It would depend upon what kind of gambeson and what time period. Early gambesons tended to be thick for use with maille. Later gambesons, such as the aketon, were thick enough to almost be armour in and of themselves! Later gambesons (ca. 14th-15th century) such as an arming cotte were thinner, but ...
From my experience, using a cold connection (rivet/bolt) on any portion of a sword blade is a very bad idea. Swords have to be forged of one uniform piece of steel. You cannot rivet or weld separate pieces onto a blade to build it up without completely compromising the integrity of the blade. In my ...
Sorry, but Cold Steel's video of puncturing a car hood with a zweihander is just, well, special lol. I don't know about you, but I am still looking for the Lichtenhauer verse regarding how to take on an opponent in a vehical.
The tone of the steel is likely going to be related to how well the sword blade was hardened and tempered. Hardening steel involves heating it to a high temperature where it’s in its austenitic crystalline phase and then quickly cooling it through quenching (the cool part where the smith plunges the...
One thing I noticed in the Mythbusters test was the narrator was saying that the high-quality katanas were cast. Steel blades, regardless of where they were made, were not cast, but forged. I seriously doubt that the blades they were using in the video were cast because they were actually flexing wh...
I have to remind members of my study group that the objective of sword combat (or any combat for that matter) is to give the other guy scars. However, I'm sure that there were many grizzled veterans that wore their scars with pride. There has been some fascinating finds at the site of the battle of ...
