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Post by Deleted on Mar 23, 2009 17:03:32 GMT
First does anyone know if the Japanese clay covering tempering technique would work on a European style longsword, or would there be problems with rigidity vs flexibility and brittleness? Second I have been thinking about a few sword designs and wanted to get some feedback. I do not have a scanner to post my sketches but can give the tech measurements in American English Standard (inches). The first two designs are based on an Oakeshott type XI design (Norman sword) with a simple cruciform hilt equal in size to the overall length of the handle (7") and a "Tea Cosy" knob pommel. The third design will take a bit more explaination, but I will get to it in a moment. single hand arming sword Total Length: 39" Blade Length: 32" Hndl Length: 7" Weight: app 2-3lbs Point of Balance: 4" Width at Guard: 1.25" Width at Tip: .75" Thickness @guard: .32" Thk @ Tip: .15" Hand and a Half version Total Length: 50" Blade Length: 39" Hndl Length: 11" Weight: app 2.5-3.5lbs Point of Balance: 6-6.5" Width at Guard: 1.5" Width at Tip: .75" Thickness @guard: .32" Thk @ Tip: .15" The third entry into this blade series would be my own take on the Falchion which is basically a modified Machete. Using the thin flexible blade of a Latin Machete equip it with with a clip or Bowie point and then expand it to a proper sword length giving the handle a Chinese "S" type hilt and ring pommel. The specs follow: Total Length: 39" Blade Length: 32" Handle Length: 7" Weight: P.o.B.: 4" Width at Guard: 1.5" Width before point clip: 2.5" Thickness at Guard: 0.05" (2mm) Thickness at Tip: 0.05" (2mm) The idea would be to make all three of these out of Carbon steel and then temper them using the Japanese clay covering method to provide a hard edge and flexible blade body. The question is then, "Could these designs work?"
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Post by Deleted on Mar 24, 2009 4:52:28 GMT
I know of at least one company that has done a clay tempered viking sword that looks like it works exceptionally well and was reviewed by our very own Mr Southren.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 24, 2009 13:07:46 GMT
Cool, I've always wondered about that. The idea behind these design thoughts is to combine Japanese forging and tempering techniques with European design versatility at sizes where the weapons could be used in either the European (ARMA) or Chinese (taijiquan feather sword) systems of swordsmanship comfortable and easily. The sword lengths are designed for the average adult male (5'9" 160-170lbs).
I took some pics of my design sketches with my dig camera and I should have them posted later today.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 24, 2009 14:58:28 GMT
These are my (badly drawn) thumbnails of the swords mentioned. Pretty straightforward and basic stuff. I drew the fullers a bit too wide so they would need be be narrower (particularly on the hand and a half) to keep in with the correct Oakeshott type for the blades. The real difference between these and anything else would be the use of Japanese forging and tempering techniques on European design. These are some various knife designs I was fooling around with. Better detail on the Hunter/Skinner blade. This is not a fantasy piece but rather meant to be a practical utility blade.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 24, 2009 18:33:50 GMT
50'' sword 11'' handle thats a big sword more of a two hander than hand and half ;7'' single hander you must have very large hands LOL looking forward to see them on paper best of look.The clay work on the blade should look great.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 24, 2009 19:24:04 GMT
Actually 50" overall with an 11" handle means a 39" blade which is about the same as your average Federschwert training blade which is a hand and a half training piece. ( www.casiberia.com/product_details.asp?id=SH2333 ) The thing to remember is that each generation is slightly larger than the one that preceded it so historical pieces are designed for historical generations. These blades are designed for modern average sizes which are larger. Mine just has two more inches of blade and two less inches of handle hence why the point-of-balance would be a bit farther away from the hilt. While I am using a historical blade design these would be modern pieces since there were no hand and a half designs in the 11th century (Oakeshott type XI and XIa). The hand and a half type doesn't show up until the 12th century (Oakeshott type XIIa) although it wouldn't surprise me if some Norman hand and a half blade gets discovered eventually. I've actually been trying to do some homework on this in thinking of the designs. My fantasy design doodles haven't been put on the puter yet.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 24, 2009 20:06:58 GMT
Your sword your design make it as long or as small as you want LOL
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Post by Deleted on Mar 24, 2009 20:45:33 GMT
Your sword your design make it as long or as small as you want LOL Thanks, and I did size them for myself LOL (Wicked Evil Grin) now if I could just find somebody to make them...... (no forge )
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Post by kidcasanova on Mar 25, 2009 6:47:47 GMT
That bastard sword looks like a big (though not uncommon) XIIIa with that spatulate tip. Though you're right about the wide fuller (would be at home on a type X though).
