ITT:swords that are a work of art
>>65417661
>>65417661I wonder how many shots it takes to completely work harden the blade
>>65417661I was confused till I saw the flintlock mechanism. Definitely a beauty.
Any basket hilt Toledo
>>65420038wheellock
>>65422267
>>65422358I mean, yeah. The Japanese sword is basically a shrine relic that is never used and exists solely to be looked at.The European sword is a mass produced weapon of war made by the millions. Its job is conquering the world.
>>65417661we know what you're doing. grow up.
>>65422267>>65422275I kind of fucking hate this. It ostensibly wants to be mid-late 15th century gothic, but there are so many gaudy elements that distract from it. The blade looks bad in general, I hate modern decorative lamination like that but that's just me. If it wants to be more Gothic looking it needs to focus on a more svelte form overall. All the various geometric elements don't really work with any of the others. The quatrefoil in the pommel looks at odds with the scabbard mount, which only kind of looks like the tips of the quillons. The less said about the lower half of the grip the better. The diamonds on the rest of the crossguard look jank as fuck as well. I'd say the grip needs to be lengthened and narrowed, with more emphasis put on a subtle curve outwards to that middle brass divider. The pommel should be more fluted, and go back to the drawing board on the quatrefoil. Look up the Albion Regent/Earls or the Munich for similar contemporary examples. I think the biggest sin this example makes is that it confuses lots of things visually for being high quality. Stuff like perfect bevels on the facets, or uber autistic detail on the metal fittings on the scabbard, or good tooling on the leather. Threadtax is a mortuary hilted sword I picked at random from my sword folder and is entirely unrelated to the above commentary. I just...I fucking hate that sword so much, it has 0 consistent design or style.
>>65422396>The Japanese sword is basically a shrine relic that is never usedAccording to reverse image search, that sword is called "Dojigiri" and the legend behind it is that it was used to kill Shuten-Doji, a bandit leader (or monster demon if you prefer the mythological version) hence the name translating to "Doji killer." Unlike every other post in this thread, that blade has tasted blood.
>>65424555That's a thing that didn't happen.
>>65422358>>65422396>>65424555I think the big disconnect is a combination of cultural differences & continuity. Those beautifully polished swords WERE used in Japan. But Japan also had a near continuous unbroken tradition involving maintenance and care of their swords that took on a more ritualistic purpose. Heirloom swords were constantly maintained even through WWII. Additionally, the continual usage of the katana style blade means that nothing really fell out of style the same way that Eurasian swords did. Japan also had far less major battles, being isolated and whatnot, so less chance for 5,000 swords to fall into disarray vs Europe where that happened every weekend for a few centuries. Going back to a previous point, European swords DID evolve. The nice ones did get donated to museums, but millions upon millions did just rust away. The were tools. Nothing more, nothing less. FWIW officers sabres of the Georgian and Victorian era are generally in pretty nice condition but many government issued swords are gone only because the gov't itself melted them down. But when the west put the swords down and picked up the guns, we somehow decided that rust & patina was now how old swords should look even if they never even saw usage [which is true of most post Napoleonic swords]. So thanks to a certain misguided belief, cleaning up a sword is verboten so all you can do is keep it in a stable rusty condition thanks to someone down the line not oiling it. Japanese swords are not inherently better, and I hate the fetish of "patina" on stuff. If you had a vintage mustang you found, with cobwebs inside and popped tires, would 5,000 boomers show up and say dont you dare try and clean it up or you'll ruin the value? No? Then why do we accept it for antique swords? Bad cleaning will always be bad cleaning but god I fucking hate the idea we can never improve or restore the items from the past, only stop them from getting worse. >Rant over, here's another sword, one of mine
I don't have a particular like of Chinese swords but this one is the exception. Looks almost legendary even without knowing its background, but we do. It was made approx. 2700 years ago for Goujian, a king of the ancient Chinese state of Yue.I wish China would hurry and crack open the tomb of the first emperor. Bet there is tons of cool weapons stashed in there.
>>65424801You dare provoke the sleeping mercury god?
>>65425060
>>65425063
>>65425068
>>65422358Why are weebs so cringe
>>65422358A Brilo pad and some elbow grease and that sabre can still chop a turks head off
>>65426655Brown mindset. White people saw these swords and went, "cool I'll make my own."
I just want a mog piece.
>>65424801Hah, this is in Elden Ring.
Pic related is the sword Ishida Masamune. It is about 700 years old. The chips in the blade are believed to have been caused during combat.
>>65427044Kino
>>65426692>>65426703>keeps spamming his turd swordswhite peoples' sabers predate your ugly turd sword by centuries
>>65429101....And?>ohhh our straight sword is older and literally everyone on earth switched to curved swords after encountering themwow you sure showed me.
