A badly attached pommel can fall off in any random moment, a well attached pommel falls off only when you want it to, a masterfully attached pommel knows the perfect timing to fall off even if you don't.
Whell! I figured that, since my pommel fell off, I might as well throw it at the guy. I then hi-tailed it out of there like a dude with a sharp iron bar was chasing me.
What I'm hearing is "old swords were made with practicality in mind even if their materials were not the best" and "some new swords have no clue what a sword should even look like". I'm sure the more artisanal ancient swords were made first for functionality and then time was spent making them look good, today it seems the other way around.
i dont know. we have mass production nowadays, so we can, well, mass produce practical tools, but back then, every tool was "a piece of art" of an artisan, every tool was unique and a show of one provenes in craft and i think that showing one proveness in art included good presentation.
Idk, Ilya from man at arms was talking about how the "higher end" swords you find in museums tend to have very blatant flaws in the blade, and that it appears that most of the time and energy was spent on the garish embellishments of the hilt and hand and such. I think the people who could afford the fancier swords never really needed to use them so they wanted them primarily as status symbols as opposed to functioning weapons
That’s true. Because nowadays there is almost no utilitarian purpose for having a sharp sword, most people would buy swords just to decorate their house or to add something cool to their collection. They usually are not knowledgeable enough about historical arms to distinguish between a quality, historical accurate swords and a cheap, poorly designed modern ‘replica’, neither are willing to spend time on doing research before they make the purchase. They just want something feels like the kind of sword they want, and those cheap products can fit such needs.
There are still people today are studying the design, functions of historical arms and produce quality reproduction. But these reproductions are quite expensive.
I'd imagine that at least a few times in history cheap replicas of high end swords were made to scam people into paying a sweet amount of money. Even quite possible that at some point a peasant might have made a petition to a blacksmith to make a cheap sword only for looks disregarding everything else, as it was not strange back then for the peasants to try and imitate the upper class, even nowdays a lot of people buy cheap counterfeit clothing and accessories in an attempt to show off something that they clearly do not have.
We know this happened. There are several surviving examples of inferior swords trying to be passed off as the renowned Ulfberht made blades. These counterfeits sometimes didn't even spell the inlayed makers mark correctly (+VLFBERH+T or +VLFBERHT+ are the two correct inlay variations).
@@zenhydra That actually completely slipped my mind! I've actually had seen a video about that. Goes to show how little society has actually changed doesn't it?
@@rmg480 People are fundamentally the same as we ever were (not a compliment). I imagine that there was some jerk in Sumeria who was passing off his inferior beer as a fine Akkadian import.
As a rule of thumb, if something was used in a war, then it probably was cheap. Sure, you might have a nice well balanced or what have you weapon. Guess what's nicer? Two guys with weapons. And because replicas are luxury items, the priorities change. It's about satisfying customers, not numbers.
That is generally true. Roger Ascham wrote how common English arrows for war were made of asp instead of ash, which he thought would be better. This was presumably a cost-cutting measure. However, in certain cases suits of full hardened infantry armor were produced in large sets. The guild system s simultaneously managed impressive quality & volume at times. Also, because of the limits of historical supply & logistics as well as morale dynamics, it wasn't necessarily practical to have more troops. Various military writers highlighted the advantages of having fewer & better soldiers.
Not Necessarily British officers in the Victorian era had to buy their own stuff and a lot of the times they bought higher end stuff from private well-known manufacturers like Wilkinson swords.... The stuff that they issued to the troops though, that was absolute garbage, cheap crap.... I would argue that’s the same with the modern day military, it’s not a high end target gun or some thing that you have custom built…
Wingzero83 exactly, it cracks me up when modern politicians say the public shouldn’t have military grade weapons in regards to semi automatic rifles like the AR platform. The private sector sells way better stuff and like you said, can be customized to you specifically. I tend to think the same way when looking back into history. Organized armies with mass produced equipment would of generally not had as good as a custom set up like what an officer might have.
RX7FDfreak Especially if you’re paying for it and you know I have to sword fight someone. If the regulation says you have to have a brass guard and you know brass is crap and can be cut through easily. I’m just going to get a steel guard and have it plated in brass.... It may cost more money but it’s helping save your hand.
@@RX7FDfreak Ask anyone in the military. Fortunate Son starts to play when they talk about receiver rattle. And no I was never in the military, a co worker told me this.
As a hobbist blacksmith, and a mathematician that has done some design courses, the dussack is just a design made by a genius: cheap, easy to make, can be beauty, and fucking useful
with the way blades were made back then, since everything was forged out, it didn't present any more work to taper the blade than to keep it straight. nowadays since everything is made from flat stock anyway, a distal taper is an extra step in the process
lol forging a good distal taper is so much harder than grinding one, which is still pretty tough to get right. You need to get it pretty spot on on the rough forge or grind or you will be throwing away a good few hours of work, because there is a low spot you can't grind out anymore.
The main difference between swords now and then: Now, if the pommel falls off and the crossguard breaks, you can call the company and [try to] get a refund. Then, if the pommel fell off and the crossguard broke, you wouldn't survive to tell the smith.
When you hear "My name is Ian Laspina" (or however thats written) in your head and have to correct yourself. Great to hear your angle on the same topic, and cooperation / mutual inspiration between a few of my favourite creators.
thinking back, there are a number of references to these "amazing" or "magical" swords shattering or breaking into pieces, which is a risk with a high hardness metal..
The best example of a cheap sword breaking and causing injury was in a video from a QVC segment where the host takes a cheap katata, starts tapping it on a table, and part of the blade breaks off and flies back, stabbing him. ua-cam.com/video/2kFgeZtkAb8/v-deo.html My own personal example of a cheaply made replica is my Marine Corps NCO sabre which started to rattle after just a little bit of use doing nothing more than military sword drills. Not sparring drills mind you, just ceremonial drills like drawing the sword, presenting it in a sword arch kind of stuff. What gets me is that this wasn't one of those cheap eBay knock offs either, it was (supposedly) made to Marine Corps specs and I was able to order it with the correct blade length based on my height and arm length.
@@papavader6084 Aside from Cold Steel, no one makes a sharpened version of the Marine NCO saber. Even, assuming, that Cold Steel still offers it, it's supposed to be heavy and kind of clunky. that's according to Matt. Even if that isn't the case or you're ok with that, it wouldn't necessarily meet regulatiations, according to the regs, the tip of the blade shouldn't go past your ears when held at the carry. So in order to get an NCO saber that meets regs, you'd have to buy one the usual unsharpened ones with the correct length of blade for your height.
2400 dollars for a year of hosting? Seems like he's getting gouged. How much space does he need? Does he have some special hosting requirements? It doesn't seem like a site that would receive the enormous amount of traffic that would justify that price.
The site is both used as source or (more ideally) as a road to sources. But also the forum is very active and they should ditch being able to host the images there into myarmoury... I know, the value of doing that for you don't risk finding a really interesting topic and seeing all the images deleted from random image hosting site, but I'm sure that's one of the things that makes the hosting price go up.
$2400 IS a little high for a site like that - serves mostly text, no heavy media (videos), lower traffic, no intense backend stuff (db querying jillions of records), etc. even with a forums i can't see it taking more than a couple hundred GB/month to run.
@@punchyscyllarus565 stupid people pay stupid prices, my host costs 5€/month, unlimited traffic, all server tools, backups are automated + all console tools + for that 70€/year i can host unlimited amount of sub domains.... Now i pay for hosting for 4 separate web sites + yearly domain payments and thats for me 70€ + 4xdomain (5€ per domain)
@@jkarra2334 Obvious question: Does that 60€/year host come with annoying small print like: "may delete site for any/no reason", "No mention of violence or historic population groups", "must respond to DMCA within 48 hours or get deleted with no further warning" etc. Such traps often form the difference between cheap and expensive hosting.
