Say I had a full readout of the stats for a particular sword. What would I need to know to determine if it's actually a battle-ready blade versus some cheap replica that will break on the 4th swing?
>Pic only semi-related
Say I had a full readout of the stats for a particular sword...
Jonathan Lopez
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Leo Murphy
if it's cheap it's shit
if it's stainless it'll kill you
if the tang isn't made properly it'll fall apart
David Ross
What do you mean "stats"? Like /tg/ shit, or the dimensions of the blade?
If you're worried, get one with a full tang. If it makes no mention either way, its got a rats tail.
Owen Carter
most important part would be what materials its made of. there are other more important things like taper,weight distribution, actual weight but those are never listed.
all you get is generic shit like 34 inch blade with no mention of any other dimensions.
Ayden Rogers
Just tell us what sword it is and the "stats" you have for it
Jayden Lopez
I mean dimensions and such
The one I 'm looking at says the following
>Blade length: 35inch
>Handle length: 7 1/2 inch
>Blade material: Hand made 6150 High Carbon Spring Steel
>Blade width with Guard: 1 13/16"
>Weight: 2lb. 15"
>Center of Balance: 5 1/2 inch
>Scabbard/Grip: Antiquated green leather
Landon Perry
The fourth swing at what?
A sword will cut pineapples all day, not so much cobblestones.
Mason Morris
deus vult!
Nicholas Myers
A lot of the really serious flaws well be in the hilt construction, the tang in particular. This makes them rather hard to spot without X-raying the hilt or ripping it all apart. The steel and its heat treatment is also very important, and while avoiding the more obvious things (cheap stainless steel for example) will cover some of these, things like every twentieth sword tuning out a lemon because the heat treatment isn't done consistently enough is at times bugger to spot without destructive testing or some pretty serious lab equipment. Measuring the hardness can give you a clue if you know where the specific steel grade should sit, but only for the parts you can reach to measure. And as you're probably hoping to spot this on a sellers store page, well, in the rare cases that a hardness is given that's probably for a sword that turned out ok, not the occasional fuckup.
On the design front a sword with very off specifications will of course point to a bad sword, say if it's grossly overweight. Spotting a good sword this way is a lot harder though, since proper balance involves not just weight and centre of gravity but also rotational and vibration nodes. And what's right here varies from one sword to another. The cheap, shoddy wallhanger look (mallninja styling, overwrought but poorly made pot metal hilt components in some fantasy style, etc) also points to a sword being crap, while a very well researched historical design means the maker knew what he was doing in one part at least.
And so on. Overall you're probably going to have to first learn a decent bit about swords, ideally including handling a few antiques and/or well made replicas. Then read reviews of the makers work, and finally inspect the sword yourself to be about as certain as you can get that you have something good.
Adrian Sanders
A lot of that will depend on what kind of sword it is. What's grossly overweight for a smallsword can be grossly underweight for a greatsword. And a lot of really important information is stuff you'll most likely never see in a description like that. You may be able to spot a few bad ones by some number being way off for the sword type (a number of Cold Steel's designs have decidedly preposterous weights for example)m but that's just very rough sorting.
While an all-out rat tail tang is bad, any tang style can be made dangerously bad by for example not radiusing the tang-hilt junction. Also note that sword and knife people seem to call things different here. A rat tail tang is just a thin threaded rod welded to the end of the blade, while it seems knife people think any tang noticeably narrower than the grip is a rat tail.
The poorer wallhangers can easily break after the fourth swing at nothing but air.
Nathaniel Thompson
Don't overthink it really. Hold it vertically and slap it from the side. If the blade shakes in the hilt it's utter shit.
Generally you can tell if it's utter shit just from looking at it but swords are made for stabbing people and even the cheap ones will do it very well.
No sword no matter how expensive was made for hitting a tree with repeating beating off a pell. If you're cheap sword breaks doing that it's your own retarded fault.
I wasted alot of my youth learning about steel quality and bladesmithing and wasted money on expensive knives and honestly with knives and even sharp swords it really doesn't matter. You can put an edge on anything a cheap sturdy piece of shit will get way more use because i'm not worried about sharpening it.
My fencing swords ok I put alot of autism into but if you knew what you liked and wanted in a sword you wouldn't be asking OP. If you want something to cut bottles with and traumatise the jury in a home invasion case get the best reviewed middle price range sword that you like.
You don't need a sports car of a sword if you're not gonna race it.
Juan Rodriguez
Kill a peasant with it.
Aaron Turner
>What would I need to know to determine if it's some cheap replica that will break on the 4th swing?
swing it four times and count the pieces
Julian Long
To what end? What are you going to do with this? You could spend $50 or $5000 and you’re unless you're Connor Macleod who cares
William Martinez
Sounds good so far, now go read some reviews of the manufacturer. They don't have to be for that specific sword, the important thing is to find out how their durability and quality control are in general.
Austin Collins
the maker's reputation goes a long way here.
Also, "battle ready" in this day and age, most likely means it was made for reenactors, which means a blunt blade, and heat treated to withstand repeated impacts when swinging wildly, because reenactors are hobbyists with no real training, and they tend to do stupid shit.
Case in point:
youtube.com
Jeremiah Butler
good film
Justin Wood
>Say I had a full readout of the stats for a particular sword. What would I need to know to determine if it's actually a battle-ready blade versus some cheap replica that will break on the 4th swing?
Who cares its all fake and gay rubbish for morons. All repro swords are.