>>65422358https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2x5WzIu5iXUfancy japanese swords are maintained by dedicated tradesmen, spending as much as 20 years polishing a single sword.
>>65426692the sword of the Prophet(PBUH) was straight and the same for all the Sahaba
the sword is merely a toolthe art is in the master
>>65430071Hmm, no, don't think so. That's a modern mindset held solely by people who don't master the sword.People who actually dedicated their lives to sword fighting and lived and died by them often had extremely elaborate, artistically decorated swords. I don't think they'd agree with you at all.
I have an autistic question. Why didn't knights during the medieval period mass adopt sabers? Wouldn't they have been far more effective for general use?
>>65430567>Medieval period>knightDepends on what you mean by these. Sabers quite simply were not a thing in Europe, for starters. Even when the Crusades happened, the Arabs were using straight swords just like Europeans. The Hungarians probably brought the first sabers to Europe, but they weren't particularly curved at all, offering little advantage over swords. It should also be noted native European swords were hardly much different; German hunting swords, messers, and falchions all had single edges, sometimes lightly curved blades.Sabers that were heavily curved came around and became popular right as firearms came into relevance on the European battlefield and soldiers began to wear less armor. The saber is perfect in these conditions. It has a lot of advantages for use on horseback (naturally frees itself from the cut.But, if you're asking why fully plate armor clad knights didn't use sabers, it's because they would be utterly useless when fighting against plate armor. A cut is never going to work, and a heavily curved sword is not going to be able to stab well enough to do anything.
>>65424801>Goujian's swordAnd no mention of his rival's spear that they also found?Pull up a chair, anons. I'll tell you a story, twice, from the Spring and Autumn Period.>It is 2500 years ago>You are Goujian, son of the king of Yue and you have just forged a sword for yourself>On your father's death, you ascend to a throne in chaos>For over 100 years, your kingdom has struggled against rivals and now the powerful Kingdom of Wu has taken your father's tragedy as an occasion to invade>against the odds, you throw back the invaders and mortally wound their king>on his deathbed, the enemy makes his heir, Fuchai, swear vengeance>Fuchai of Wu returns and casts you down>You are humiliated and forced to grovel before the King of Wu as a common servant for three long years before you are sent away like an unwanted dog>You return to Yue and hold no feasts and reject celebrations>For 10 years you reform and build Yue into a strong kingdom with a powerful army>you eat only gruel and bile to remind yourself of the humiliation inflicted by Fuchai>One year, Fuchai campaigns north against the Qi>You strike>Their capital is sacked and crown prince slain by your hand>The next summer you return and besiege their capital for three years>Fuchai offers to surrender, but you deny him, only his death can sate your long held rage>fearing your wrath, Fuchai kills himself and you are left as the hegemon of China
>>65430721>It is 2500 years ago>You are Fuchai of Wu, son of the king, and you have just forged a spear for yourself>80 years ago, your people were mocked as slovenly barbarians by the arrogant Zhou vassal states>through war and valiant effort, the Kingdom of Wu was become a great power in China>Your father as king as brought your people to the zenith of power and Wu now stands paramount above the other kingdoms>Yue is one of those arrogant peoples that warred savagely for decades to keep the Wu in the dirt>Suddenly, the King of Yue has dies and your father strikes to ensure the security of your own kingdom>Tragedy befalls the campaign and after battle you are brought to your dying father>His weak voice implores you, do not let his failure be the undoing of your people, Yue must fall or the others will band against you>You regather the armies and head back into Yue>You ravage their capital and break their power>Goujian, their king, is captured and instead of murdering him you show with the grace he never showed your people>Goujian is taken back to Wu and have he serves you for three years before you send him home>For the next 10 years you rule Wu and hold sway of China>One year you head north with the army to deal with the Qi until a exhausted messenger finds you>The Miser King, Goujian of Yue, has invaded>You rush home to find your family dead and kingdom in tatters>You begin to prepare for the war, but Goujian returns first>For three long years you fight on the walls to desperately keep the soldiers of Yue out>With no hope left you offer to surrender to Goujian>He rebuffs you and demands your execution>With no escape and no option, you decide to spite him and deny him the satisfaction>as you take yourself with your own blade, your kingdom dies with you
>>65424801Thought this was fake.
>>65429991>>65430012>>65429190>still keeps spamming turd swordsreminder that the shit you post appeared centuries after white people made their own sabres
>>65431762What a weird thing to care about.
>>65432419He doesn't. It's reverse psychology, he wants more sabers and the like posted so he complains about it.
>>65431762goddamn nigger just post swords
is kanana sabre?
>>65432658sure
>>65432658Does my dick fit in your ass?
>>65425060is the handle really supposed to look like corn
>>65432730no they just made it look like exactly like corn on accident. It was really crazy. There was a corn cult that started because of it. The caster swore the mold he used looked absolutely nothing like corn, but every grip they made wound up looking like that.Eventually that foundry was burnt down during the civil war and the corn cult kinda lost its influence.