Hey Skall, here's an idea for a video, watch and analize some clips from Forged in Fire, I bet people would love some ranting and the pure schadenfreude from you losing your mind :P
"expertly crafted, and inlaid with green enamel" 2:09 Me: where is this green enamel? all I see is blue... I also get a "baby's first sword" vibe from its design 6 ^ ^
"Many reproductions try to imitate the high end" That's why I like things like the Munich Towngurad cut and thrus sword/rapier (whatever). It's pretty close to mass production as it is. There are a couple versions of it sitting in multiple museums. So budget replicas could have an easy time doing it right, by jsut somewhere laying within the specifications.
The sword you pulled out to display the distill taper and simplicity of construction I also have. In fact, I bought it due to your review! Can confirm it is a very simple construction and employs less than ideal methods to construct the handle, but it is a 1:1 exact replica of a museum piece of a common infantryman's sword. The tang is still thick and extends through the handle, the handle is properly shaped and beveled, the cord wrap is tight and VERY comfortable, and while the fitting of the brass guard isn't very tight, it is totally acceptable for its price and historical origin. Even if the handle breaks on me, which I don't think it will, it should be simple enough to just make a new one. Can definitely recommend as a first sword, since it's my first sword, too!
@@gamma4053 Which is exactly why it's a dumpster fire. Why do modders have to do the developers job for them? If mods are what make a game good, the game itself isnt very good. Believe me, I want the game to be successful and hope its playable at some point. But in it's current state, for $40. Hard pass.
Really enjoyed this, good explanation of steel quality (hardness vs toughness). Thank you! I worked for quite a while selling and servicing high end Japanese hand made kitchen knives and recognized a lot of the talking points I would go through with customers. Great job!!!
Oh hey, I live in Cluny, the city from which the Cluny sword is originated,what a coincidence ! Like, I'm amazed that such a small town lost in the middle of the french countryside would have one of its swords reproduced by Albion (although it's true that the city has a huge and intersting history, and had a lot of influence during middle-ages), and said sword mentionned in your video ! great video, very informal, as always, thanks Skall !
threw some cash myarmory's way. Can't tell how many times I've looked up reviews & resources there, even without being a registered member. Good website, good content!
Great video as always, Skall! I just want to point a few things out about the wood for the handle and scabbard. While we do have access to most woods that medieval folk had, the modern reproduction market chooses woods that are not really practical for the blade. For example, ebony and rosewood are a common choice for many manufacturers and customers. They are expensive, strong and luxurious. However, a scabbard made of hardwoods like these can potentially ruin the blade over time, instead of preserving it, even if they are well made. They have a higher acidity than softwoods which could corrode the blade over a longer period of time, and their higher silica content may scratch and dull them. Hardwood is okay for handles since the tang has no edge to be preserved, and the rust that may appear on it is just on the surface (unless it's a very very old sword). Certain softwoods were the standard for scabbards, and most of the times, the handle too. For example, certain poplar species, birch, and alder can be a great (and historical) choice. Hackberry is also a decent choice, but may cause some skin irritation. The American tulipwood (or "Yellow poplar" which is actually not related to real poplars), is a great choice too. They have a much lower silica and acidity, so they can preserve the blade much better than hardwoods. They are also cheaper and easier to work with. (As for the common poplar that are planted in towns and by the roads in Europe, forget about that. Those are weak and TOO soft.) For Japanese swords, the traditional wood used for the handles and scabbards is a certain Japanese magnolia species. They call it Honoki. They air dry it in big quantities for about 8 to 10 years before cutting and carving them into shape for the handle and scabbard. They are pretty expensive though. According to Peter Dekker, an expert of Chinese arms and armour, the handles and scabbards of Chinese blades were historically made of poplar and/or alder. However, sometimes the handles of Jians were made of hardwood, but the handles of Daos were always made of softwood. Some really great sword manufacturers use hardwood instead of softwood. Like LK Chen. They make their handles and scabbards of ebony and rosewood, since they couldn't identify the wood on the antiques they studied. So they just went with that for the luxury. (I had a chat with them regarding this topic, and they might upgrade their handles and scabbards to poplar in the future.) All this is just based on my research, and may not be 100% accurate.
I Have been at the Wallace Collection and it is FANTASTIC I will go again as soon as I can. Highly recommend and if you are a miser it won`t cost you anything either.
I love MyArmoury.com I'll have to consider supporting them. I also really liked Knyght Errant's video (all of them really) and I'm glad you did the same with swords.
Tod of Tod's Worshop did an excellent video on this topic. He argued that context is important when it comes to expectations. A Medieval person's expectations of a sword they commissioned are slightly different than the expectations of a modern consumer/collector of replicas. I personally don't fuss over minor cosmetic flaws: a gap between the hilt and the blade, a wavy ridge in the blade, a slight bend or warp, etc... Historical examples show many cosmetic flaws, including on high end swords. By the Middle Ages, sword fittings were manufactured separately, and the gaps between the fittings and the blade were par for the course. Things like cutler's resin and shims were used to tighten the gaps. A Medieval person obviously didn't mind too much about that, but we do. We certainly do mind about such flaws, and there is nothing wrong with that. Most of my favorite replicas are hand made, and I appreciate the little quirks they have, or what same may call flaws. It's all about expectations so far as I am concerned. Thank you for your efforts to help save MyArmoury. I had no idea it was in jeopardy.
Back in the days, the tip of a pick axe was quenched and tempered every week during heavy use. All the edged tools were case hardened. Period source say the piece was "steeled". The portion of the tool to be hardened was quenched at cherry red, and because it's heated in charcoal, the heating process is improving the carbon content of the very surface of the iron, transforming it into steel. Then the quenched part is tempered to the proper color, like purple for the edge of a wood working tool, or yellow for the tip of a rock mining tool. With this method of superficial heat treatment, only a few dozen micrometers of an iron tool, the depth at which the carbon from the charcoal infused, became really hard steel, and it would quickly wear off with use and sharpening, and call for another surface treatment. This means that analyzing remains of iron or steel tool is not a good indicator of how hard the edge of the tool was during actual use. The structural part of the tool could be soft, still if a few dozen micrometers of the edge or tip of the tool are made hard enough by case hardening, the tool is good for at least some weeks of work, doing the same work as a modern tool that's through-tempered, albeit some bending. The thing we obtain with through hardening rather than case hardening is springness, and of course not having to case harden again each time the tool hardened steel surface wear off.
I'd have a hard time believing that the good functional swords would last long enough to get into a museum. The originals we've got now are literally the ones that people left at home when they went to war.
I must admit, I was suprised to hear about how hard some of those blades were. As I would have assumed a hardnes of not much more than 45 HRC. Making a blade with a hardnes of over 50 HRC that doesn't shatter must have been no mean feat. Especialy with the - lets call it limited - controll over the exact composition of the materials in those times. Sure, you can take even unalloyed steel to higher hardnes, and it's done in industrial applications, but those are usually more massive pieces like rollers, punches and dies, not thin blades. I do work in the metall industry and we have pieces that go as high as 65-68 HRC. But those are made from high-alloy tool steel like S290. And you have to be carefull about the axis of shockloads even then, or they will shatter like glass. So yea, a 55HRC medieval blade that does work? Call me impressed.
You should check out the Ulfberht Swords!!! They are over a thousand years old and when tested in a lab are extremely high grade carbon steel even by today's standards!!!
what u said at 17:00... i saw that happen at a demonstration held at a conference organised by a Japanese samurai "school" and it's representative in Romania. The japanese guy wanted to show a certain form of techniques, some kata, and he used his own sword for some very impressive cuts specially by a 70 year old guy,like really awesome clean cuts.They had the cuts in the program but the romanian organizers wanted him to show some form of techniques,some kata or something. His sword was already taken backstage and they provided a sword for him and apparently, it was a damn replica lol!:)))). What happen was that he did somekind of ceremony and than put the sword to his hips and did a draw cut,like iaido, and the power of the draw and sudden stop was so strong that the blade flew out of the handle into a set of chairs.Lucky thing was that the conference was held in an indoor soccer field,and the seats ocupied were on left and right and back and forward were all empty. The blade went halfway into the back of a seat and for 3 seconds it was so quiet you could hear air move if you tried:))))). The fuckin idiots brought him a replica,a modern cheap sword and the old man was probably training and doing that type of draw cuts for whole his adult life,decades and decades of training.He did smile and did a movement like he is trying the weight of the sword,i was far and couldn;'t hear but after the shit hit the fan i imediately realized he probably said that something is wrong with that sword.Anyway, indeed, tragedy could happen so for anyone that is not a sword practicioner, japanese or european, please do not show off your techniques with your sword that you found at some trift shop and looks great.You could hurt or actually kill someone for real.
