why do you suppose...

[Andy Spalding]

Now that i know how to use a crossguard, i feel much more confidant for it. The tsuba seems so limited and cumbersome, I cannot move my fingers or hand around it. It's like a wall that says, "Do not move your hand past this guard"

[Eddie Smith]

the statement I made about curved swords cutting better came from John's article about the Katana and Longsword. He gave cutting power to the katana as the winner, I was hesitant, but he has done more test cutting than I. and the statement about single edge swords should have been stated differently by myself. Single edge blades that are as wide as a similar double edge blade tend to have a move acute angle on their blades due to design. So it is possible to make an edge that is thinner. I believe. And thinner edges are sharper. Or is my understanding off here?

[Jay Vail]

I have always wondered why the Japanese never developed a cross or other similar thing for the katana (in any of its versions, including the earlier more straight bladed forms). That goes with my other question of why the gladius and viking swords also didn't have a very meaningful cross.

I rather suspect it was because these swords were part of a sword, shield combination. Historically, most Euro swords don't seem to have had large crosses until the Medieval period. Perhaps they arose as cavalry became more prevalent and the sword had to be used in part for defense, where in the sword/shield combo the sword is generally not used for defense.

[I. Hartikainen]

Let's be careful not to forget nor discount all of the techniques that work from kron in the source-texts. I'd rather land my cuts from a distance of course, but when I close to grips, I'm darn glad for that crossguard. It is certainly no needless thing and was put there for darn good reasons...both cultural and practical I think.

Indeed, I agree completely. The crossguard is very useful both offensively and defensively... I hope I didn't give the idea that I thought otherwise. I come from a background in the Italian style of longsword, and while there emphasized is the blade contact in the middle of the blades, there still exists binds under the hands with the crossguard, a possible strike with the crossguard holding the sword from the blade, a grab from the opponent's crossguard, a suggested parry of an upwards strike with the crossguard (that is shown probably as a bad technique) and pommel strikes that don't rely on it, but are a lot safer with it etc.

Yours,
Ilkka

[Mike Cartier]

The Crossguard is a most wonderful part of the sword, it certainly was not created in vain. I don't know what people do without them frankly

[Francisco Urbano García]

I have always wondered why the Japanese never developed a cross or other similar thing for the katana (in any of its versions, including the earlier more straight bladed forms). That goes with my other question of why the gladius and viking swords also didn't have a very meaningful cross.

I rather suspect it was because these swords were part of a sword, shield combination. Historically, most Euro swords don't seem to have had large crosses until the Medieval period. Perhaps they arose as cavalry became more prevalent and the sword had to be used in part for defense, where in the sword/shield combo the sword is generally not used for defense.

Well in the case of the Japanese we have to consider their highly traditional society very resilient to changes. For instance, in 1934 the Japanese Imperial Army introduce a new saber for the officials; it was basically a short katana blade with the traditional European D-Shape grip for sabers... Well, in one or two years it was rejected because it was not tradional.

They didn't care that it that the D-Shape grip was more useful for cavalry, it had to be traditional. They even try to ban the use of firearms in the country so that top keep things traditional; samurais had nothing to do against a bullet

[Francisco Urbano García]

...that Europeans as a whole generally chose long, straight, double-edge swords, if it is the case that curved swords cut better and single edge swords can be sharper?

"Curved Swords cut better: " yes... and no. It is up to the shape of the surface to strike with the sword. If you hit with a Katana a curved surface that matches the curved katana, you will get the same cutting power that one straight blade that hits a flat surface.

Of course, most surfaces geometry intended for swords (enemies) favor curved blades for cuts, the more curved the incidence point the easier to penetrate the target.

The katana's origin is a straight sword, they curved it to improve cutting power and so that when using it riding a horse it would not get stuck in the enemy.

Japanese had leather and wood armors and a good katana could cut through that stuff, but in Europe chain mail made blades less important since there is no way you can cut through that, not even the best Katana in the world... Because European armor was getting so good avoiding cuts, weapons involving great thrusting power were a must.

For that kind of battles katanas would not be a good choice... Well, in fact, even for Japanese, at war, katana was a secondary weapon; arrows and spears were favour.

I just remember in the movie "The Kingdom of Heaven" there was a knight wearing a chain mail on his head and asking for mercy. Well, they execute him but they could use a sword; the used a kind of hammer.

[Chris Ouellet]

Japanese had leather and wood armors and a good katana could cut through that stuff, but in Europe chain mail made blades less important since there is no way you can cut through that, not even the best Katana in the world...

The Japanese never made armor out of wood or bamboo this is a common misconception.
http://www.sengokudaimyo.com/katchu/katchu.html
It's in bold face on that website, even though it is SCA related the research that he's done is quite good and many texts corroborate the assertion that Japanese armor was made of leather, steel or a combination of the two.

Aditionally I don't think there's any evidence for chainmail making blades less important in any martial culture.

[Francisco Urbano García]

The Japanese never made armor out of wood or bamboo this is a common misconception... Japanese armor was made of leather, steel or a combination of the two.

Well, you might be right, I just have read that they would use
lacquered wood and leather to make it stronger. You can check a book titled "Arms and armor of the Samurai"

Aditionally I don't think there's any evidence for chainmail making blades less important in any martial culture.