I'd still call it a two-handed sword, though many XIIa's and XIIIa's fall into the hand and a half category. Certainly one with an 11" grip would not. I'd say a 7 or 8 inch grip with a 34-36 inch blade would be about right for that style. Anything larger and you're in two-hand territory.
Though looking back, you're using handle interchangeably with the entire hilt assembly (I was thinking only the grip). So your grip on the hand and a half would be around 9-9.5 inches long. Which is pretty borderline so I cant really call it either way. Same with your arming sword, grip would be about 5" long, which is fairly common)
Cool stuff. I'd be interested in seeing these drawn to scale.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 25, 2009 8:32:15 GMT
I need to draw it to a bit better scale with the narrower Fuller. The blade pattern between the XIIIa and XI are similar with the main difference being in the thickness of the metal. The XI is quite a bit thinner. myArmoury.com has this to say about the type XI: "The blade still featured a cross-section that was flat and thin, and while this resulted in an effective cutting sword it also rendered the blade a bit too flexible for dedicated thrusting. Even though this new type shared these key traits with its shorter cousins it also featured a blade that was much longer and narrower. An average blade length of 35 to 37 inches is common for this design. Ewart Oakeshott designated this sword as the Type XI in his typology of the medieval sword." "In Records of the Medieval Sword Oakeshott described the Type XI in the following manner: 'This type is distinguished by having a slender blade, generally long in proportion to the hilt, with a very narrow fuller running to within a few inches of the point.' This type of design offers a distinct contrast when compared to previous designs like Oakeshott's Type X. The long, narrow blade of the Type XI typically features edges that run nearly parallel to an adequate point. " www.myarmoury.com/feature_spotxi.html By this token the arming sword is actually too short and the hand and a half version not too far of the mark. By handle length I'm referring to the combined length of the pommel, grip, and hilt therefore the actual grip section would just big enough to put both hands on. When I did the equations to come up with the size for the hand and a half, I thought it was a bit big at first myself. Then I looked at the sizes of some training pieces and some other commercially available hand and a half swords and found the sizing comparable. This also falls in with the sizing guidelines from both the Chinese and German WMA traditions that states that the pommel of a single hand sword should come to the center (Dantian) and that the hilt should come to the center (Dantian) on a two handed (European equivalent hand and a half) weapon. The thing to remember is that Asian traditions did not have an equivalent to the European great sword and that Asian two handed swords could be used either one or two handed, the same as the European hand and a half sword. But as mentioned this is to be more of a technical experiment to see how well Japanese forging and tempering techniques would work on a European weapon. I'll try to see if I cant get things drawn to a better scale while I'm at work this week. That way I won't have the three year old jumping on me while I try to come up with something.
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Post by Brendan Olszowy on Mar 25, 2009 14:58:37 GMT
It's Global Gear's Viking sword which is done with a clayed Hamon. Paul was quite impressed with it. The drama with clay quenchin a double edged sword is how on earth they keep the blade straight? A katana get sori (i.e curved back) during quenching due to the different crystaline structures formed (edge vs spine) taking different amounts of space. The edge expands, whoop -> sori. So if you have 2 edges what happens then?