Daniel Parker
>Connor Macleod
Woul have better choices available to him than some shit made by a former hobbyist who is now a 'swordsmith' or some crap thrown out of a Chinese factory that was made for autistic spergs to hit plastic containers with
Hudson Phillips
>read some reviews of the manufacturer.
>the maker's reputation goes a long way here.
This.
"Stats" are worthless if you're still buying some cheap chink repro shit.
Benjamin Brooks
As it is all worthless crap with no value whatsoever does this really matter? All modern made swords are completely gay fatuous toys
Cameron Watson
Problem with modern swords is they're not manufactured really for fighting, in so much most are made to a screaming low budget, survive the tantrums of hopped up kids full of sugar whacking on all sorts of weird shit. Milk bottles, trees, pieces of meat, ballistic jello men and bits of car. In order not to get dozens of returned goods due to 'I dun broke it', its over engineered and over weight to survive the fury of 1000 spergs a day and tend to be completely fine for that purpose. The fact as many of them do survive as long as they seem to do is either a testament to modern engineering or couch potato upper body strength.
"Real" swords are very light, they tend to have quite a fine edge and made by people who go that extra length into the normalising cycles, hardening and subsequent heat treatments and they cost REAL money, but for the most part they're not subject to the same abuses that your sub-$500 tree beater is. So there's that completely different market in making a sword in terms of who will buy it and its capabilities as a martial weapon.
David Walker
It really has a lot to do with the manufacturer’s reputation. If you can’t find anything anywhere online about them, you should be skeptical. If the price seems too good to be true, it is. You are not the one and only weeb to find the one and only diamond in the rough sword maker.
Logan Lopez
I’ve noticed this. There seems to be differing definitions of what a rattail tang is. Also, for some, stick tang is an interchangeable term, and for others, it isn’t.
Adam James
>Say I had a full readout of the stats for a particular sword
OP confuses vidya and real life. Is it +1 damage on larping as hobbit, hum what if I larp as an elf or a renaissance knight...humm
Thomas Davis
>It really has a lot to do with the manufacturer’s reputation
Or in other words how much money they spend on fake reviews and shitty websites that act as marketing clearing houses for worthless reproduction junk and sword shaped objects for spastics to hit fruit with
Evan Cook
>they cost REAL money, but for the most part they're not subject to the same abuses that your sub-$500 tree beater is. So there's that completely different market in making a sword in terms of who will buy it and its capabilities as a martial weapon.
Or you could just buy an actual antique sword for less.
Ryan Bailey
Fake reviews for stuff =/= solid reputation for a swordsmith
If you are thinking a 5 star review on BudK counts, you deserve your mtech shit
Colton Williams
>Or you could just buy an actual antique sword for less.
For sure, the thought of mad kids running around with antique cavalry sabres fucking them up kind of does bad things to my feels though
Logan Peterson
>for a swordsmith
O keld some spastic with no tradition or knowledge trying to reinvent centuries of expertise by growing a beard and pretending he's a dwarf from the hobbit in Wyoming making sheckels selling sword shaped objects to roleplayers
Samuel Miller
>>Or you could just buy an actual antique sword for less.For sure, the thought of mad kids running around with antique cavalry sabres fucking them up kind of does bad things to my feels though
Sure it does but hang on, they bought them to use as weapons right? Not to prance about slapping each other with with or hit fruit with? I mean the original owners never trained with their expensive sabres they used wooden singlesticks, or foils ....really makes you think and wait for it....they used them on horseback and wait for it....in the late renaissance they did not use large two handed swords they used...smallswords. Large two handed swords were in fact largely use for controlling unarmed civilian mobs. Of course this is irrelevant to hemafags, they just want to play at LOTR which would be fine if they admitted it and FUCKED OFF to /sp where their gay 'sport' has a home.
David Butler
>blade steel
>temper
>handle construction (peened/screw etc)
Michael Martin
Oh, hemafags are the least of the worries.
You know who's going to buy them... and what they're going to do
Ryder Cooper
Except the ones that are far superior to your autisthentic, rusted-through 100 year old wallhangers.
William Price
> I mean the original owners never trained with their expensive sabres they used wooden singlesticks, or foils
People definitely did use their "expensive" (more like munitions grade, more often than not) swords for training. Not for practice against others (that just won't end well), but for cutting practice and other stuff like that.
We have accounts of that from all over the world. Hell, we even have accounts of people making fun of the ineffective cuts delivered by those who didn't do it.
Besides, nobody in HEMA today spars with a fucking antique military weapon.
>in the late renaissance they did not use large two handed swords they used...smallswords.
>Smallsword
>used from the late 17th to the 19th century, peak popularity in the 18th
>renaissance
Why do the people who bash HEMA never fucking know what they're on about?
Renaissance swords can be anything from basket hilted dussacks to rapiers, side-swords, and so on and so forth. There was a huge variety of weapons in that period of time. Saying smallswords were used then is really stretching the definition of renaissance. Also, smallswords were never intended for battlefield usage. Those who expected serious combat were armed with something more substantial.
And yes, they used plenty of two-handed sword types too. Swiss sabres, kriegsmessers, longswords, and of course the really fuckhuge two-handers which were almost exclusive to that time period.
Two-handed weapons were still used with quite some frequency into the 1600s. This Swiss sabre for example, in spite of how fancy it looks, was part of a batch of swords and made for military use.
>Large two handed swords were in fact largely use for controlling unarmed civilian mobs.
They also are depicted in shitloads of military contexts from protecting officers to storming openings.