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Michael Pearce
Industry Professional
Location: Seattle, Wa. Joined: 21 Feb 2004
Posts: 365
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 Posted: Thu 16 Jun, 2005 8:56 pm Post subject: |
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| Jean Thibodeau wrote: |
Michael:
As a side note: Bringing up the point that lenticular is not a defining quality of type X, WAS / IS, a useful point and I don't want what I mentioned above to be taken the wrong way as my intent is only to get to back to the original intent of the topic. |
No worries- I was trying to dispose of the issue of 'typology' so we could get back on track too- less gracefully than I might have unfortunately!
Anyway, if we are disussing a modern type X sword with a flat-ground blade as opposed to a period type X with a flat-ground blade, I am resonably sure that Gus's sword is at least close enough that valid comparisons can be made if we limit the variables enough. Sorry if I side-tracked things too much... let's get on with it, then!
Michael 'Tinker' Pearce
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Then one night, as my car was going backwards through a cornfield at 90mph, I had an epiphany...
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Angus Trim
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| Posted: Thu 16 Jun, 2005 9:17 pm Post subject: |
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| Jean Thibodeau wrote: | Patrick;
Exactly, lets talk about specific features and how in isolation and combination they have an effect on cutting in general and when specifically intended for different targets.
As in my previous post: How do fullers affect cutting ? As the thread stubbornly stayed stuck on a discussion of typology I am re-asking this specific question, but any other aspect of blade qualities affecting cutting would be welcome.
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Hi Jean
The thing you have asked about as far as cutting goes, is does a fuller affect cutting ability. A fuller by itself doesn't really affect cutting, because unless we're discussing a rather narrow, shallow fuller, then with western swords,a fuller is a very important part of the overall design. You can't really separate it from the "type". A type X for instance, should have a rather large fuller, encompassing a lot of the sword's real estate......
On the other hand, if you were to grind a substantial fuller into a finished XVIII {for instance} for comparison purposes, you would be removing the spine of the blade over the length of the fuller, thinning the blade in crossection, removing much of the "support" area of the blade, changing the weight, the balance {static, harmonic, and dynamic}, and making it necessary to start all over again to establish the balance.......
If your question is partly does a fullered sword cut better than a non-fullered sword, the answer is, it depends. It will depend on the overall design and quality of the fullered sword vs the unfullered sword......
The edge geometry, the bevel geometry, the harmonics, the dynamic balance, the mass, the mass at point of impact, the width at the intended point of impact, the thickness, etc. These are more important than whether there is a fuller or not.....
Now, Japanese swords are different than the western stuff. Japanese swords, in period, could and did have bohi's carved into them after the sword's working life had been going for a while. The bohi made the blade lighter, but did not make the sword a better cutter, nor did it do anything for the sword's durability.
The euro stuff, all I've seen anyways, has the fuller being very important to the initial design.
swords are fun
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Jean Thibodeau
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| Posted: Thu 16 Jun, 2005 9:31 pm Post subject: |
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If one made a lenticular blade without a fuller and compared its' cutting performance with an as close as possible identical sword with a wide fuller it might be possible to get an idea about fullers having an effect on cutting performance.
There might be some difficulties keeping everything else " equal " as the one without fuller would be heavier unless some other variable was changed.
It is actually difficult to change one variable and only one variable!
The fullers have an effect on cutting at the very least in an indirect way as they affect the handling caracteristics of a blade, stiffness, weight to width ratio, angle of main bevels and maybe other things I am not mentioning.
Now, do they have a direct effect reducing drag while cutting ?
Well, the above should be understood as questions as I don't have the experience or knowledge to make the above statements of fact.
Anyway, I'm throwing out there my pure guesswork in the hope that some interesting discussion will result.
You can easily give up your freedom. You have to fight hard to get it back!
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Angus Trim
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| Posted: Fri 17 Jun, 2005 6:43 pm Post subject: |
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| Jean Thibodeau wrote: | If one made a lenticular blade without a fuller and compared its' cutting performance with an as close as possible identical sword with a wide fuller it might be possible to get an idea about fullers having an effect on cutting performance.
There might be some difficulties keeping everything else " equal " as the one without fuller would be heavier unless some other variable was changed.
It is actually difficult to change one variable and only one variable!
The fullers have an effect on cutting at the very least in an indirect way as they affect the handling caracteristics of a blade, stiffness, weight to width ratio, angle of main bevels and maybe other things I am not mentioning.
Now, do they have a direct effect reducing drag while cutting ?