I bought that Deepeeka on the 2nd hand market. I was intrigued by the hilt and got it for a good price. I didn't realize, at the time, it was a bad attempt at a museum piece. The first thing I noticed about it was just how damn balanced it is and after a bit of handling I realized it is really lively in the hand and very quick- like the blade is hardly there at all. Speaking of the blade- it looks like hammered shite. Out of all the swords I own, it has the worst forging I have ever seen, but man they got the balance right. This is probably a happy accident. Look forward to putting an edge on it this summer and seeing if it will cut. Just goes to show even a cheap knock-off can shine now and then. Great vid by the way- keep 'em coming!
Todd also makes a pretty good video about reproductions vs originals: ua-cam.com/video/TVL46CM9k80/v-deo.html Basically a lot of reproductions are a lot better than the originals because modern consumers demand much higher quality.
That historical sword in the thumbnail and first part of the video is the sword I picked for my D&D character. It went overboard in a level 13 airship battle with dragons.
For a modern swordsmiths take on the high quailty swords of the past not being quite up to modern ideas of quality check out Tods Workshops video on this matter Original Vs Reproduction - Which is better? ua-cam.com/video/TVL46CM9k80/v-deo.html
if it helps: Hardness is the resistance to be indented , penetrated or scratched by another object. In steels, it correlates to how stiff and how much stress can the piece deal with before permanent deformation. Toughness is the resistance to break by impact. In steels, generally there is a tradeoff between both qualities. if you maximize toughness, the piece will have (relatively) low hardness. meaning the chances of breaking will be minimal if, for example, you drop it on the ground. And if you maximize hardness the piece might end up like a file or drill bit. virtually impossible to bend and scratch (with other steel piece) but will snap like a carrot if you hit it with a hammer or drop it on hard ground. For swords you want a middle ground so it doesnt deform badly nor breaks during a fight, since the sword both deals and recives impactful blows. These qualities, asuuming comparable alloys, are regulated mostly through heat treating.
Just adding that with modern methods and materials it's possible to get materials that are both relatively hard and relatively tough. Other than that totally agree with previous comment.
2020 : sword falls apart during testing > blacksmith gets bad review on internet.. 1400 : sword falls apart during battle> seriously p*ssed-off knight comes looking for blacksmith with a good quality mace to "have a conversation over a refund".. yeah, times weren't easy for scammers back then. XD
Not to mention that they wouldn't get the sword delivered and go right to battle. if the sword had issues they could just pop over and have a little chat.
In my experience restoring Nihonto, (likely unusual in ways). It was the old Hitatsura Long Swords that broke and ended up O Suriage Wakizashi. All the splotches of Yakiba, and larger Niei crystal structures which are hard. May have potentiated the swords to break under combat stress. Although some were just shortened for practicality.
On thing with the nail is that the grip would be easy to replace just being wooden side pieces. In Afghanistan, they have knives that are very similar. And as it is used, they replace the small wooden (or ivory) pieces on the handle if it broke.
The Bolick Dagger is a good example of Mass prettiest weaponry commonly thay had plain wooden handles but on the rare occasion you would find one's made for knights that had full metal handles with engraving even.
Way back you made a video how devastating ZombieTools "the Spit" is (thinking of ua-cam.com/video/F7z1ry6twsg/v-deo.html ) ... but there's really no review about it. So, what's your thoughts about it?
re. the point about distal tapers being absent in cheap reproductions, it can also go the other way - some reproductions I've seen, mainly of Chinese weapons, have such aggressive distal tapers that the point is as thin as a sheet of paper and completely incapable of supporting any sort of thrust or even its own weight. I own a Chinese dao that is so flimsy the tip can bend completely around to touch the pommel-ring. Of course, part of the reason for that is that wushu performances love that whippy snap sound effect they get from flimsy flopsy blades.
6:08 I just recently looked up that graphic for my pen&Paper Campaign preperation to cross reference with other metals because I let my party find reddish metla blades that withstood centuries without being properly conserved. Seems loke beryllium Copper (Copper beryllium?) is "close enough"
The most important thing about using wood for a grip.. is not the time... it's that you can use woodworkers... ie. Other artisans.. thus removing the entire task from your metal workers... it's actually a very nice wooden grip..
Distal taper back in the day when you had to draw out the metal every inch is custom made and while it might take a little while longer your not hammering the thick end as much and the thin end more so it evens out across the length of the blade. Being perfectly even all the way along might even be harder.
Looking at this fancy blue rapier and armor I started wondering: in games and books and movies we often can see swords made of some weird materials or for example iron from metheorite. I thought it would be nice idea for another vid of you, if weapons like that exist at all and there is enough of them for one episode longer than 3 minutes.
I have Depeeka cluny sword, it's great to handle, excellent for cutting practise and solo forms. A cheap sword has value if its cutting abillity and durability are equal. Feel free to disagree, I know you should only buy expensive swords, but I took a chance and honestly love it, the pommel and crossguard might be too thick for someone with small hands as my gf finds it a bit of a stretch but other than that your way off on this Skall
Keeping in mind the miserable quality of some historical weapons & armor helps explain the discrepancy in accounts of performance. For example, period texts often describe crossbows as powerful but one 15th-century sources says barrage of over a thousand bolt did about as much damage to English archers "as a shower of rotten apples." I suspect it depended on the crossbow. The same applies to armor; most 16th-century manuals highly praise armor but at least one (by Cesare D'Evoli) claims lots of weapons often defeated it. We know that the best historical armor of hardened steel offered three times the protection of the worst wrought iron. Various manuals noted the low quality of common arms & armor while stressing the importance of equipping troops with good gear if at all possible. In practice, some period militaries simply couldn't or didn't want to spend the resources to provide decent kit for soldiers. Sometimes some Swiss pikers lacked even footwear while the best of them would three-quarters harness & weapons of hardened steel. In the 15th century, some Turkish soldiers had only a bow & arrows, only a sword, or even only a big stick. (A big stick or staff is perhaps the most economical weapon out there, as it's easy to come by in any forested environment and up close a few strong & brave fellows with wooden bludgeons can potentially overwhelm a single soldier with whatever equipment.)
I have a somewhat inverse relationship to katana as you it seems. I used to find them uninteresting and was easily annoyed by the bandwagon lameness around them, but for some reason have recently become enamoured of their simplicity, beauty and shape. Anyhow, that was all just to preface the fact that I'm asking a question about them. While researching for a future (when money is made available to me again and the world stops being SO difficult) purchase, I heard that many modern steels are far superior to the tahamagane used out of necessity only in the originals. I am wondering what modern steel they would compare best to, or if you know of a resource that might have comparative information about historical vs modern steels. I am wondering if saving up for a 1095 steel is worth it, or if a 1060 that I can already almost afford is sufficient. And maybe even better than what was available originally.
The lowest grade modern steel would be far and away better than the best ancient steel. In terms of purity, carbon content, and overall quality. For example, look at reproduction black powder guns, and compare them to the best preserved 150+ year old originals. In every way, the modern reproduction is "better" than the original.
Why does this remind me of the That Works and Shadiversity spat in the comments over this very subject? Which was one of the most civil and lovely debates to read btw.
if you watch some of tod cutlers videos he talks about this to my Favourite is a bishops sword with his coat of arms on the pommel out of kilter with the rest of the hilt
I asked my metallurgical buddy abou the Rockewell scale, he laughed and said that is is a very crude and unrefined measurement, steel has so many properties and also depending on how it is made and for what...
