honshu kat only due to the blade form. I want distal taper in a sword but it's not the whole thing.
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Post by Kane Shen on Sept 19, 2022 5:33:58 GMT
Distal taper is only one half of a good mass distribution, changes in cross section are usually underrated. F.e. I own a super cheap United Cutlery Honshu double edged ninja sword which has close to zero distal taper and not much profile taper but still a good mass distribution and a good handling The blade starts with a heavy ricasso, changes to single edge backsword and then to diamond double edge. Much better handling than my clumsy UC Honshu kat only due to the blade form. I want distal taper in a sword but it's not the whole thing. Andi, A great degree of distal taper is absolutely the defining nature of functional swords across different cultures, and it is especially true when European swords are considered. Please refer to this article here (108M PDF download, be aware) detailing the measurement parameters of 20 edged weapons in the Gotti Collection, from colossal two-handed swords, to rapiers, sideswords, off-handed swords all the way to daggers. Other than one very short dagger, I cannot find ANY bladed weapon that has less than 50% of distal taper. None. A great number of them have 70-80% of distal taper, the thickness near the tip is often only 1/3 or 1/4 of the thickness of the base. It is almost always linear or concave distal taper, which means only one thing: to properly make a sword, you need to get down to the dirty business of toiling away in the workshop to forge the blade correctly and to grind it correctly. There is absolutely no way to weasel out of the hard work.
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Post by zabazagobo on Sept 19, 2022 6:07:53 GMT
Two thumbs up to the critique on under-building blades on the production market.
For example my Kingston Arms sidesword handles like a dream and has pronounced distal taper and profile taper. Sounds like a perfect sword in theory. However, in function, it is so thin it is pretty terrible at thrusting. As in, floppy flex to floppy fail. Which for a sidesword is pretty disappointing. Especially since it kind of sucks at cutting too. My Windlass Musketeer is much better in the thrust than the KA sidesword, but is still significantly outperformed by a Cold Steel gim with practically no distal or profile taper. And then the CS gim moves as fast as the KA sidesword with probably four times the punch for all of a 3 inch reach deficit. I swear that sword is a work of wizardry sometimes lol.
Here's to hoping that LK Chen gets the overall level of thickness right and doesn't overdo the tapering. Given their background in Chinese style swords, I'm particularly interested in seeing if that influences certain design decisions.
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Post by zabazagobo on Sept 19, 2022 6:24:41 GMT
Distal taper is only one half of a good mass distribution, changes in cross section are usually underrated. F.e. I own a super cheap United Cutlery Honshu double edged ninja sword which has close to zero distal taper and not much profile taper but still a good mass distribution and a good handling The blade starts with a heavy ricasso, changes to single edge backsword and then to diamond double edge. Much better handling than my clumsy UC Honshu kat only due to the blade form. I want distal taper in a sword but it's not the whole thing. Andi, A great degree of distal taper is absolutely the defining nature of functional swords across different cultures, and it is especially true when European swords are considered. Please refer to this article here (108M PDF download, be aware) detailing the measurement parameters of 20 edged weapons in the Gotti Collection, from colossal two-handed swords, to rapiers, sideswords, off-handed swords all the way to daggers. Other than one very short dagger, I cannot find ANY bladed weapon that has less than 50% of distal taper. None. A great number of them have 70-80% of distal taper, the thickness near the tip is often only 1/3 or 1/4 of the thickness of the base. It is almost always linear or concave distal taper, which means only one thing: to properly make a sword, you need to get down to the dirty business of toiling away in the workshop to forge the blade correctly and to grind it correctly. There is absolutely no way to weasel out of the hard work. I know it's a different wheelhouse from European blades (and especially rapier), but some of the best swords I've ever handled were katana with very little distal taper, as in 25% or less. I swear there's an overall 'balance coefficient' with overall blade length as well as 'posterior-grip counter-weight' in the hilt as moderating variables. And then there's profile taper, cross section geometry, and it turns into a multivariate exercise quickly on all aspects of performance with distal taper humming along with everything else. Would be fun to start building a large scale dataset on this to run some analyses
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Post by Kane Shen on Sept 19, 2022 6:41:09 GMT
Andi, A great degree of distal taper is absolutely the defining nature of functional swords across different cultures, and it is especially true when European swords are considered. Please refer to this article here (108M PDF download, be aware) detailing the measurement parameters of 20 edged weapons in the Gotti Collection, from colossal two-handed swords, to rapiers, sideswords, off-handed swords all the way to daggers. Other than one very short dagger, I cannot find ANY bladed weapon that has less than 50% of distal taper. None. A great number of them have 70-80% of distal taper, the thickness near the tip is often only 1/3 or 1/4 of the thickness of the base. It is almost always linear or concave distal taper, which means only one thing: to properly make a sword, you need to get down to the dirty business of toiling away in the workshop to forge the blade correctly and to grind it correctly. There is absolutely no way to weasel out of the hard work. I know it's a different wheelhouse from European blades (and especially rapier), but some of the best swords I've ever handled were katana with very little distal taper, as in 25% or less. I swear there's an overall 'balance coefficient' with overall blade length as well as 'posterior-grip counter-weight' in the hilt as moderating variables. And then there's profile taper, cross section geometry, and it turns into a multivariate exercise quickly on all aspects of performance with distal taper humming along with everything else. Would be fun to start building a large scale dataset on this to run some analyses
Nobody is suggesting it's the only factor that matters. The point is, with everything else properly considered and executed, distal taper still NEEDS to be greater than 50%, and often in the 70 or even 80s percentage wise to make a sword handle the way it is supposed to. Katana have on average less distal taper than European, Middle-Eastern and Continental Asian swords, which is why the majority of them need to be extremely short bladed. You can rarely find two-handed swords with a grip as long as the katanas with such short blades elsewhere in the world. When the blade gets shorter, you can somewhat get away with less distal taper, as there is not "less mass" away from the hilt, there is NO mass at that distance. But you sacrifice a ton of reach and tip speed by going short, which is the reason why the further back you go, when katana were used more often as battle swords, the greater degree of distal taper they had. Also when they are expecting serious fighting, not just as EDC onto the local flee market, they tend to pick longer bladed katana more on par with European swords. When blades get longer, the greater need of distal taper there is. Also it is demonstrably false to state distal taper is an European phenomenon. Middle-eastern swords and South-Asian swords have a TON of distal taper. So do Chinese, Korean, Mongolian and Vietnamese swords, etc. That CS jian is quite a outlier. I know it's contract made by Dynasty Forge. I have one of the jian under Dynasty Forge's own brand, indeed not a ton of distal taper--about 20% of so, and 30% profile taper, but it's lightweight at under 2 lbs with a 29" blade as a single-hander. Still, it doesn't move with the finesse of the typical Chinese jian. If you pick up any of the LK Chen jian models (there are a dozen of them), you will know how much better they move and cut, because they have much more distal taper which is close to the originals, as he designs those models based on antiques.
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