Here is the proof:
http://luksavat.tripod.com/mace.jpg
http://www.medieval-weaponry.co.uk/acatalog/AW5730Close-medieval-war-hammer.jpg

When European armor and chain mail appeared blades were useless against them, if you wanted to stop one of those knights you had to thrust... and do it hard. Katana are not good at that, European weapons are.

One characteristic in European weaponry is its constant adaptation to new battle circumstances, that is why there are so many. Japanese tradition prevented any innovation on its weapons.

[Carey Vaughn]

I think it would be most accurate to say not that cutting power lost importance, but rather that thrusting gained importance. As everybody's saying, armor in Europe made upper-class warriors increasingly invulnerable to cuts throughout the Dark Ages and Middle Ages, and obviously cutting power vs. solid steel plate is something of a moot point. Fighters of the day thus wanted additional thrusting power as well as to maintain cutting ability, as they could now expect to fight not only armored foes but also unarmored household troops, where cutting ability remained a necessity. Thus we see the development of the Medieval-era sword to incorporate stiffer, more tapered tips more attuned to thrusting through narrow gaps in armor; the blades at the same time maintained their excellent cutting ability. Fullers now no longer ran the full length of the blade as they had in cutting swords, stopping instead around 2/3 down the blade to lend more stiffness to the point.

The Japanese never developed such impregnable armor as their European counterparts, and thus thrusting was much less of a concern.

I know this isn't terribly relevant, but what always absolutely fascinates me is Norse swords of the 9th Century. They had primo European steel, but still employed the layering techniques used by the Japanese, using softer iron cores and hardened steel edges for incredibly flexible, elastic blades that maintained a hellaciously sharp edge. Talk about the over-engineers if their day...

[Francisco Urbano García]

Norse swords of the 9th Century. They had primo European steel, but still employed the layering techniques used by the Japanese, using softer iron cores and hardened steel edges for incredibly flexible, elastic blades that maintained a hellaciously sharp edge. Talk about the over-engineers if their day...

Really??? I thought the first using that technique were Spaniards blackmiths in Toledo, hence the Toledo fame for their blades at the time. You have any link about it?

[Carey Vaughn]

The Norse get surprisingly little acknowledgment for the stuff they were doing. People always hype up Japanese sword smithing, but few people know about the Scandinavian smiths who were doing arguably more impressive stuff even earlier. Here's a couple quick sources... The first one includes photos of actual 9th Century pattern welded Norse blades for historical evidence, the second is some general info. I don't know much about the sources themselves, but their info is accurate and the pics speak for themselves.

http://www.vikingsword.com/ethsword/pat06.html

http://bellsouthpwp.net/d/e/deodand23/VikLINKS.HTM

I just found those real quick by google searching, but if you want feel free to do some further looking. They were doing all kinds of crazy cool stuff for their time, just some real intriguingly creative dudes. Their ships were also quite intuitive for the time, which is something that people are more familiar with. They were some of the earliest ships to be ocean capable while still having a shallow enough draft to navigate inland rivers, a technology which is largely responsible for their tremendous raiding ability. Just a fascinating culture, which I'm finding myself more and more interested in and impressed by.

[Stacy Clifford]

In defense of the katana I wouldn't say it's bad at thrusting, it's certainly quite good at puncturing things as the earlier testing on armor link showed. The difference maker I think is the curve, which makes it harder to aim a thrust. With straight blades it's just point and stick, with curved blades you have to make some additional adjustments to get the right trajectory, the curvier the bigger.

[Carey Vaughn]

Yeah, definitely a good point. Curves do make aiming a thrust more awkward, which proves an inhibiting factor.

I'd also argue that straight blades do have a couple additional advantages to curved ones in terms of thrusting... I would think that just from a physics perspective, straight blades inherently have more linear force behind their punch. The more the force travels in a straight line, the more the energy is focused towards linear penetration. Additionally, to some degree, the straight blade would probably make deeper stab wounds just because there's less lateral mass. It's like the difference between shooting a target with a straight-shafted arrow versus a curved-shafted arrow (the logistics of aiming a bent arrow aside..). The straight one will penetrate better than the bent one with it's mass (and thus force) directed elsewhere than straight into the target. Now the practical application of those things is debatable, but generally they hold a lot of water from a technical perspective.

[Jeremiah Backhaus]

Actually, the process of welding the steel to make a larger billet was the ONLY way to get enough steel to make a sword in those ages anywhere in the world. The smelting process was not very far advanced and so when you got the large chunk of smelted ore at the end, you had iron, steel, low carbon stuff, high carbon stuff, pig iron, wrought iron, ash and slag. From this chunk you would have to separate the usable from the unusable. Then take these pieces and weld them together to be able to make a blade.

So even the European blades are welded (some rusted and/or etched pieces show the welds). The difference comes in the PATTERN welding. Which the Norse did quite well, (I've seen them first hand and handled some - amazing!!) and the Japanese developed during peace times. They also found a way around using so much steel, by making the spine of the blade out of iron or semi-hard steel, then adding a sliver of steel for the edge, which can be sharpened to hold an edge. This however ends up being rather brittle and thin. Not a real bonus to the sword as a whole, but does save on steel usage.

Paul Chamagne had a segment on the History Channel where he discussed something like this.

-Jeremiah (SA)