Well, the above should be understood as questions as I don't have the experience or knowledge to make the above statements of fact.
Anyway, I'm throwing out there my pure guesswork in the hope that some interesting discussion will result. |
I've actually done stuff like this a few years ago back when I used plywood to "rate" cutting. What I found was that there wasn't enough difference in the cutting to worry about the fuller one way or the other. The fuller does affect the handling and rigidity, and the other issues I mentioned before.
No drag reduction that I could tell.....
What does affect drag, is the angle of the main bevel and the shape of the main bevel, and the length of the main bevel. Ok, the angle of the edge has an effect too, particularly if its a fairly long edge bevel {or a thick edge whichever way you wish to think of it}.
I think of lenticular and convex differently. Lenticular is done right, and is historically correct, but convex can be lenticular, or it can be done in such a way that it drags..... Every historical sword I have seen with a convex main bevel is done in such a manner that the angle of the bevel at any point of the arc, is behind the edge. Or put it another way, the main bevel will not interfere with the cutting path the edge starts......However many modern made swords have the main bevel done in such a manner that they drag noticeably.
But, many, many modern swords with convex main bevels are done wrong. Many of them subtly....When its done wrong, what you have is a main bevel that will drag in the cut.......
When done right, or actually lenticular, the drag can be nearly as low as a well done flat bevel, thickness, width, and angle being as close as possible {or as close as apples and apples can get}.
I have cut with two swords whose main bevels are concave. These hollow ground blades both had low drag contours. The wood residue would build up only on the edge, and the spine.......
Flat bevels would ussually have the residue build up in a straight line across the bevel. More thrust oriented swords {ie, narrow and thick} would have a lot of drag. More cut oriented swords {wide and thin} would have much have much less drag, ussually even residue deposit across the bevel. I developed a fondness for the flat bevels because they supported both the edge and the spine in some of this cutting as well as can be done, and still be effective in cutting.
Now, 1/4 inch plywood has pretty much gone out of vogue as a cutting target of choice. So, nitpicking modern well made swords as far as which is a slightly better cutter is a wasted kind of exercise. If you can cut thru the ribcage of a deer carcass with sword A, and can also do it with sword B, which is the better cutter? Maybe the one you like best?
Comments are my opinions based on my experience.........
swords are fun
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Angus Trim
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| Posted: Sat 18 Jun, 2005 7:31 am Post subject: |
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| Nathan Robinson wrote: | As far as I can tell, Tinker, you're absolutely right.
I also haven't been able to find where Oakeshott mentions cross-section for Type X and I'm really surprised by it. It's mentioned for Geibig's system of classification, but that's far more specific than Oakeshott's catch-all Type X. But because Oakeshott doesn't mention it in his typology, I can't see why it has any part of defining the type. I was wrong on that one for sure. I think it's agreed that the vast majority of documented swords of the Viking Age are, in fact, lenticular in cross-section and so I guess, in turn, it would be safe to say that the typical Type X is going to be of that cross-section, too. Again, discussing what is typical does not address any limits Oakeshott may have put on his Type X classification, though, as I had expressed it. |
Hi Nathan
I've got some agreements, and disagreements in what you're saying in your posts on this thread, and will try and get back today and tomorrow and expand on both the agreements and disagreements......
But......
Before doing this, I want to point out that with the later X's, there really is no such thing as a '"typical" crossection. This of course does do just as you mention, mucks up the ability to exactly compare modern made swords and historical swords.
Going back to my discussion with Craig, the key to type X's is the fuller. The fuller runs most of the length of the blade, and 1/3 or more of the width of the blade.
However, the main bevels can be convex, concave, or flat..... or in the case of X.10 {Records} more or less hex section, with the fuller {a very shallow one} in place.......
X.10 is a sword that Oakeshott owned. It is now a part of the Oakeshott Institute collection, and its possible its still in Minnesota. I don't believe that Ewart would have documented it as a X in Records if it was a "sub" type of X. Its not, its just as "typical" as those that have the convex main bevels........
Which, as you said, mucks things up when comparing the past to the present....... No one at this time has reproduced this fine sword, and I don't believe anyone plans to anytime soon......
Its like talking typical "center of gravity", or typical weight, or typical distal taper characteristic, or typical edge geometry. No such animal existed in period...... which makes it difficult to compare past performance to the present......
I don't believe we can do anything "exact" in any comparison. But I do believe, that yes, we can do a pretty fair job of being able to tell how a sword should handle, and cut, and thrust, given certain parameters.........