>>65432730The guy who made it is really bad at depicting grapes.
>>65424801>believing Chinese archaeology Protip: it's almost all fake, including the terracotta army (the paint degrading off almost instantly when dug up because it was cheap and hastily applied before the "dig" happened) and nearly to all of the fossils. When it became apparent that Neanderthal was actually something of a relative of modern Europeans the Chinese conveniently "found" even LARGER skull fragments from another archaohuman. Because they obviously needed to be descendants of even larger ones than Neanderthal. Yes I know the genetic admixture is small for Neanderthal and Denisovian and whatever the chinks are calling their totally-real fragments. Same shit with the "Sanxingdui" culture rubbish. Oh you found ancient bronze age culture? Well, western pig dog, we found ours which is even OLDER and GRANDER!This shit was all invented up around the 70's and beyond to be more implessive than any western counterpart. There's a reason they never let westerners examine/test any of this at a lab level, because 99% of it would be revealed as obvious forgery. You'd be a fool to believe any of it, really.
>>65424246Hey it is something that is damn close to answering a question about swords i've always wondered: Why no sword that looks like a basket hilted Roman short sword??
>>65432840Basket hilts are pretty annoying to wear in day to day life, and there's only a handful of niche cases where a shorter sword is useful outside of being convenient to wear. So it's a clash of ideas.Are you going to bring that thing to the battlefield? If so, why not bring a proper broadsword? If not, you're probably not going to put up with the basket hilt for long before deciding you really don't get in that many street fights, so you should switch to something else. If you do really get into that many duels to the death, you probably were carrying a full size rapier or broadsword so a shorter basket hilt sword was never even a consideration.The one case where I can see it being used is on ships, that's where shorter swords with hand protection did wind up being used that I can think of. And there they just went ahead and decided a single edged cutlass was preferable.
>>65432944I was just wondering why the Romans or anyone else never tried it back when short and stabby was the meta. Than and contoured handles for more twisty while you stab.
>>65432959Big shield means no real point. Their metallurgy wasn't really suitable for sword on sword fencing either. Hell, they didn't even bother with real guards yet. All the protection was reliant on the shield.
>>65432965I was thinking of the hand itself. They are up close with loads of close range face to face stabbing, punching ect. It was basically knife fight with 14-18 inch blades. I can't help but think that there were loads of Legionaries with messed up hands and missing fingers. It just seems odd to me that no one thought of making some kind of basic basket hilt for a short sword especially as there were gladiatorial weapons that had hand protectors.Same for an angled grip, maybe with a little finger protrusion like on a foil. It wouldn't interfere with their fighting style and would give you better torque and grip for the twist and yank part of gutting someone, not to mention making it a bit more thrusty..
>>65433009Addendum: For instance these features would be just fine on a early Spatha, it would just be a straight edged cavalry saber.I'm imagining Gladius, beefy fencing grip and claymore hilt. They had all sorts of wacky gladiatorial weapons so the components and concepts were there, it just seems odd that every other culture had all sorts of experimental stuff but they apparently never tried out hand guards. I can't see why it wouldn't be as effective as a Gladius but with hand protection.
>>65433009Hands are kinda hard to hit when you're not sword to sword fencing, especially when using a larger shield. That's the same reason it took positively forever for mail shirts to even bother covering the forearms, like centuries after the Western Roman Empire and nobody felt it mattered, apparently.
>>65433033But surely there was lots a face smashing with pommels a accidentally whacking your hand into things, not to mention that a contoured grip would help alot with the twist and pull part of it all especially if they had any sort of armor.Hmmmm...Wait a moment. My proposed design takes several times the money and effort to make for only modest advantage doesn't it?
>>65432329>>65432419your disgusting shit swords repulse me, and everyone else, turdij-spammer
>>65433042>Hmmmm...Wait a moment. My proposed design takes several times the money and effort to make for only modest advantage doesn't it?That, and no one had invented anything really like it at the time, and there'd a 50/50 chance that the legionnaire who just threw his pilum and now needs to draw his sword in a bloody hurry will end up just fumbling around trying to thread his hand into the basket.
>>65433486
>>65435414
>>65434054Yeah one of the things some people touch on when discussing sword designs is the actual shape of the hilts not for protection but for comfort. A bit like EDC handguns. Objectively, the best gun to carry for personal defense would be like an M4. But clearly no one but retards do that [IN CIVILIAN LIFE] because it would be really uncomfortable and get in the way for 99.999999999% of the time. The Romans were all about efficiency and logistics. A big mortuary/schiavona/bowl guard/basket hilted/etc whatever you wanna call it sword hanging off their person for months of marching, clanking against it or an extra 500g of weight would get really fucking old really fast. FWIW in the period when gun & sword cavalry was still armoured because they hadnt gone full Napoleon yet, you do see probably the most widespread usage of heavy hilts on swords that are meant as primary weapons. 30 years war/english civil war/the clusterfuck of Habsburg & French shit. But that works because the cavalryman can ready the line, and carefully and deliberately draw their sword as a primary weapon. Order of intention and use case is really important to remember as well because just because a more protective guard is objectively better at protecting, that may come at the cost of other factors.