Well yeah, steel has a lot of properties, but Rockwell is explicitly only measuring one of those. It's not the "Rockwell Quality Scale", It's the Rockwell *Hardness* Scale. The fact that it maps reliably onto other measures of hardness shows that it does what it is meant to perfectly fine.
The difference between a commoner's sword and a nobleman's sword can easily be seen today in highly polished, limited edition engraved officer's pistols. Or highly deccorated pistols presented to heads of state, and the common Beretta issued in the Army
Just to make a point about the cheap stuff in history, I would say it's absolutely possible that you could buy a weapon that you might expect to have a rapid unscheduled disassembly. If only because there are plenty of cheap firearms you could reasonably expect to at least not function. If not, have a rapid unscheduled disassembly.
Sometimes in all of the the difference between forged and cast metal is confused. When you originally cast steel, and we've had steel of some type or another for almost as long as we've had iron, it's in an ingot. Until modern casting methods were developed this meant it would have inclusions (small bits) of slag and other materials from the ores used and the casting itself. It would also have the carbon erratically mixed throughout the material, so hard spots and soft spots. If you heat the material to the correct working temperature, beat it flat with a hammer and continually fold the material over on itself you are forging. Very time consuming, requires skilled labor, works best if you have a mill in or something like it to mechanically drive the hammer, and you lose a lot of material, though you can recycle it, because the hammering expels material. Good blades are usually forged. Modern plate metal is usually a high quality ingot squeezed into shape by successive rollers, thus fufiliing the sane general purpose as forging. Plate metal will never be as high quality as a good forging. I'm not addressing the effects of heat treating here. Watch one of the videos of a master Japanese craftsman making a sword blade and you can see the process. Because the Japanese used military swords until recently their blade making traditions survived. It's not that they were any better at it. One of the reasons Austria has some of the best surviving depositories of armor and bladed weapons is that parts of Austria and the old Holy Roman Empire (later Austro-Hungary), like Styria, had metal ores, abundant coal for high temperature furnaces, lots of wood for fires also, mechanical and hydraulic power for machine hammering and forging from the many water mills in a land of mountains, rivers and steep canyons, skilled smiths and the need for a multitude of high quality weapons due to the nearly continuous wars the Holy Roman Empire found itself in with France, German and Scandanavian princes, Protestants, the Turks and others. Since Austria and Vienna became the seat of the empire, and were close to the main centers of armament production, they also became the place that weapons were stored in armories. The continuous wars left no time for the "beating of swords into plowshares" of other European areas. Because of the nature and tactics of the wars with the Turks, which extended into the 19th Century, armor and blade weapons had a longer usuable life span there and so were stored in good conditions. Austria, Bohemia (the Czech Republic) and southwestern Germany (Schwabia/Baden Wurtemmburg/Stuttgart) still remain centers of quality armament production as they were in Imperial times. I suspect the "named" swords in northern European countries may have been crafted from iron-nickel meteorites, which were easier to spot in more barren lands. The metal in the cross sections of some meteorite that I have seen is of excellent quality to begin with, and similar to today's advanced and chemically controlled alloys. This occurred during the natural processes that formed the "fallen stars". When you start with a high grade raw material and combine it with the best craftsmen available at the time you'll get an excellent blade, though very expensive and rare. Hope this info from a former aerospace metallurgical materials engineer is helpful.
How often would one man make a good quality plain sword, and whoever bought it had the fancy guard, hilt wrap and scabbard/sheath. oh and I read somewhere that Navel swords were meant to rattle in the scabbard, so that bad weather or water wouldnt make them stick. How true is that, as far as you know.
Hey Skallagrim, i am just gonna throw my idea at this 9:37 . It looks to me more like unfinished product than crude weapon. It is possible that the blacksmith didn't have the time to finish this weapon. It could be made in to this shape 8:57 quite possibly. This looks to me like a more probable option.
19:10 "The pommel is gonna fall off."
Is not bug. Is feature. Automatic pommel launch for ending rightly!
A badly attached pommel can fall off in any random moment, a well attached pommel falls off only when you want it to, a masterfully attached pommel knows the perfect timing to fall off even if you don't.
Whell! I figured that, since my pommel fell off, I might as well throw it at the guy. I then hi-tailed it out of there like a dude with a sharp iron bar was chasing me.
No no it's a surprise feature
Today I have a pommel launcher let show you its features
What I'm hearing is "old swords were made with practicality in mind even if their materials were not the best" and "some new swords have no clue what a sword should even look like". I'm sure the more artisanal ancient swords were made first for functionality and then time was spent making them look good, today it seems the other way around.
i dont know. we have mass production nowadays, so we can, well, mass produce practical tools, but back then, every tool was "a piece of art" of an artisan, every tool was unique and a show of one provenes in craft and i think that showing one proveness in art included good presentation.
Idk, Ilya from man at arms was talking about how the "higher end" swords you find in museums tend to have very blatant flaws in the blade, and that it appears that most of the time and energy was spent on the garish embellishments of the hilt and hand and such. I think the people who could afford the fancier swords never really needed to use them so they wanted them primarily as status symbols as opposed to functioning weapons
@@adamb2077 except for knights who could afford and did use some of them
That’s true. Because nowadays there is almost no utilitarian purpose for having a sharp sword, most people would buy swords just to decorate their house or to add something cool to their collection. They usually are not knowledgeable enough about historical arms to distinguish between a quality, historical accurate swords and a cheap, poorly designed modern ‘replica’, neither are willing to spend time on doing research before they make the purchase. They just want something feels like the kind of sword they want, and those cheap products can fit such needs.
There are still people today are studying the design, functions of historical arms and produce quality reproduction. But these reproductions are quite expensive.
2:17
"Inlaid with green enamel"
My vision sucks and I'm tired, but that is blue
@John Tremblay i agree, turquoise ranges from a little greenish to this kind of bright blue.
Apparently, blue was considered green back when? For a turquoise color like that, I guess I could rationalize that.
Turquoise is green, granted its very close to blue.
That being said i agree the colour in the picture was blue
@@Sk1tz092
I heard Yanni
I'd imagine that at least a few times in history cheap replicas of high end swords were made to scam people into paying a sweet amount of money.
Even quite possible that at some point a peasant might have made a petition to a blacksmith to make a cheap sword only for looks disregarding everything else, as it was not strange back then for the peasants to try and imitate the upper class, even nowdays a lot of people buy cheap counterfeit clothing and accessories in an attempt to show off something that they clearly do not have.
ah yes, consumerism and emulation
We know this happened. There are several surviving examples of inferior swords trying to be passed off as the renowned Ulfberht made blades. These counterfeits sometimes didn't even spell the inlayed makers mark correctly (+VLFBERH+T or +VLFBERHT+ are the two correct inlay variations).
@@zenhydra That actually completely slipped my mind! I've actually had seen a video about that.
Goes to show how little society has actually changed doesn't it?
@@zenhydra Ah, I remember the guys at Men at Arms talking about it when they made their historically accurate high-quality replica.
@@rmg480 People are fundamentally the same as we ever were (not a compliment). I imagine that there was some jerk in Sumeria who was passing off his inferior beer as a fine Akkadian import.
Oh! I own that cheap cluney sword!
I really can't complain about the blade itself but yes, the grip hurts, alot. :(
As a rule of thumb, if something was used in a war, then it probably was cheap. Sure, you might have a nice well balanced or what have you weapon. Guess what's nicer? Two guys with weapons.
And because replicas are luxury items, the priorities change. It's about satisfying customers, not numbers.
That is generally true. Roger Ascham wrote how common English arrows for war were made of asp instead of ash, which he thought would be better. This was presumably a cost-cutting measure. However, in certain cases suits of full hardened infantry armor were produced in large sets. The guild system s simultaneously managed impressive quality & volume at times. Also, because of the limits of historical supply & logistics as well as morale dynamics, it wasn't necessarily practical to have more troops. Various military writers highlighted the advantages of having fewer & better soldiers.