The hardest thing in my view, is telling how durable a given sword, whatever type, whatever period, woud be. Hardness' was all over the map, as was the quality of the steel. If a sword is "historically accurate", would it be able to traverse thru the ribcage of a deer carcass showing no discernable wear or damage? This is the biggest question in my mind, and I intend to come back to that later, as well as handling characteristics of the best modern stuff vs the antique, and the cutting capabilities.........
swords are fun
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Angus Trim
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| Posted: Sat 18 Jun, 2005 11:25 am Post subject: |
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| Nathan Robinson wrote: | Hey Gus. Thanks for the post.
Is it fair to compare these modern interpretations that have such a drastic difference in design philosophy with those historical antiques? They seem like completely different animals to me.
I think it's very important, ahh, crucial, that we discuss these things in the context of the big picture and not as isolated features. Too long has the Internet fixated on specific features (edge, point of balance, grip length, etc.) and not looked at these things as the complex and diverse set of variables that they truly are.
In the case of comparing an antique sword's abilities with a modern one, we first have to produce a sword that is as like the original as we are able to do. From that point, a study of edge geometry can happen. It would be quite interesting to put different edge types on these swords and see how they perform given different tasks and targets. But doing this type of testing isn't telling us anything if the sword, as a whole, is drastically different from the comparative sample. |
Hi Nathan
If you don't mind, for the moment, I'm going to drift away from X's, and mention maybe XVIII's for a bit. Just so we don't start fixating on some part of this that will derail the points you brought up.
I'm not certain that we can really use terms like "drastic difference in design philsophy", without mentioning that today swords are an anachronism. They were valued weapons "in period", and today they're collectors items, martial arts tools, functional art, and recreational tools.......
Today, we're still in rediscovery mode of the properties of these one time weapons {be they military, self defense, or dueling in nature}. Harmonics, dynamic balance, the various blade geometries and edge geometries are only being discussed and shared over the last 7 years or so.
And some of the discoveries {or rediscoveries if you prefer} haven't been done by studying antiques, but by studying reproductions, and then going back to antiques and "verifyining", if you will...... Its been a synergy between some of the leading swordmakers and researches, and yes, lets admit some competion, friendly and otherwise....
One of the key discoveries, the mulitiple nodes in the handle for instance, happened here in the NW by accident. Tinker and I were playing with some different "harmonic" things, doing some cutting tests etc, and we found that most singlehanders we were playing with had two obvious nodes in the handle, and that many of the longer handled swords had three....... and that this had an effect on handling and performance vs swords that had only one obvious node. This was shared with CF and Craig Johnson that summer, and at WMAW in Racine, I shared it with Jason Dingledine and Peter Johnsson. It wasn't long that this became part of all our conversations on harmonic or dynamic balance. {Tinker took the opportunity to test X.10 while it was in his hands for this, and it too had the multi-node thing going on in the handle}. I want to stress that virtually all antique swords that are in decent condition enough to test for this, shows this phenomon, but if you consider all of the repro euro swords in production now from anywhere in the world, only a small fraction of them show this. Even today, only the best custom makers, A&A, Albion, and AT are the only ones that do this on a regular basis.......
Today, the dynamic balance of the best custom makers, and the top tier semi-production people, is "historically correct". Meaning that we have captured the feel and handling characteristics of the "period swords". This is done by accurately defining things like distal taper, profile taper, and blade geometry. And either copying very exactly certain key antiques, or having developed an understanding of how these things relate to one another....
The reason why you will hear "your swords are better today than they were a couple of years ago" about any of us, is our understanding grows continually, and our refining of our knowledge into the swords continues to get better......
So, we can come real close to reproducing the "feel" of antiques. The handling of the antiques. Why not the cutting? I feel we have and can......
In mind, as stated before, the toughest thing will be judging how much a given antique sword would be able to stand up to. How much bone would it be expected to cut thru without wear or damage to the edge? How much pressure would an antique blade of a given time take, before taking a set or snapping? As valuable as the existing period swords in excellent condition are, I doubt we'd be allowed to test them much.
The steels today are different than yesterday, though they share many of the same properties. Since the WW2, most commercially made steels have manganese in them, and manganese affects the way steels corrode and harden. But modern steels, made to the exactly the same dimensions {and I mean exactly} and mounted the same as a period sword, will give a sword that will feel exactly like the antique. Modern steels are not "stiffer" than older steels, though they may not fail {either snap or take a set} as soon as some period steels would.....Blade geometry is more important that choice of steel for dynamic balance purposes {in fact for balance purposes steel choice is irrelevant}......