I haven't really consciously noticed any custom blade smiths making double edged hamoned western swords. Expect to pay several thousand dollars for a sword done like that - it's a big ask.
The only other thing is having such a thin blade on a Falchion. Falchions are Machete's as you say. Cleavers. I think a thin blade wouldn't suit that purpose. So I wonder what it's use will be? Especially with a long 32" blade. It would just flop and set if you tried to cut with it.
Good luck with them.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 25, 2009 15:08:11 GMT
Even chinese dao and da dao have thick spines and they still move exceptionally well You can go thicker spine without losing mobility, it would just require some serious distal taper I'd go for a 6-7 mm at the guard, 3-4 mm at the tip and drop the blade down to 30" and the handle only needs to be about 5-6" in length, that is the length of my wraith's handle and I could easily convert those to any sword or knife for a perfect handle length.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 25, 2009 21:58:16 GMT
It's Global Gear's Viking sword which is done with a clayed Hamon. Paul was quite impressed with it. The drama with clay quenchin a double edged sword is how on earth they keep the blade straight? A katana get sori (i.e curved back) during quenching due to the different crystaline structures formed (edge vs spine) taking different amounts of space. The edge expands, whoop -> sori. So if you have 2 edges what happens then? I haven't really consciously noticed any custom blade smiths making double edged hamoned western swords. Expect to pay several thousand dollars for a sword done like that - it's a big ask. The only other thing is having such a thin blade on a Falchion. Falchions are Machete's as you say. Cleavers. I think a thin blade wouldn't suit that purpose. So I wonder what it's use will be? Especially with a long 32" blade. It would just flop and set if you tried to cut with it. Good luck with them. I was thinking about that with the Falchion during the staff meeting at work today. While a 2mm thickness works well on a machete with an 18-24" (45-60cm) expanding the blade to a full 32" (80cm) would have to require more thickness to have proper rigidity. The beauty of a machete and why I wanted the falchion to have machete characteristics is that machete don't have a weak surface you can hit as readily with spine (pounding tent stakes) the flat (driving nails) as with the edge. I have a cheap $7 US machete that actually puts up with all this abuse. One could only imagine what a quality sword with those characteristics could do. Do you have the link for that review? I would love to see it. I never thought about the curvature factor when contemplating the designs, but me designing a sword is like, well it's a drafter telling the smith what to do. I know a decent amount about using swords but I haven't the foggiest practical knowledge of their manufacture. Thanks for the insights Brenno.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 25, 2009 22:07:19 GMT
Even chinese dao and da dao have thick spines and they still move exceptionally well You can go thicker spine without losing mobility, it would just require some serious distal taper I'd go for a 6-7 mm at the guard, 3-4 mm at the tip and drop the blade down to 30" and the handle only needs to be about 5-6" in length, that is the length of my wraith's handle and I could easily convert those to any sword or knife for a perfect handle length. I was starting to draw these out to scale and realized I may have to adjust the width a hair as these a very long thin blades. I still want to go with the 32" (80cm) and 39" (97.5cm) as that is actually kind of important for the style of swordsmanship I practice. However, in using Jian proportions for blade thickness you get excellent Wushu practice pieces but something that might be too thin for practical cutting. There is no way to keep the blade in keeping with the Oakeshott type I wanted so I'll have to go the complete fantasy route with an "S" hilt and ring pommel. I'll try do do some scale drawings after i can make a run to Staples for some fresh drafting pens.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 30, 2009 19:52:48 GMT
