How Sharp Were/Are combat swords?

>>33783522
>How did old sword combat work
You thrust at unarmoured parts or hit the helmet hard enough for the opponent to see the stars

>>33783522
Most were not very sharp, and they don't need to be, either. Even a blunt edge is easily capable of breaking bones and causing internal damage even if it doesn't break the skin (which it probably would anyway).

Check out the NOVA special called "secrets of the viking sword". It's on youtube Near the beginning of the video there is a neat demonstration comparing a blunt medieval bastard sword vs. a sharp Katana.

Sword combat changed a lot over time as well. It really depended on armor technology of the day. You had an arms race between swords and armor. Full plate armor made the wearer pretty much impervious to a sword so pointed weapons like picks and warhammers were used instead. Then the gun was invented which could shoot clean through plate armor. At that point there was no need to wear heavy plate armor so that's when you had the development of things like the "small sword" and classic fencing weapons like a saber or rapier. When people aren't wearing armor you don't need a very large sword to kill.

>>33783522
How sharp is a kitchen knife?
Same deal with swords - it depended entirely on how sharp the wielder liked to keep his sword.

Depends on the sword homie, katanas are very sharp because they only need to cut through unarmored peasants. European-style cavalry sabers tended to be unsharpened since they would quickly dull again anyway rattling around in a steel scabbard on horseback so it generally wasn't worth the effort.
I would say that most swords aren't terribly sharp on average.

>>33783522
See: >>33783829
People who knew what they were doing or could hire people generally had really fucking sharp swords, plebs might just be beating people to death with a steel bar. There are also complicating factors like the sword itself. A cutting sword is going to be sharp as fuck for its entire length, a longsword might have its first 1/3 or so be fairly dull.

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>>33783863
>katanas are very sharp because they only need to cut through unarmored peasants

>>33783829
This. Although the meme that swords were generally dull is wrong. Generally, swords being used were kept relatively sharp as long as the people using them were competent.

>>33783863
>European-style cavalry sabers tended to be unsharpened
They were issued unsharpened. People would sharpen them when they were sent to combat areas (it was called service sharpening) and were expected to use them. Metal scabbards dulled them quickly, but the general wisdom was to maintain them and keep them sharp if they were going to be used.

>>33783522

As Matt Easton would say

C O N T E X T

In the 18th and 19th century most european swords were fairly dull almost all the time, not due to bad craftsmanship or not caring, but because they kept them in metal scabbards, which dulled them basically immediately, but that didn't matter to much if you were a cavalryman as you were charging with the speed of a horse, and if you weren't a cavalryman or officer then you'd have a musket or rifle with a bayonet. If you took a look at older than that then it would depend on the area of the world. Certain areas in the Mediterranean had excellent stones to sharpen with, as well as in Scandinavia, but I'm not aware of many other places, so the stones themselves would be a problem. A primarily thrusting sword such as an estoc or similar basically has no cutting capability whether it was sharpened or not, so of course they generally weren't sharpened.

Generally speaking I'd say as sharp as they could reasonably get it without it costing too much in labor or money.

They were not crowbars or giant bars of metal.

>>33783983
I say fairly dull in comparison to a freshly sharpened sword, to be clear, not "you can rub your hand against it and not get cut" dull.

>>33783756
What in the living fuck are you talking?
Look at any medieval manuscript, the swords are clearly sharp.

>>33783863
>European-style cavalry sabers tended to be unsharpened since they would quickly dull again anyway rattling around in a steel scabbard on horseback so it generally wasn't worth the effort.
No, they did sharpen them on campaign, but were left blunt until needed. Sabres needed regular resharpening due to the reason you listen, shitty metal scabbards.

Wooden core scabbards are best scabbards,

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See, a sword isn't a mere bar of iron : it must be hammered to shape and get rid of impurities, it must have just enough carbon to hold an edge but not too much or it will be brittle, then it must be heat-treated so the blade becomes resilient and doesn't break on impact. Finally, they the edges were sharpened on huge stone wheels. A sword was very expensive in the early middle-ages, so expensive in fact that it became the symbol of nobility.

Now, do you think they would have went through all of this hassle just to make a steel club ? Of course not, because they intended swords to fulfill an other role than blunt weapons.

>>33783522
A sword that's like five pounds and over three feet long doesn't need to be as sharp as a razorblade that's less than an ounce

Can people who have never handled swords and buhurt faggots fuck off?
The amount of memery in this thread is fucking dumb.

