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The Qualities of a
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| VIDEO: Tinker Cutting Tree Branches
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During the course of this the owner of the property looked down at us from the patio and asked if we weren't worried about the swords. I responded that these particular swords were originally designed (in-period) for hacking apart people in chain-mail; I didn't expect mere tree-branches to be much bother!
These were not hyper-expensive custom swords with ultra-high-technology materials; they were swords made in China and priced at under $350 USD. Nonetheless they held up fine; in fact at least as well as 'real' swords would have in-period. Afterwards they needed extensive cleaning to remove sap but that was all.
Many people in the sword-world are used to excusing swords for poor quality because they are inexpensive but as my father once told me, "A dog-turd isn't a bargain just because it only costs a nickel!" There's a simple truth that we in the world of sword enthusiasts need to embrace; there are objective standards for what is or is not a 'good' sword. In reviews it's fairly common to see a sword described as "good for the price". What we need to understand, however is this: A bad sword can never be "good for the price". A bad sword is a bad sword, period. Price does not excuse it's badness. The fact that the sword is cheap does not magically render it safer or more capable.
To be a good sword the standard is simple - will the sword do what it was designed to do? I don't mean, "Will it part the credulous from their money?" which too many swords are in fact designed to do. I mean, "Will it perform the task that this sort of sword was originally designed to do?" If the answer is 'yes' then it's a good sword.
Should we expect a sub-$400 sword to perform as well as a $1200 sword? Not necessarily - but we should still expect it to fulfill the function for which it was designed.
So, when we are speaking of European style swords - particularly medieval swords - what are the qualities that mean that a sword is 'good?' These qualities can easily be broken down into several categories, the first of these being:
Steel and Heat Treat
The steel that a swords blade is made of is of supreme importance - and at the same time is almost irrelevant. How can that be? Simple - steel is nothing without a quality heat-treatment. The most cheap, pedestrian steel with a good temper is better than the best steel in the world with a bad temper. Let's go back and explain this a bit.
A sword's 'temper' depends on how it is heat-treated. Heat-treatment of steel happens in two phases: hardening and tempering. To harden steel it is heated to a critical temperature called solution temperature'. At this point the structure of crystals in the steel has dissolved. The heated steel is then 'quenched', usually in some sort of oil. The rapid cooling causes crystals to reform, making the steel very hard but brittle. The blade must then be 'tempered' to make it less brittle. This also makes it less hard. Generally tempering is accomplished by heating the steel slowly to a temperature of a few hundred degrees. Different steels require different temperatures, different amounts of time or both. The object, in the end, is a tough, flexible blade that holds an edge reasonably well.
How hard is hard enough? How flexible is flexible enough? This will vary by sword type and use, but period swords often had blades hardened into the forties on the Rockwell scale that we use today for measuring the hardness of cutlery. These blades probably needed extensive sharpening after use, but they served their purpose. Today we can do rather better with modern steels- a Rockwell hardness of 50-53 has been found to be a good compromise temper.
As for flexibility I once saw a slightly tipsy collector flex a 10th C. Viking sword to over 90 degrees of deflection and have it return to true. While this sort of flexibility isn't the rule it did exist. For modern swords I usually specify 45 degrees of deflection and returning to true as the minimum. I did not pull this number out of a hat; it's the amount of observed deflection when photographing people cutting with swords. Less flexibility than that and if some one does a bad cut the sword is likely to bend.
Balance, distribution of mass and Harmonic Balance
Often we pick up a sword, and if it feels good in the hand we say that it is 'Well Balanced'. Generally by this we mean that it feels good when we wave it around. This can be a good indicator of the sword's balance - or no indicator at all. That depends on what the person waving it around knows. A person that knows nothing about swords may think that it feels fine while a more knowledgeable person might realize that it's all wrong. Balance doesn't just control how the sword feels in the hand; it controls how easy it is to make the sword track in the cut, how easy it is to control the point and whether or not it stings your hand when you cut.
It is possible to take a properly made sword and make a steel bar of the same length with a hilt added have an identical weight and Center of Gravity (COG) yet the proper sword will feel brilliant in the hand while the other will be an unusable mess. It will feel heavy, awkward, be difficult to control and will shock the hand when you strike with it. What's the difference? The way the mass is distributed.
Real swords - meaning antiques from the period and a minority of modern reproductions - tapered in profile and in thickness. This accomplished much of the balancing of the blade. The pommel is often cited as a 'counter-weight' to the blade and so it is to some degree. More importantly the pommel is a 'tuning device' to fine-tune the handling and harmonics of the blade.
