Even more sword-on-sword bashing experiments! [Video!]

[Jonathan Newhall]

I found this clip from the show mythbusters from a while ago http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/mythbusters-slicing-a-sword.html

They do some sword on sword high quality steel (and even a stainless steel, just to illustrate the difference) edge on edge and edge on flat tests with a very high powered strike using a motorized device (for safety of course).

The results are interesting, despite being from Katanas, and very in line with what we should expect. If ARMA's movies about edge bashing don't satisfy your curiosity, these might do the trick.

This has a surprising amount of relevant information, except that cutting through a sword due to sharpness (mentioned briefly) isn't really what's going to happen unless you're talking on the monomolecular level of sharpness :p

Spoiler, stainless steel snaps like a twig to high carbon even edge on flat, and the high quality on high quality steel blocks edge on flat (with a tiny bit of dulling due to the force of the strike) and the blocking sword snaps when they hit edge on edge, although this appears to not be from the actual hit location (what might have caused this??). Regardless, you will note that the gouge in the sword from the edge on edge hit is ENORMOUS!

[Eric Mains]

Thanks, I've been looking for this one.

[CalebChow]

Awesome video.

The thing that concerns me is just how bent the "victim" sword was after the edge on flat...

I'm guessing the swinging machine is a tad bit harder and the static positioning of the swords are significantly more rigid than any real situation, but...that bend looks pretty nasty.

[Jonathan Newhall]

Yes, the actual strike from the swinging machine seems to be a moderate deal heavier than any real strike would be (to test a "high end" scenario, I assume), and no block would be held so rigidly, either.

But yeah, that sword gets bent pretty hard, which is disconcerting for anyone with a katana, at least.

[JoeyNaeger]

That's not to surprising as the spine is quite soft on a katana that's been differentially hardened. I suspect a through hardened sword would hold up better.

[Maxime Chouinard]

Yeah well, I would prefer my sword to bend a bit than to break. Anyway the sword looks like a basic Paul Chen sword, very low quality and a bit flimsy. It might interest you to see what happened with other swords: http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=6KUVGKOU4cY

The rapier didn't fared well, I might say it is very disconcerting for a rapierist, but it is in no way conditions that a sword is supposed to go through, and again it looks like some Paul Chen blade. These tests may be a lot of fun but they are made to produce visually exciting results. I'm pretty sure that if nothing had broken they would have used a hand grenade or something.

[Stacy Clifford]

That rapier didn't have a very beefy cross section like some did, it looked like the kind that would flex if you even shook it hard. I'm sure one with a triangle or star cross section or some other thicker spine would have held up much better and not whipped like a wet spaghetti noodle. However, there are apparently plenty of accounts of rapiers snapping in combat (not being cut), so it's apparent from history that they weren't particularly designed for parrying strong blows in the first place.

I think it's worth noting for the public reading this thread that the scenario they depict in their test is the worst case of a hard parry with no give at all. A real parry with human hands is much more dynamic and will absorb some of the impact, not just oppose it cold, and make blade snapping much less likely.

[Maxime Chouinard]

I agree with you Stacy, like I said a sword is not made to perform under such conditions.

[Jaron Bernstein]

I agree with you Stacy, like I said a sword is not made to perform under such conditions.

I have a cheap MRL sharp that I could offer as sacrificial victim sword.

[Chris Ouellet]

One of the things the mythbusters tests fail to account properly for is the momentum of the body of the swordsman. They did a decent job, but their machine does a static-standing cut, which is rare in actual swordfighting.
It doesn't seem like a lot but in collisions impulse is related to momentum and the body can add significant power to a blow through proper displacement (generally from the hip).
Furthemore the cutting angle they used to calibrate their machine is an above the head cut, whereas the most powerful cuts the human body can deliver come from above the shoulder in a 45 degree angle.

So their tests are not conclusive, when this first came out I pointed this out on their forums but they've ignored it. I'm surprised the swordsmen they had doing tameshigiri didn't insist on momentum and a 45 degree cut. The swordsman's cut was decent, a little slow to test the true limits of skill, but a good benchmark for a decent cut.
The ARMA tests are much better overall.

[CalebSlagle]

I also noticed the shopping channel did their own experiments related to this subject. Really interesting observations on the roll of manufacturing quality if you ask me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_N4hprpRJhM&eurl=http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&q=sword%20accident&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wv&feature=player_embedded

[Joshua Hintzen]

I also noticed the shopping channel did their own experiments related to this subject. Really interesting observations on the roll of manufacturing quality if you ask me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_N4hprpRJhM&eurl=http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&q=sword%20accident&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wv&feature=player_embedded

I saw that video a few years back when I was first learning about the quality of swords. I know I really shouldn't laugh, the man was hurt, quite possibly badly. But trying to sell junk blades as sturdy "practice" weapons and breaking it SO easily on television, I think the irony is worth a giggle. Any one know how badly hurt he was?

[Yu Fei Leung]

I also noticed the shopping channel did their own experiments related to this subject. Really interesting observations on the roll of manufacturing quality if you ask me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_N4hprpRJhM&eurl=http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&q=sword%20accident&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wv&feature=player_embedded

I saw that video a few years back when I was first learning about the quality of swords. I know I really shouldn't laugh, the man was hurt, quite possibly badly. But trying to sell junk blades as sturdy "practice" weapons and breaking it SO easily on television, I think the irony is worth a giggle. Any one know how badly hurt he was?

The poor fellow probably had nothing to do with the manufacture of the product. He's just a salesman. I don't think he's a victim of his own bad workmanship, he's just a victim of someone else's bad workmanship.

[Stacy Clifford]

The poor fellow probably had nothing to do with the manufacture of the product. He's just a salesman. I don't think he's a victim of his own bad workmanship, he's just a victim of someone else's bad workmanship.

Nobody here thinks that guy has anything to do with making the sword, but he probably went by the manufacturer's sales description (or was going to before the thing broke) and was given a false sense of security about its sturdiness to go along with his general ignorance of swords. What he did was dumb, no two ways about it, but that shouldn't have been able to happen if the blade was as tough as the manufacturer probably said it was.

As for how badly he was hurt, from the look of the replay and what he said, the point might have gone an inch deep and he probably needed stitches, but it looks like it bounced off his chest too fast to have gone in any deeper than that.

[Parker E. Brown]

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 when struck, evidence of their forged method of production. However, I have been witness to swords breaking when struck during test cutting. I had an old Museum Replicas Ltd. basket hilt claymore that broke at the tang while test cutting against zurnpec targets. This can be attributed to the craftsman creating a tang that was too minimal to be martially viable. I have a feeling that there were instances of swords breaking due to poor craftsmanship and this eventually evolved into the myth that it was possible to cut a sword. However, breaking and cutting are not the same.