The most commonly used steels today for the better made swords are "spring steels", the three most commonly used ones, 1075, 6150, and 5160 all make for good swords. All will thru harden in the most commonly used thickness' {ussually .25 inch or 6mm or less}. The chemistry of these simple alloys is pretty close, 1075 has more manganese and carbon, 5160 has roughly 1% chromium added, and 6150 has the chrome, + a small bit of vanadium added.
All of these steels will make for a resiliant body, and decent edge holding, depending on edge geometry/ main bevel geometry etc. The problem is, that none of them accurately will tell you how the steel "in period" would react. We do know that chemistry of period blades was all across the map {meaning that it wasn't pure iron and carbon}. We know hardness' could be all over the map too, sometimes in the same blade....... Consequently, we can't know for certain that the antiques would hold up to the same use, assuming very close geometries, that modern swords see all the time.......
swords are fun
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Nathan Robinson
myArmoury Admin
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| Posted: Sat 18 Jun, 2005 12:23 pm Post subject: |
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I knew right from the start of this topic that this is exactly where this was going to head. I wish you'd not do this.
| Quote: | | X.10 is a sword that Oakeshott owned. It is now a part of the Oakeshott Institute collection, and its possible its still in Minnesota. I don't believe that Ewart would have documented it as a X in Records if it was a "sub" type of X. Its not, its just as "typical" as those that have the convex main bevels........ |
Gus, I wish you'd move on. we're not talking about "sub" types, and your assertion that an early -period sword with a cross-section that isn't lenticular is "just as typical" as others goes against the database of the hundreds of documented swords available in print, at museums, etc.
There are many examples all throughout Oakeshott's Records of swords that are outside of the typical example of the types discussed. In fact, there are many examples that are outside of the general definition of the type, and hence are atypical examples. This is part of how the typology works, and is exactly as Ewart exmplained it. Without opening any books to look this stuff up, I remember XIII.1 shows a Type XIII sword with multiple fullers and mentions that this feature is "rather uncommon". Does this mean that Type XIII swords with triple fullers are "just as typical" as those with a single fuller simply because it appears in the book? No, it doesn't. It means that Type XIII swords with a triple fuller are rather uncommon, ie, atypical.
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Angus Trim
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| Posted: Sat 18 Jun, 2005 12:38 pm Post subject: |
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| Nathan Robinson wrote: | I knew right from the start of this topic that this is exactly where this was going to head. I wish you'd not do this.
| Quote: | | X.10 is a sword that Oakeshott owned. It is now a part of the Oakeshott Institute collection, and its possible its still in Minnesota. I don't believe that Ewart would have documented it as a X in Records if it was a "sub" type of X. Its not, its just as "typical" as those that have the convex main bevels........ |
Gus, I wish you'd move on. we're not talking about "sub" types, and your assertion that an early -period sword with a cross-section that isn't lenticular is "just as typical" as others goes against the database of the hundreds of documented swords available in print, at museums, etc.
There are many examples all throughout Oakeshott's Records of swords that are outside of the typical example of the types discussed. In fact, there are many examples that are outside of the general definition of the type, and hence are atypical examples. This is part of how the typology works, and is exactly as Ewart exmplained it. Without opening any books to look this stuff up, I remember XIII.1 shows a Type XIII sword with multiple fullers and mentions that this feature is "rather uncommon". Does this mean that Type XIII swords with triple fullers are "just as typical" as those with a single fuller simply because it appears in the book? No, it doesn't. It means that Type XIII swords with a triple fuller are rather uncommon, ie, atypical. |
Hi Nathan
I don't think we're really in disagreement here, I think what may be at fault is the way I used the language. I don't like the word "typical" in a discussion like this. But in the context you're using, I agree with you....
I should have used the word "correct", or something more like that. The point being that these other blade contours need to be considered too, or at the least, not dismissed.........
swords are fun
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Nathan Robinson
myArmoury Admin
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| Posted: Sat 18 Jun, 2005 12:47 pm Post subject: |
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Ah, I see what you're saying, too. I think we have to use words like "typical" and "average" because, as we're all finding out, the notion of "correct" is such a broad thing now. There was so much variance that the best we can do is talk about the average examples, because just as we all think it's figured out, some crazy example pops up way off to the extreme envelope of attributes that further broadens the "correct" definition 
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