Not Necessarily British officers in the Victorian era had to buy their own stuff and a lot of the times they bought higher end stuff from private well-known manufacturers like Wilkinson swords.... The stuff that they issued to the troops though, that was absolute garbage, cheap crap.... I would argue that’s the same with the modern day military, it’s not a high end target gun or some thing that you have custom built…
Wingzero83 exactly, it cracks me up when modern politicians say the public shouldn’t have military grade weapons in regards to semi automatic rifles like the AR platform. The private sector sells way better stuff and like you said, can be customized to you specifically. I tend to think the same way when looking back into history. Organized armies with mass produced equipment would of generally not had as good as a custom set up like what an officer might have.
RX7FDfreak Especially if you’re paying for it and you know I have to sword fight someone. If the regulation says you have to have a brass guard and you know brass is crap and can be cut through easily. I’m just going to get a steel guard and have it plated in brass.... It may cost more money but it’s helping save your hand.
@@RX7FDfreak Ask anyone in the military. Fortunate Son starts to play when they talk about receiver rattle. And no I was never in the military, a co worker told me this.
imagine wielding a legendary sword only to be one shot by a peasant with a longbow
Did you mean: The Battle of Agincourt
@@tommyscott8511 Crossbowman yelling YEET while you're still unscrewing your pommel.
Richard the Lionheart too.
@Memphis Keith ah yes, totally legit account
@UC_LY7rjcL7_HIf8RX9z7Zhw next time you use other accounts to promote a malware ridden app, try not creating your accounts 3 days apart
Oh yes, Dussack. The literal sharp piece of metal. The proud bohemian heritage.
Personally I love how cheap dussack looks.
As a hobbist blacksmith, and a mathematician that has done some design courses, the dussack is just a design made by a genius: cheap, easy to make, can be beauty, and fucking useful
It is surprisingly appealing
@@leonardorodini1947 I read that as *Hobbit blacksmith* and was very confused
Not as good as a katana
with the way blades were made back then, since everything was forged out, it didn't present any more work to taper the blade than to keep it straight. nowadays since everything is made from flat stock anyway, a distal taper is an extra step in the process
It’s still a lot of work to draw out a distal taper
lol forging a good distal taper is so much harder than grinding one, which is still pretty tough to get right. You need to get it pretty spot on on the rough forge or grind or you will be throwing away a good few hours of work, because there is a low spot you can't grind out anymore.
Clearly because some ancient swords that were found were dull, all medieval swords were blunt weapons used for striking
And weighed 22 pounds, minimum.
@@biohazard724
I saw someone who thought a longsword would weigh 20kg...
Thats idk around 36-40 pounds...
the better skill of the user the better they can cut, dull is relative.
@@xluca1701 My family thought they were all 10 kg yeah i miss 'em
@@tsmspace
Yeah I can cut rocks with a piece of flat steel
What if you did a charity stream for myarmoury?
The main difference between swords now and then:
Now, if the pommel falls off and the crossguard breaks, you can call the company and [try to] get a refund.
Then, if the pommel fell off and the crossguard broke, you wouldn't survive to tell the smith.
When you hear "My name is Ian Laspina" (or however thats written) in your head and have to correct yourself.
Great to hear your angle on the same topic, and cooperation / mutual inspiration between a few of my favourite creators.
thinking back, there are a number of references to these "amazing" or "magical" swords shattering or breaking into pieces, which is a risk with a high hardness metal..
The best example of a cheap sword breaking and causing injury was in a video from a QVC segment where the host takes a cheap katata, starts tapping it on a table, and part of the blade breaks off and flies back, stabbing him. ua-cam.com/video/2kFgeZtkAb8/v-deo.html
My own personal example of a cheaply made replica is my Marine Corps NCO sabre which started to rattle after just a little bit of use doing nothing more than military sword drills. Not sparring drills mind you, just ceremonial drills like drawing the sword, presenting it in a sword arch kind of stuff. What gets me is that this wasn't one of those cheap eBay knock offs either, it was (supposedly) made to Marine Corps specs and I was able to order it with the correct blade length based on my height and arm length.
Not an NCO yet, wondering if there’s anywhere you can get a high quality NCO sword from though... that would be cool.
@@papavader6084 Aside from Cold Steel, no one makes a sharpened version of the Marine NCO saber. Even, assuming, that Cold Steel still offers it, it's supposed to be heavy and kind of clunky. that's according to Matt. Even if that isn't the case or you're ok with that, it wouldn't necessarily meet regulatiations, according to the regs, the tip of the blade shouldn't go past your ears when held at the carry. So in order to get an NCO saber that meets regs, you'd have to buy one the usual unsharpened ones with the correct length of blade for your height.
2400 dollars for a year of hosting? Seems like he's getting gouged.
How much space does he need? Does he have some special hosting requirements? It doesn't seem like a site that would receive the enormous amount of traffic that would justify that price.
The site is both used as source or (more ideally) as a road to sources. But also the forum is very active and they should ditch being able to host the images there into myarmoury... I know, the value of doing that for you don't risk finding a really interesting topic and seeing all the images deleted from random image hosting site, but I'm sure that's one of the things that makes the hosting price go up.
$2400 IS a little high for a site like that - serves mostly text, no heavy media (videos), lower traffic, no intense backend stuff (db querying jillions of records), etc. even with a forums i can't see it taking more than a couple hundred GB/month to run.
@@punchyscyllarus565 stupid people pay stupid prices, my host costs 5€/month, unlimited traffic, all server tools, backups are automated + all console tools + for that 70€/year i can host unlimited amount of sub domains....
Now i pay for hosting for 4 separate web sites + yearly domain payments and thats for me 70€ + 4xdomain (5€ per domain)
@@jkarra2334 Well go help out and tell the chaps running myarmoury.
@@jkarra2334 Obvious question: Does that 60€/year host come with annoying small print like: "may delete site for any/no reason", "No mention of violence or historic population groups", "must respond to DMCA within 48 hours or get deleted with no further warning" etc. Such traps often form the difference between cheap and expensive hosting.
@2:03 green enamel? I see bright electric blue. Maybe I’m colorblind
No it's blue.
Looks more like turquoise to me and more blue than green yeah.
If it was made with turquoise, it would turn blue over time.
Yes, there IS a difference between "cheap" and "inexpensive".
Ones makes cutlery the other knives
Hey Skall, here's an idea for a video, watch and analize some clips from Forged in Fire, I bet people would love some ranting and the pure schadenfreude from you losing your mind :P
I remember them calling a longsword or armingswords "a crusadersword like Excalibur".
Historical accuracy had left the chat and jumped of a bridge.
"expertly crafted, and inlaid with green enamel" 2:09
Me: where is this green enamel? all I see is blue...
I also get a "baby's first sword" vibe from its design 6 ^ ^
The way Skall pronounces "example" is enjoyable.
"Many reproductions try to imitate the high end" That's why I like things like the Munich Towngurad cut and thrus sword/rapier (whatever). It's pretty close to mass production as it is. There are a couple versions of it sitting in multiple museums.
So budget replicas could have an easy time doing it right, by jsut somewhere laying within the specifications.
2:10 am I colourblind, or was it a mistake Skal? That's blue right?
I think Skal might be colour blind
I could see it being cyan... But green? Yeah, weird.
It’s blue.
It's the dress all over again
Definitely blue.
I'm most interested in the cool chair you have there, Skall. Looks really nice and comfy! Also great content you make, keep it up!
This is why i love watching the work of Ilya Alekseyev. He does a amazing job making blades in the older ways, just because the piece calls for it.
2:11 green? you're colourblind my man
No color blindness, not everyone agrees on tones between main colors.
I'd say it's cyan instead of green.