>>65425068>Samuel JackosnGET THESE MUTHAFUCKIN SNAKES OFF MY MUTHAFUCKIN SWORD
>>65435414I think it's interesting that shashka are traditionally worn edge up like a katana.
>>65434054>>65437812>Objectively, the best gun to carry for personal defense would be like an M4Calico M100 for home defense. >The Romans were all about efficiency and logistics. A big mortuary/schiavona/bowl guard/basket hilted/etc whatever you wanna call it sword hanging off their person for months of marching, clanking against it or an extra 500g of weight would get really fucking old really fast.I get it, my idea would work but not be cost effective. They could have made the hilts/hand guards spinning them like they did the mass produced helmets but i get your point.I should make my idea, i'll sacrifice a Cold Steel gladius for it. They have full tangs, if i get the plastic off i can weld a claymore hand guard and a fencing grip to one, i can heat up the grip and bend it a little.
>>65434054>there'd a 50/50 chance that the legionnaire who just threw his pilum and now needs to draw his sword in a bloody hurry will end up just fumbling around trying to thread his hand into the basket.And my fancy murder sword that was designed for a very specific situation of killing someone while i use a body shield trying to rally my Century is useless because they can't use them right, i didn't train them in those highly specific tactics that are mostly of use in killing other Romans, i couldn't afford to equip my troops with them and they are all mad at me because i spent 5 years of their salary on my sword instead of buying them food or shoes so they leave me behind to die alone.Got it.
>>65417661The Sword of Stalingrad is definitely one of those items which have some magic to them, if such things exist.
>>65441484
>>65441485>The original design was by R. M. Y. Gleadowe, a University of Oxford fine arts don, and approved by the King.[5]>A commission of nine expert craftsmen from Goldsmiths' Hall supervised the execution of the works.>The Russian wording was cleared by Sir Ellis Hovell Minns, a Slavonic iconographer and the President of Pembroke College, Cambridge.[6]>The Wilkinson Sword Company was the fabricator, with the principal craftsmen being swordsmiths Tom Beasley and Sid Rouse, the calligrapher M. C. Oliver and silversmith Corp. Leslie G. Durbin from the Royal Air Force.[7]>The steel for the blade came from Sanderson Brothers and Newbould of Sheffield. The project took about three months to complete.>[...]>Before its presentation [to Stalin at the Tehran Conference], the sword was exhibited around the United Kingdom as a religious icon, including at Westminster Abbey, which formed a pivotal scene in Evelyn Waugh's wartime trilogy Sword of Honour.[11]
>>65440681If I can offer a solution I think IS in line with the Roman style of development: Picrel is an asymmetric example but others with 2 [or more] branches exist. It is known as the Attack Hilt. The sword is carried as a stirrup hilt, AKA a 1796 style knucklebow. But when the sword is drawn and a lever/trigger/button is engaged, spring loaded bars stacked inside swivel out and lock into place. I don't own any examples so I cannot speak to how robust their locking is, but this seems to be a great if mechanically complex solution. That being said, it would be much easier to make replacement C shaped bars individually in a camp or outpost vs joining and grinding an entire basket hilt. With their thrusting preference I'd almost suggest a more disc/bowl shaped guard to protect from thrusts & cuts. Edge of the bowl should be strong enough to deflect a cut but otherwise since the legionary isnt raising his arm up a la Conan, a flat disc would protect his forearm.
>>65442154[cot'd] some of them had levers to manually deploy the bars, and one could probably pull them out by hand if needed. Fuck you could even probably Emerson it with little teeth on the outside guard so as you drew the gladius and passed by your shield, it would catch and deploy the guard [blade down still] or even something more basic like tying some rope to the additional bars to the scabbard to catch and pull open.
>>65442198>>65442154That is a really clever design. You could probably simplify it so you could push the guards into place with your thumb while you drew it and have them lock in place with a flat tab. It would make sheathing it a bit fidgety but that isn't a real issue.That is just neato, thanks for sharing it.
>>65432658>>65432662Well, the Warabitetō/Tachi is ancient saber.
>>65432730it's commemorating the Battle of Buena Vista from 1847, so yes.mexico = corn
>>65442154>The sword is carried as a stirrup hilt, AKA a 1796 style knucklebow.1796 had ho crissguard/shell, only knuckleguard, unlike this
>>65443791BASED illiterate.