First, I would like to thank everyone who has contributed their advice and ideas to this thread. Brenno, you are a sword maker extrordinaire and I defer to your knowledge and ability. Bloodwraith I would love to see this vaunted "wraith handle" of yours it might go very well on this proposed series of swords. Second, thanks to the review on the Global Gear Viking sword we know that Japanese tempering techniques CAN be used on some Western sword geometries, but as Brenno pointed out it would be prohibitively expensive - not to mention we don't know exactly how Global gear pulled it off. Kidcassanova, Aceltone, et al... Okay, expecially after drawing things out to scale the Bastard sword is a bit more of a two hander although I do believe it would be light enough to use one handed also. However, in the original specs I tried to use Chinese Jian technical data and extrapolate it out to apply to a European Oakeshott type XI sword (although my badly drawn thumbs looked like other types). Your wise and insightful commentary really sent me back to the drawing board. Since I don't have the facilities to make swords either by smithing or grinding out from premade flat blanks so I am coming from the area of pure design and mechanical principle. With the reformulation I went and took averages of technical data from the only three Oakeshott type XI swords in commercial production - Albion's Ritter and Hospitallar and Arms & Armor's Sword of St. Maurice. I combined this with the technical data from several commercially available Jian's - ColdSteel's Jade lion Jian, and Gim sword (proven cutters), Hanwei's Adam Hsu Jian (proven handling), and Hawei's Qi Jian (because I like it, and because of the story that goes along with this sword series {which I am still in the process of writing}). This gives me a fresh set of sword specs and that it what I used to formulate the scale drawings, which I remembered to resize this time. So Here are the revised Pics:
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Post by Deleted on Mar 30, 2009 20:43:52 GMT
OK now for the tech data, and again this comes from a direction of pure design and speculation rather than actual process. So our average tech data for Oakeshott type XI swords is as follows (using a conversion factor of 2.5cm to inch):
Table A Total Length: 41.15" (102.88cm) Blade Length: 35" (87.5cm) Blade Width @ Guard: 1.84" (4.6cm)
The average technical data for our Jian is as follows: Table B Total Length: 37.56" (93.9cm) Handle Length: 7.06" (17.65cm) Blade Length: 30.13" (75.31cm) Width @ Guard: 1.08" (2.7cm) Width @ Tip: 0.66" (1.65cm) Thickness @ Guard: 0.28" (0.7cm) Thickness @ Tip: 0.15" (0.04cm)
Anyway, it is from this data that I extrapolate to get the tech specs for the swords I am proposing. (*IMPORTANT IMPORTANT, SERIOUS MATH WARNING - ALGEBRA IN USE*)
Alright then, let's get to it. To create the width of our new swords and to keep it in with the proper Oakeshott type we need to do the following: So if a 35" blade has a width of 1.84" then a 32" blade has a width of x" therefore, 1.84"/35"=x"/32" and x=1.68". A 39" blade is 1.84"/35"=y"/39" and y=2.05". So, we have two swords with 32" and 39" blades that need to be made with 1.68" and 2.05" widths respectively to keep with type.
Now, for tapering I will be using Jian data since this is what the new sword should handle like. Therefore one gets: .66"/1.08"=x"/1.68" and y"/2.05" so in .66/1.08=x/1.68 x=1.03" and in .66/1.08=y/2.05 y=1.25".
So right now our spec sheets look like this: Table C Arming Sword Total Length: ? Handle Length: ? Blade Length: 32" (80cm) Width @ Guard: 1.68" (4.2cm) Width @ Tip: 1.03" (2.58cm)
Bastard Sword Total Length: ? Handle Length: ? Blade length: 39" (97.5cm) Width @ guard: 2.05" (5.13cm) Width @ Tip: 1.25" (3.13cm)
Now, onto blade thickness. Again I am using the Jian data because, well I study Chinese swordsmanship in addition to Western and this is supposed to be an East meets West design.