@@ansast883 I'm sorry but if you think that's green you have never seen green in your life
The sword you pulled out to display the distill taper and simplicity of construction I also have. In fact, I bought it due to your review! Can confirm it is a very simple construction and employs less than ideal methods to construct the handle, but it is a 1:1 exact replica of a museum piece of a common infantryman's sword. The tang is still thick and extends through the handle, the handle is properly shaped and beveled, the cord wrap is tight and VERY comfortable, and while the fitting of the brass guard isn't very tight, it is totally acceptable for its price and historical origin. Even if the handle breaks on me, which I don't think it will, it should be simple enough to just make a new one. Can definitely recommend as a first sword, since it's my first sword, too!
I'd like to see Skall playing Bannerlord while dressed as a viking. Anyone else?
Raid shadow legends
Here here
"I vill drink from yor *Skall* !!! "
Bannerlord is an unfinished, no content, dumpster fire with 2014 graphics and 2008 combat
@@gamma4053 Which is exactly why it's a dumpster fire. Why do modders have to do the developers job for them? If mods are what make a game good, the game itself isnt very good. Believe me, I want the game to be successful and hope its playable at some point. But in it's current state, for $40. Hard pass.
Green enamel? Without the intention of sparking debate, that is most definitely blue xD
Really enjoyed this, good explanation of steel quality (hardness vs toughness). Thank you!
I worked for quite a while selling and servicing high end Japanese hand made kitchen knives and recognized a lot of the talking points I would go through with customers. Great job!!!
Oh hey, I live in Cluny, the city from which the Cluny sword is originated,what a coincidence ! Like, I'm amazed that such a small town lost in the middle of the french countryside would have one of its swords reproduced by Albion (although it's true that the city has a huge and intersting history, and had a lot of influence during middle-ages), and said sword mentionned in your video !
great video, very informal, as always, thanks Skall !
If the master sword from Zelda was a rapier 2:08
threw some cash myarmory's way. Can't tell how many times I've looked up reviews & resources there, even without being a registered member.
Good website, good content!
Great video as always, Skall!
I just want to point a few things out about the wood for the handle and scabbard.
While we do have access to most woods that medieval folk had, the modern reproduction market chooses woods that are not really practical for the blade.
For example, ebony and rosewood are a common choice for many manufacturers and customers. They are expensive, strong and luxurious. However, a scabbard made of hardwoods like these can potentially ruin the blade over time, instead of preserving it, even if they are well made.
They have a higher acidity than softwoods which could corrode the blade over a longer period of time, and their higher silica content may scratch and dull them. Hardwood is okay for handles since the tang has no edge to be preserved, and the rust that may appear on it is just on the surface (unless it's a very very old sword).
Certain softwoods were the standard for scabbards, and most of the times, the handle too.
For example, certain poplar species, birch, and alder can be a great (and historical) choice. Hackberry is also a decent choice, but may cause some skin irritation. The American tulipwood (or "Yellow poplar" which is actually not related to real poplars), is a great choice too.
They have a much lower silica and acidity, so they can preserve the blade much better than hardwoods. They are also cheaper and easier to work with.
(As for the common poplar that are planted in towns and by the roads in Europe, forget about that. Those are weak and TOO soft.)
For Japanese swords, the traditional wood used for the handles and scabbards is a certain Japanese magnolia species. They call it Honoki. They air dry it in big quantities for about 8 to 10 years before cutting and carving them into shape for the handle and scabbard. They are pretty expensive though.
According to Peter Dekker, an expert of Chinese arms and armour, the handles and scabbards of Chinese blades were historically made of poplar and/or alder. However, sometimes the handles of Jians were made of hardwood, but the handles of Daos were always made of softwood.
Some really great sword manufacturers use hardwood instead of softwood. Like LK Chen. They make their handles and scabbards of ebony and rosewood, since they couldn't identify the wood on the antiques they studied. So they just went with that for the luxury. (I had a chat with them regarding this topic, and they might upgrade their handles and scabbards to poplar in the future.)
All this is just based on my research, and may not be 100% accurate.
I Have been at the Wallace Collection and it is FANTASTIC I will go again as soon as I can. Highly recommend and if you are a miser it won`t cost you anything either.
I love MyArmoury.com I'll have to consider supporting them. I also really liked Knyght Errant's video (all of them really) and I'm glad you did the same with swords.
Tod of Tod's Worshop did an excellent video on this topic. He argued that context is important when it comes to expectations. A Medieval person's expectations of a sword they commissioned are slightly different than the expectations of a modern consumer/collector of replicas. I personally don't fuss over minor cosmetic flaws: a gap between the hilt and the blade, a wavy ridge in the blade, a slight bend or warp, etc... Historical examples show many cosmetic flaws, including on high end swords. By the Middle Ages, sword fittings were manufactured separately, and the gaps between the fittings and the blade were par for the course. Things like cutler's resin and shims were used to tighten the gaps. A Medieval person obviously didn't mind too much about that, but we do. We certainly do mind about such flaws, and there is nothing wrong with that. Most of my favorite replicas are hand made, and I appreciate the little quirks they have, or what same may call flaws. It's all about expectations so far as I am concerned. Thank you for your efforts to help save MyArmoury. I had no idea it was in jeopardy.
Back in the days, the tip of a pick axe was quenched and tempered every week during heavy use. All the edged tools were case hardened. Period source say the piece was "steeled". The portion of the tool to be hardened was quenched at cherry red, and because it's heated in charcoal, the heating process is improving the carbon content of the very surface of the iron, transforming it into steel. Then the quenched part is tempered to the proper color, like purple for the edge of a wood working tool, or yellow for the tip of a rock mining tool. With this method of superficial heat treatment, only a few dozen micrometers of an iron tool, the depth at which the carbon from the charcoal infused, became really hard steel, and it would quickly wear off with use and sharpening, and call for another surface treatment.
This means that analyzing remains of iron or steel tool is not a good indicator of how hard the edge of the tool was during actual use. The structural part of the tool could be soft, still if a few dozen micrometers of the edge or tip of the tool are made hard enough by case hardening, the tool is good for at least some weeks of work, doing the same work as a modern tool that's through-tempered, albeit some bending. The thing we obtain with through hardening rather than case hardening is springness, and of course not having to case harden again each time the tool hardened steel surface wear off.
Imagine weilding the most epic legendary sword in the world with style then gets one shot by a wannabe gangstah indiana jones style...
@Joaquin Nicholas Soriano his sabre looked pretty thick
@Kaiser Franz von Lappen der 2. one is stupidity the other is cheating, i leave it to you to deside which is which
@Kaiser Franz von Lappen der 2. i said the most epic legendary sword in the world, not a knife. Fucchead.
@Kaiser Franz von Lappen der 2. get your idiom out of here idiot.
@@potatomatop9326
And if the sword's a Messer, the idiom works.
I just now noticed the frame you have around your video... I love it haha. That small detail does a lot for me haha
I'd have a hard time believing that the good functional swords would last long enough to get into a museum. The originals we've got now are literally the ones that people left at home when they went to war.
I must admit, I was suprised to hear about how hard some of those blades were.
As I would have assumed a hardnes of not much more than 45 HRC. Making a blade with a hardnes of over 50 HRC that doesn't shatter must have been no mean feat. Especialy with the - lets call it limited - controll over the exact composition of the materials in those times.
Sure, you can take even unalloyed steel to higher hardnes, and it's done in industrial applications, but those are usually more massive pieces like rollers, punches and dies, not thin blades.
I do work in the metall industry and we have pieces that go as high as 65-68 HRC. But those are made from high-alloy tool steel like S290. And you have to be carefull about the axis of shockloads even then, or they will shatter like glass.
So yea, a 55HRC medieval blade that does work? Call me impressed.
You should check out the Ulfberht Swords!!! They are over a thousand years old and when tested in a lab are extremely high grade carbon steel even by today's standards!!!