Most medieval swords when properly made will balance at a point somewhere between 23-33% of the swords overall length measured from the point to the pommel. This will place the COG on the blade, which allows for not only a kinesthetic feel for where the point is and what it's doing but allows proper harmonic balance. For more about Harmonic Balance reference this article:
http://www.tinkerswords.com/Harmonics.html
Assembly, Fit and Finish
Another factor where a sword can succeed or fail is in the assembly of the hilt.
There was a major difference between the construction of antique swords and modern swords; modern swords are made entirely of steel in one piece. The blade, tang etc. is a single piece of steel. Contrary to this it seems to have been the nearly universal practice from the Middle Ages until well into the 19th C. to make a steel blade and scarf-weld it to a wrought-iron tang. This means that the tang, shoulder of the blade and the first couple of inches of the blade were made as a separate piece and forge-welded to the blade.
This means that we do have some different considerations; the tang needs to be treated differently because unlike the wrought-iron tang and shoulder of a 'period' blade the modern sword's tang is hard and subject to work-hardening in a way that was not true of the originals. This means that the shoulder (the join of the blade and tang) has to be well-rounded to avoid creating stress-points that can cause the blade to snap off at the tang. Ideally the tang should have a lower temper than the blade as well.
On a Medieval Sword the guard was tightly fitted, sometimes with wooden wedges to make certain that it was fully tight. The handle was made of two or more sections of relatively light wood sandwiched and glued together over the tang, then wrapped in cord or wire and typically then covered with thin leather. The pommel fit snugly on the tang with a short section of the tang protruding, which was then flattened to 'rivet' the handle assembly in place. This method stood the test of time for centuries and stayed in use because it was the best hilt-assembly method that their technology allowed.
In about 1625 a firm of cutlers in England created a different method of holding on the hilt by cutting a screw-thread on the tip of the tang which was secured by a nut that was counter-sunk into the pommel. Note that this is NOT a 'screwed-on pommel'. In this case the pommel was not free to rotate, but rather 'keyed' over the rectangular section of the tang. Variations on this method continued to be used alongside the traditional 'riveted' construction until the dawn of the 20th century, though it was never as common as the older method.
Both of these methods survived the test of centuries of use and work as well today as they ever did. Provided, of course, that there are no serious problems with other aspects of the sword's design and construction.
Things that do not work as well include pommels that screw on to the tang and 'rat-tail' tangs. Screwed on pommels tend not to work well as a rule, although if the thread is large and robust and the pommel has a very regular distribution of mass (such as a 'scent-stopper' pommel) it can work well enough. In the case of disc-pommels however the uneven distribution of mass makes it 'want' to rotate when the sword experiences vibration from a strike or parry. Basically when the sword is used the pommel unscrews itself. Another draw-back is the handle - these tend to 'settle' over time, sometimes compressing slightly so that when the pommel loosens as a result once it is re-tightened the pommel will be out of alignment.
A 'rat-tail' tang is one where there is a short stub of tang protruding from the base of the blade with a section of screw-thread for the rest of it's length. Typically this is either 1/4-20 or 6mm-1 thread. This thin of a threaded rod isn't strong enough to withstand the forces exerted on the tang during use. This thread is also almost always poor-quality threaded rod that is simply tack-welded in place.
Welded tangs are another issue- often the screw-thread of any kind of tang is welded on. There is nothing wrong with this in and of itself if the welds are of good quality and the weld is 'normalized' afterwards. But far too often production companies either do a poor job of the welding or fail to relive the stresses and hardening that can accompany a weld, making a join that will break under stress.
The first thing about Fitting a sword- everything should fit well and be snug. No rattles, no large ugly gaps filled with glue (or simply gaping open.) As to finish - a sword doesn't need a good finish to be a good sword- but a good finish can indicate that some one cared enough to make certain of it The finish should be attractive to the eye and be regular and even. It doesn't need to polished like a mirror; in fact swords are often over-polished to hide defects and to initiate the male, "Oooooh-Shiny!" response.
In the end...
...The trick to buying a good sword is no trick. Know what you want, know what the sword is for and know what makes a 'good' sword. Ask questions and be willing to walk away if a useful answer isn't forthcoming.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Michael Tinker Pearce has been making swords and other blades since 1992, his interest in medieval swords piqued with his participation in role playing games in the 1970s. He is the author of the book, The Medieval Sword in the Modern World, and is a well known and highly respected sword maker - his most recent collaboration with the Hanwei forge to produce a line of low cost medieval swords that comply with his extensive requirements for a good sword.