So we have thickness to width ratios of, at the guard: .28"/1.08"=x"/1.68" and y"/2.05" therefore: .28/1.08=x/1.68 x=0.44" and in .28/1.08=y/2.05 y=0.53"
So now the specs look like this: Table D Arming Sword Total Length: ? Handle Length: ? Blade Length: 32" (80cm) Width @ Guard: 1.68" (4.2cm) Width @ Tip: 1.03" (2.58cm) Thickness @ Guard: 0.44" (1.1cm)
Bastard Sword Total Length: ? Handle Length: ? Blade length: 39" (97.5cm) Width @ guard: 2.05" (5.13cm) Width @ Tip: 1.25" (3.13cm) Thickness @ Guard: 0.53" (1.33cm)
This seems much more workable than my original idea of using Jian measurements directly. Now for tip thickness I can either use the same ratios as were used for the guard thickness or reconfigure to the same type of taper found in the Jian. This is where the question of the diamond cross section of the Jian vs the fullered cross section of the Oakeshott type come into play and I must defer to others' greater knowledge on this issue. However to do the calculations it looks like this: For the use of guard ratios: 0.44"/1.68"=x"/1.03" so x=0.27" and 0.53"/2.05"=y"/1.25" so y=0.32" If I use Jian ratios then I get: .15"/.66"=x"/1.03" and y"/1.25" so in .15/.66=x/1.03 therefore x=0.23" and in .15"/.66"=y"/1.25" so y=0.28" So now the spec sheet looks like this: Table E Arming Sword Total Length: ? Handle Length: ? Blade Length: 32" (80cm) Width @ Guard: 1.68" (4.2cm) Width @ Tip: 1.03" (2.58cm) Thickness @ Guard: 0.44" (1.1cm) Thickness @ Tip: 0.27" (0.68cm) or 0.23" (0.58cm)
Bastard Sword Total Length: ? Handle Length: ? Blade length: 39" (97.5cm) Width @ guard: 2.05" (5.13cm) Width @ Tip: 1.25" (3.13cm) Thickness @ Guard: 0.53" (1.33cm) Thickness @ Tip: 0.32" (0.8cm) or 0.28" (0.7cm)
So, now we have most of the blade specifications. It is now time to get to the hilts, handles, and pommels. I am assuming a 0.5" (1.25cm) thickness on the hilts since it is a nice suitable number to do figures with, seems more than adequate for strength in my mind, and looks reasonable in a scale drawing. Add about 5" (12.5cm) of grip area for the Arming sword plus the average width of a hand for the Bastard sword which would be 4" (10cm). This give us combined handle lengths of 5.5" (13.75cm) and 9.5" (23.75cm). The pommel cannot be sized in these calculations as it needs to be able to be varied in size to provide to correct Points of Balance to the swords at the time of manufacture.
Using the Chinese Taijiquan school of thought the P.o.B. on the single hand Arming sword should be one hand's breadth away from the hilt of about 4" (10cm) and the P.o.B. on the Bastard sword should be 1.5 hand's breadth away from the hilt or app. 6" (15cm). Pommels will have to vary in size to be able to provide this. Likewise the points of percussion connot be figured out at this time because there are too many variable in the manufacture process that would affect this to be able to calculate P.o.P. at the design stage. (A true egineer might be able to but I am no engineer.)
Anyway, our final specs now look like this: Table F Arming Sword Total Length: ? Handle Length: 5.5" (13.75cm)+pommel Blade Length: 32" (80cm) Width @ Guard: 1.68" (4.2cm) Width @ Tip: 1.03" (2.58cm) Thickness @ Guard: 0.44" (1.1cm) Thickness @ Tip: 0.27" (0.68cm) or 0.23" (0.58cm) Point of Balance: app 4" (10cm)
Bastard Sword Total Length: ? Handle Length: ? Blade length: 39" (97.5cm) Width @ guard: 2.05" (5.13cm) Width @ Tip: 1.25" (3.13cm) Thickness @ Guard: 0.53" (1.33cm) Thickness @ Tip: 0.32" (0.8cm) or 0.28" (0.7cm) Point of Balance: app 6" (15cm)
So that's how I came up with everything. With any luck these are workable designs as evidenced by the scale drawings in the above post. Since I do not have the facilities to makes these myself my goal is simply that someone be able to make these designs and have a couple of cool swords out of it.
Namaste
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