You get on some good talks often and i like them when they are long. :)
what u said at 17:00... i saw that happen at a demonstration held at a conference organised by a Japanese samurai "school" and it's representative in Romania. The japanese guy wanted to show a certain form of techniques, some kata, and he used his own sword for some very impressive cuts specially by a 70 year old guy,like really awesome clean cuts.They had the cuts in the program but the romanian organizers wanted him to show some form of techniques,some kata or something. His sword was already taken backstage and they provided a sword for him and apparently, it was a damn replica lol!:)))). What happen was that he did somekind of ceremony and than put the sword to his hips and did a draw cut,like iaido, and the power of the draw and sudden stop was so strong that the blade flew out of the handle into a set of chairs.Lucky thing was that the conference was held in an indoor soccer field,and the seats ocupied were on left and right and back and forward were all empty. The blade went halfway into the back of a seat and for 3 seconds it was so quiet you could hear air move if you tried:))))). The fuckin idiots brought him a replica,a modern cheap sword and the old man was probably training and doing that type of draw cuts for whole his adult life,decades and decades of training.He did smile and did a movement like he is trying the weight of the sword,i was far and couldn;'t hear but after the shit hit the fan i imediately realized he probably said that something is wrong with that sword.Anyway, indeed, tragedy could happen so for anyone that is not a sword practicioner, japanese or european, please do not show off your techniques with your sword that you found at some trift shop and looks great.You could hurt or actually kill someone for real.
I bought that Deepeeka on the 2nd hand market. I was intrigued by the hilt and got it for a good price. I didn't realize, at the time, it was a bad attempt at a museum piece. The first thing I noticed about it was just how damn balanced it is and after a bit of handling I realized it is really lively in the hand and very quick- like the blade is hardly there at all. Speaking of the blade- it looks like hammered shite. Out of all the swords I own, it has the worst forging I have ever seen, but man they got the balance right. This is probably a happy accident. Look forward to putting an edge on it this summer and seeing if it will cut. Just goes to show even a cheap knock-off can shine now and then. Great vid by the way- keep 'em coming!
Todd also makes a pretty good video about reproductions vs originals: ua-cam.com/video/TVL46CM9k80/v-deo.html
Basically a lot of reproductions are a lot better than the originals because modern consumers demand much higher quality.
That historical sword in the thumbnail and first part of the video is the sword I picked for my D&D character. It went overboard in a level 13 airship battle with dragons.
For a modern swordsmiths take on the high quailty swords of the past not being quite up to modern ideas of quality check out Tods Workshops video on this matter Original Vs Reproduction - Which is better? ua-cam.com/video/TVL46CM9k80/v-deo.html
8:17 what I like about the Fallgrim is that it’s details are slight but functional
Skall rocking the Greek statue beard I see ^.^
Looks nice
I seriously WISH that someone would make a quality peasant Dussack! I'd love to have one!
Skall: “hardness is as important as toughness”
Me: “hm yes I know the difference”
if it helps:
Hardness is the resistance to be indented , penetrated or scratched by another object. In steels, it correlates to how stiff and how much stress can the piece deal with before permanent deformation.
Toughness is the resistance to break by impact.
In steels, generally there is a tradeoff between both qualities. if you maximize toughness, the piece will have (relatively) low hardness. meaning the chances of breaking will be minimal if, for example, you drop it on the ground. And if you maximize hardness the piece might end up like a file or drill bit. virtually impossible to bend and scratch (with other steel piece) but will snap like a carrot if you hit it with a hammer or drop it on hard ground.
For swords you want a middle ground so it doesnt deform badly nor breaks during a fight, since the sword both deals and recives impactful blows.
These qualities, asuuming comparable alloys, are regulated mostly through heat treating.
Just adding that with modern methods and materials it's possible to get materials that are both relatively hard and relatively tough. Other than that totally agree with previous comment.
I love how he is getting it explained again, lol. More carbon, more hard
2020 : sword falls apart during testing > blacksmith gets bad review on internet.. 1400 : sword falls apart during battle> seriously p*ssed-off knight comes looking for blacksmith with a good quality mace to "have a conversation over a refund".. yeah, times weren't easy for scammers back then. XD
Not to mention that they wouldn't get the sword delivered and go right to battle. if the sword had issues they could just pop over and have a little chat.
"This was obviously made for nobility..... back in the day *cough*"
Yes, a lot of people seem to have noticed that pause. Good stuff.
comradezero totally not named after him or something,no
In my experience restoring Nihonto, (likely unusual in ways). It was the old Hitatsura Long Swords that broke and ended up O Suriage Wakizashi. All the splotches of Yakiba, and larger Niei crystal structures which are hard. May have potentiated the swords to break under combat stress. Although some were just shortened for practicality.
On thing with the nail is that the grip would be easy to replace just being wooden side pieces. In Afghanistan, they have knives that are very similar. And as it is used, they replace the small wooden (or ivory) pieces on the handle if it broke.
Donated. MyArmoury is my go-to website for link-spamming people about Oakeshott typology.
8:17 This was obvious made for nobility...
Congrats, Skall! I didn't know you were knighted!
Oh wow, I hope MyArmoury makes it, it was my main source for a uni project D:
I just bought my first sword and it should be ready in a couple months, I’ll be sure to check out myarmory, I need gear and an ax
The Bolick Dagger is a good example of Mass prettiest weaponry commonly thay had plain wooden handles but on the rare occasion you would find one's made for knights that had full metal handles with engraving even.
Rubber blade with glass edges, the modern macuahiutl, perfect :)
imagine going to the hospital and the doctors can't get all the glass shards out OUCH
Myarmoury is a great site with excellent resources and references. It would be a real shame if it came down.
Really liked this upload. Very informative for sure.
Ah, there's something I love about the simple, utilitarian swords, more than the blinged out stuff, even.
2:11 "green enamel". uh, am I the only one that sees BLUE enamel?
Nope, it's blue.
Let's be charitable to the critics and allow that it might be somewhat blue-green.
That's definitely blue, think skal might be colorblind
Way back you made a video how devastating ZombieTools "the Spit" is (thinking of ua-cam.com/video/F7z1ry6twsg/v-deo.html ) ... but there's really no review about it. So, what's your thoughts about it?
re. the point about distal tapers being absent in cheap reproductions, it can also go the other way - some reproductions I've seen, mainly of Chinese weapons, have such aggressive distal tapers that the point is as thin as a sheet of paper and completely incapable of supporting any sort of thrust or even its own weight. I own a Chinese dao that is so flimsy the tip can bend completely around to touch the pommel-ring. Of course, part of the reason for that is that wushu performances love that whippy snap sound effect they get from flimsy flopsy blades.
I know we're talking about swords, but I bet that book smells really good.
6:08 I just recently looked up that graphic for my pen&Paper Campaign preperation to cross reference with other metals because I let my party find reddish metla blades that withstood centuries without being properly conserved. Seems loke beryllium Copper (Copper beryllium?) is "close enough"
Hi Skall!
The most important thing about using wood for a grip.. is not the time... it's that you can use woodworkers... ie. Other artisans.. thus removing the entire task from your metal workers... it's actually a very nice wooden grip..
Distal taper back in the day when you had to draw out the metal every inch is custom made and while it might take a little while longer your not hammering the thick end as much and the thin end more so it evens out across the length of the blade. Being perfectly even all the way along might even be harder.
Looking at this fancy blue rapier and armor I started wondering: in games and books and movies we often can see swords made of some weird materials or for example iron from metheorite. I thought it would be nice idea for another vid of you, if weapons like that exist at all and there is enough of them for one episode longer than 3 minutes.
*Pommel falls off*
Marvelous, this saves me the effort of unscrewing it.
Good stuff, Skal.
