Swords, in real life.

[Duper]

Iv made weapons for the local chapter of 'the society of creative anachronisms' who do battle with real swords & armour etc. Iv made Halberds, Bills, Pikes etc.

Thanks for the reply Rij, a couple of things. I agree, I conceed on the number of times it's folded. The swords my wife's brother-in-law i believer are genuine. I examined them closely and they are folded ... lots of times. He was also approached by 2 or 3 sword hunters over the years tracking down particular family heirlooms.
The SCA is not in the habit of fighting with live steel. If they are they need to have thier heads examined. They most typically use rattan wrapped in duct tape (an SCA Must ) and sometimes reinforced with plastic strips.

Great links thanks!


Yea Cuda.. whatever. nice bat'leth. I've seen one, not this nice in that sword shop in the Clackamas Mall. They have replicas by the same artist that made the knife in last Star Trek movie.

[rijruna]

gday again ppl, another note of interest is this linky http://www.vikingsword.com/ethsword/index.html
it has a lot of other ethnicly oriented weapon types, but by no means a complete listing.
I try to make any submissions here as factual as possible & therefore help spread the knowledge, after all, what is knowledge unless its used & shared? [useless is what.] There is one piece of my metal-work over in the US. When Suncho came out for our small LAN a few months ago I gave him one of my belt-buckles made from my laminated-chain-damascus as a reminder of his stay & play. I havent thought about asking him to post a pic of it to show but will do when Im in chat next time.
The steel I make is unique in that when I figured out how to do it without massive wastage of materials, there was only a handfull, [& no not 2 hands either in the world to succeed at it, the count would now be still under 200] & that took a coupla yrs of fooling around with different types of heat sources & I finally ended up using an LPG fired furnace of my own design for its constant temps available & ease of immediate heat & with no messy dust as in blacksmiths forge.
Just as a hint as to how long Iv been around hot metals, I grew up on a farm where my grandfather & uncles used the farms forge for repairs to implements & to make new shoes for the draught-horses & riding horses. My g/father wouldnt allow a tractor onto his farm until he was in his 80`s. So, I grew up around hot metals & it hasnt stopped yet & I`m 50.
Again, I`m only too happy to provide info to interested people, as I dont have an apprentice to pass on my knowledge to & if I`m able to get others interested, well, its all good. After all, there wouldnt be many young people today who would be interested in a noisy dirty & dangerous work such as black-smithing for a line of work. Anyways, if I can be of further help to those who want information, let this thread keep going, & I`m glad that you liked what Iv linked so far.
cheers
rij

[Arol]

[quote
because carrying a ****ing katana around would be so much more badass than having a pistol.

i mean honestly, who would **** with a person crazy enough to have a katana? having a katana on your belt PREVENTS conflict, rather than solves it

Maybe, sometimes.
But remember the first Indy Jones movie?
Lot of fancy sword play.
Indy says -"Oh the H... with it.", and pulls out his 38 and puts an ounce of lead in the head of the swordplayer!

[Ympakt]

Re: The four millione folds....

Perhaps the swords had over four million layers in them , that's a bit more likely. You'd only have to double over the piece of steel 23 times to get over four million "folds" in the steel. Try it; divide 4,000,000 by 2, then that answer by 2, etc.. and you wind up with .95XXXX. Not too difficult to add up the layers in 23 folds. If you actually wanted four million folds, you'd start forging an ingot and wind up hammering dust!