>>33784132
Oh, boy! Look at this retard!
>muh heavy european swurd meme

>>33784327
Fuck off, longswords were around 4 pounds

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>>33784132
>five pounds

>>33784505
>4 pounds

Oy vey! What do need two ponds for?
Help! This goym is stealing my 1 pound sword!

Stop. Talking. Bollocks. If. You. Don't. Know. What. You're. Talking. About.
Is. This. Real. Life?

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>>33784594
No this is 4chan, where the katana was never used against lamellar armor and the longsword can cut through anything.

>>33783983
>Certain areas in the Mediterranean had excellent stones to sharpen with, as well as in Scandinavia, but I'm not aware of many other places, so the stones themselves would be a problem.
I'm gonna need a source before I believe that anyone anywhere else didn't either import these stones or used slightly inferior local alternatives. Sharpening edges is not a military thing; it's something literally everyone needs to do for all kinds of tools.

>>33783983
Matts latest video on japanese swords has an account of an englishmen in japan complaining about dull european swords. So they did at times feel that it was a problem.

Why are you so bothered by my inability to weigh things?

>>33783918
yeah. the bow was the samurai's main weapon of choice, they were basically mounted knights after all

>>33785263
I didn't say they didn't use local stones, what I meant is that the local stones wouldn't have been as good. I understand the confusion though, I did phrase it weirdly. I meant to say that I'm not aware of many other places where excellent stones for sharpening could be found it europe.

>>33785286
Well those accounts are generally about duels and other small fights, weren't they? I'd definitely be a problem, in fights like that, but I don't know if it'd be as large of a problem in a proper battle.

>>33783918
That wasn't even the wrong part of his post

There is no definitive answer. it depends on when, what kind and what it would be used for. swords for dueling or self defense would be sharp because they would be for unarmored opponents. Also to use a historical example of sharp fucking swords, the Norse sagas tell about floating a piece of hair down a stream towards a blade to test sharpness. this was before plate armor. but just like knives using an overly sharp sword for a tough job such as to get through chainmail would roll the blade compromising its durability. so really it depends. a sword doesn't have to be razor sharp though. katana fanboys will tell you that it was the best and the greatest and can cut through anything but a duller but more hefty and better shaped European sword can cut just as well. I also see people saying that it depends on the availability of good stones but those were traded all over Europe so it didn't play a role in sharpness.

>>33785286
Isn't that a given when Euro swords are of higher qualtiy, but Jap swords are more brittle?
Brittle weapons are generally sharper, because that is how it "works"

>>33783522
A machete has little weight to it and a really narrow flexible blade. Very different than a sword.

Cringeworthy thread here.

>>33783756
"Secrets of the viking sword" is literally made up bullshit. No one would fight the way they demonstrate it's incredibly inefficient and wastes a shit load of energy

>>33785616
I don't quite get what you're trying to say. That jap swords would break if they weren't properly sharpened? That's not how it works.

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>>33785890
I think what hes trying to say is that jap swords being harder allowed them to have sharper edges, but also made them brittle.

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>>33785890
What about it?
Brittle = Feels sharp
Thats how it works

Just the same reason why Obsidian and glass shards make good cutting tools and arrows.

Or are you unfamiliar with the hows and why's of metal?

>>33785997
Dear anon. A metal edge is NOT formed in the way a breaking edge in a piece of glass or obsidian is formed.

Hard steel keeps an edge longer than soft one, but it is not inherently sharper. There is no reason you can't sharpen any sword to a razor edge (except you don't do it because that's overkill).

A lot were probably very sharp, but not some razor edge. If you're going into battle and not some people just getting ambushed, you know your life is at stake and a loto f times these people had many hours if not days before the battle actually happened. Why on earth would you not sharpen that sucker up?

Also, for quite a while, even before chainmail reached it's peak, it was a head of weapon technology (think like 250ad). The tip of the swords the Romans used could cut through them, but it took a lot of force. If it wasn't sharp it would be very hard to have gone through them.

Also, might not be a 'sword' to some people. But Dacians' falx would literally cut people down into or through the collar bone and that was with an iron helm. Those obviously had a lot of leverage on them though.

You niggers will argue about anything

>>33783756
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

>>33786809
is this bait? it's too stupid of a response to tell.
everything that anon said is historically accurate...
read a fucking book retard

>>33786874
>Sword combat changed a lot over time as well. It really depended on armor technology of the day. You had an arms race between swords and armor. Full plate armor made the wearer pretty much impervious to a sword

This is accurate.

>so pointed weapons like picks and warhammers were used instead

This is true, but lacks context.

Everything else is varying shades from based on extremely bad sourcing to absolutely incorrect.

>>33785486
It was one of many.