Nice to see the kaskara get some love! :)
I have Depeeka cluny sword, it's great to handle, excellent for cutting practise and solo forms. A cheap sword has value if its cutting abillity and durability are equal. Feel free to disagree, I know you should only buy expensive swords, but I took a chance and honestly love it, the pommel and crossguard might be too thick for someone with small hands as my gf finds it a bit of a stretch but other than that your way off on this Skall
Keeping in mind the miserable quality of some historical weapons & armor helps explain the discrepancy in accounts of performance. For example, period texts often describe crossbows as powerful but one 15th-century sources says barrage of over a thousand bolt did about as much damage to English archers "as a shower of rotten apples." I suspect it depended on the crossbow. The same applies to armor; most 16th-century manuals highly praise armor but at least one (by Cesare D'Evoli) claims lots of weapons often defeated it. We know that the best historical armor of hardened steel offered three times the protection of the worst wrought iron. Various manuals noted the low quality of common arms & armor while stressing the importance of equipping troops with good gear if at all possible.
In practice, some period militaries simply couldn't or didn't want to spend the resources to provide decent kit for soldiers. Sometimes some Swiss pikers lacked even footwear while the best of them would three-quarters harness & weapons of hardened steel. In the 15th century, some Turkish soldiers had only a bow & arrows, only a sword, or even only a big stick. (A big stick or staff is perhaps the most economical weapon out there, as it's easy to come by in any forested environment and up close a few strong & brave fellows with wooden bludgeons can potentially overwhelm a single soldier with whatever equipment.)
I have a somewhat inverse relationship to katana as you it seems. I used to find them uninteresting and was easily annoyed by the bandwagon lameness around them, but for some reason have recently become enamoured of their simplicity, beauty and shape. Anyhow, that was all just to preface the fact that I'm asking a question about them. While researching for a future (when money is made available to me again and the world stops being SO difficult) purchase, I heard that many modern steels are far superior to the tahamagane used out of necessity only in the originals. I am wondering what modern steel they would compare best to, or if you know of a resource that might have comparative information about historical vs modern steels. I am wondering if saving up for a 1095 steel is worth it, or if a 1060 that I can already almost afford is sufficient. And maybe even better than what was available originally.
The lowest grade modern steel would be far and away better than the best ancient steel. In terms of purity, carbon content, and overall quality. For example, look at reproduction black powder guns, and compare them to the best preserved 150+ year old originals. In every way, the modern reproduction is "better" than the original.
Why does this remind me of the That Works and Shadiversity spat in the comments over this very subject?
Which was one of the most civil and lovely debates to read btw.
if you watch some of tod cutlers videos he talks about this to my Favourite is a bishops sword with his coat of arms on the pommel out of kilter with the rest of the hilt
I need to find Sir Radzig's sword! Those barstarsds have it
That common armor harness is interesting talk about that, are those slide rivets on the forarm there to fit many people?
Me whenever Skal or another tuber say they've been rambling on long enough: "No, no, stay with me! DON'T LEAVE ME!!"
20:00 That *sword* of thing...
I see Tobias Capwell's book. That's a nice book.
Have had a few cheap swords with decent blades that reworked made fun custom jobs
I asked my metallurgical buddy abou the Rockewell scale, he laughed and said that is is a very crude and unrefined measurement, steel has so many properties and also depending on how it is made and for what...
Well yeah, steel has a lot of properties, but Rockwell is explicitly only measuring one of those. It's not the "Rockwell Quality Scale", It's the Rockwell *Hardness* Scale. The fact that it maps reliably onto other measures of hardness shows that it does what it is meant to perfectly fine.
The difference between a commoner's sword and a nobleman's sword can easily be seen today in highly polished, limited edition engraved officer's pistols. Or highly deccorated pistols presented to heads of state, and the common Beretta issued in the Army
I don’t even care about weapon reproduction personally, and I would probably unironically donate to myarmory if I could.
09:24 The bohemian falchion is "forged out of single piece of me". They really don't make them like they used to.
Just to make a point about the cheap stuff in history, I would say it's absolutely possible that you could buy a weapon that you might expect to have a rapid unscheduled disassembly.
If only because there are plenty of cheap firearms you could reasonably expect to at least not function. If not, have a rapid unscheduled disassembly.
Mom, can we have dussack?
No, we have dussack at home
Dussack at home: 8:56
Mom, all my friends have dussacks.
Ok, child, have this dussack: 9:38
Sometimes in all of the the difference between forged and cast metal is confused. When you originally cast steel, and we've had steel of some type or another for almost as long as we've had iron, it's in an ingot. Until modern casting methods were developed this meant it would have inclusions (small bits) of slag and other materials from the ores used and the casting itself. It would also have the carbon erratically mixed throughout the material, so hard spots and soft spots. If you heat the material to the correct working temperature, beat it flat with a hammer and continually fold the material over on itself you are forging. Very time consuming, requires skilled labor, works best if you have a mill in or something like it to mechanically drive the hammer, and you lose a lot of material, though you can recycle it, because the hammering expels material. Good blades are usually forged. Modern plate metal is usually a high quality ingot squeezed into shape by successive rollers, thus fufiliing the sane general purpose as forging. Plate metal will never be as high quality as a good forging. I'm not addressing the effects of heat treating here. Watch one of the videos of a master Japanese craftsman making a sword blade and you can see the process. Because the Japanese used military swords until recently their blade making traditions survived. It's not that they were any better at it.
One of the reasons Austria has some of the best surviving depositories of armor and bladed weapons is that parts of Austria and the old Holy Roman Empire (later Austro-Hungary), like Styria, had metal ores, abundant coal for high temperature furnaces, lots of wood for fires also, mechanical and hydraulic power for machine hammering and forging from the many water mills in a land of mountains, rivers and steep canyons, skilled smiths and the need for a multitude of high quality weapons due to the nearly continuous wars the Holy Roman Empire found itself in with France, German and Scandanavian princes, Protestants, the Turks and others. Since Austria and Vienna became the seat of the empire, and were close to the main centers of armament production, they also became the place that weapons were stored in armories. The continuous wars left no time for the "beating of swords into plowshares" of other European areas. Because of the nature and tactics of the wars with the Turks, which extended into the 19th Century, armor and blade weapons had a longer usuable life span there and so were stored in good conditions. Austria, Bohemia (the Czech Republic) and southwestern Germany (Schwabia/Baden Wurtemmburg/Stuttgart) still remain centers of quality armament production as they were in Imperial times.
I suspect the "named" swords in northern European countries may have been crafted from iron-nickel meteorites, which were easier to spot in more barren lands. The metal in the cross sections of some meteorite that I have seen is of excellent quality to begin with, and similar to today's advanced and chemically controlled alloys. This occurred during the natural processes that formed the "fallen stars". When you start with a high grade raw material and combine it with the best craftsmen available at the time you'll get an excellent blade, though very expensive and rare.
Hope this info from a former aerospace metallurgical materials engineer is helpful.
Time for a co-lab between Skal and Michaelcthulhu to make the ultimate sword?
I was gonna say, I think hardox would impress him. It's seriously tough stuff.
@@uncagedulfhedinn2525 Michaels blades seems indeatructable 😅 Skal designs, Michel builds, destructive testing with heavy metal commences!
i have donated 145.90 CAD (100usd) anonymously on armory but I'm posting it here. show my solidarity to this community
How often would one man make a good quality plain sword, and whoever bought it had the fancy guard, hilt wrap and scabbard/sheath. oh and I read somewhere that Navel swords were meant to rattle in the scabbard, so that bad weather or water wouldnt make them stick. How true is that, as far as you know.
Im the one that mentioned nordic gold,nordic gold is 89%copper 5%aluminum 5%zinc 1%tin and is almost as hard as steel but much more...yellow
Who calls that brass material "nordic gold" ?
Its not brass it has more then zinc and copper in it if you look up nordic gold youll see the 50 cent euro which is made of nordic gold
@@nullsnaggle5198 It could also be described as a kind of Bronze, but it's certainly not gold except perhaps in colour.
@@johndododoe1411 I know its just the metals name I dont know why😌
Hey Skallagrim, i am just gonna throw my idea at this 9:37 . It looks to me more like unfinished product than crude weapon. It is possible that the blacksmith didn't have the time to finish this weapon. It could be made in to this shape 8:57 quite possibly. This looks to me like a more probable option.