There may be no answer to this, but I'll ask it anyway.
When those who knew what they were doing made/designed/created a sword back in the days when they really mattered, would they have aimed it to have a certain length of life?
I'm asking from the point of view of how a sword may have changed during its useful life. An old and much used sword would presumably be very different in mass distribution, edge geometry etc. from how it started out, because of the effects of repeated sharpening, tip reshaping, corrosion etc.. Would the best makers have intended their products to perform perfectly 'straight from the box' or would they have aimed for a plateau of good enough use (e.g. start out a bit wide and heavy to allow for some loss of material over time). Or would they have corrected for loss of blade mass by altering the cross and pommel to suit the new conditions. Were swords sharpened by users or refurbished by makers (probably both I suppose).
I'm personally inclined to believe that a sword custom made for an individual would be designed to be as perfect as possible from the start, since if you lost the first battle the rest didn't matter, but would this have been different with swords made in larger numbers for an army?
Alternatively, do the differences caused by wear and tear not really make that much difference so nobody really bothered about them? If the latter is the case, would that mean that there are fairly wide tolerances in sword design parameters?
It's getting late in the UK. Does any of this make any sense?
good night all

I think Oakeshott said that the service life of a sword was about 50 years. That would probably mean some training with it, and the odd battle every now and then. It seems like old, worn swords were passed on to new owners; in Sweden, some were used for "sword-spears" (but there´s evidence that some of these pole weapons had sword-like blades made for that use frm the beginning). I've seen some late 15th century/early 16th century woodcuts with peasants armed with swords, the points poking out from tattered scabbards. Those swords too worn to be of any use were shelved, kept as curios, issued to militias, or scrapped. Some military swords from the 17th and 18th centuries were shortened and reground for use in the line infantry or the navy. Another factor was the ever-changing nature of European warfare, that could make perfectly good swords obsolete in a decade or less. So, I think most swords were made to last, but that reality caught up with them in most cases.

One thing that needs to be mentioned is the cosmopolitan nature of sword manufacture. Contrary to popular myth, swords were not manufactured by a single man working alone from start to finish. This did occur but was far from the norm. Blades were made in smithing centers and then exported throughout the world to be hilted by cutlers in the local fashion. So when we talk about a sword being "custom made" we're probably talking about an individual seeking out a cutler, choosing a particular blade and then having it hilted up.

There are examples of swords which posses blades that are a full century or two older than their furniture, so as long as a blade was servicable it was retained. Swords were also handed down for several generations. I'd say that as long as they were servicable they were used. Steel and iron were valuable commodities and even worn out and broken blades were recycled into shorter swords, daggers, arrow heads, or whatever. Cutlering (hilting) is just as much an art as blade making, and since guild membership required standards that were taken very seriously, I would assume that a cutler would know the ins and outs of sword construction. If a weapon required a change in components in order to preserve its integrity they probably knew how to occount for it.

Another popular myth is the vision of medieval people engaging in combat every day of their lives. Battles were actually a last resort, coming after political intrigue and negotiation. The Battle of Hastings only occurred after much political wrangling. William the Conqueror/Bastard was considered to be a veteran at the time of Hastings, and he had only participated in two or three pitched battles up to that point. So it is quite possible that a sword might last a very long time, long enough to require changes in furniture so as to keep up with current fashion.

That was rather long, and I don't think I even answered the question :eek:

I tend to agree with Patrick that swords being worth what they were they were probably used as long as they were usable albeit with a change of hilt components from time to time to keep up with the latest fashions. There are plenty of extant examples about of swords with refurbished hilt components. I seem to even recall reading somewhere (one of the Oakeshott books?) about someone finding a type X blade in a Katzbalger hilt...

Wow! I wonder if some medieval graverobber dug that up in a perfectly preserved condition and decided to reuse it. If only that sword could talk...
That really is an interesting set of questions. I would think that swords were designed from the outset for maximum performance without taking into account loss of mass through wear. As has been pointed out, actual use in battle would have been quite infrequent -- perhaps a handful of occasions in a man's lifetime? So long as corrosion was kept in check, I see no reason that a sword couldn't last a lifetime, or even several lifetimes.
The swords that have come down to us are by definition the swords that survived their working lifetimes, somehow or another. We cannot examine or evaluate all the swords that broke in use and were simply re-used as daggers, arrowheads, nails, or whatever -- so a lot of the story is just unknowable.
Arguably, from Roman times until the appearance of plate in the 14th C., there was no change in the tactical requirements for a sword. Mail was the best defense--and a rare one at that--for a thousand years. Before circa 1350 there is no reason a sword could not be effective generations from the time it was first made. Fashions might evolve, and the sword could be altered (re-hilted) to suit tastes, but there is no reason to scrap the sword entirely as obsolete.

Regards,
Brian M

There we go... thanks Bjorn! I was sort of right... :)

Mac or ElJay will probably comment here, but I'll point out that blade recycling seems to have been common in Scotland. Many of the basket hilt weapons described in "Culloden: The Swords and the Sorrows" have blades slightly older than their hilts, and I think there's at least one with a blade/hilt age difference of approx. 50 years. I don't have the book in front of me to double check my memory, though. Some older blades seem to have been used almost as-is while others--those from long, two-hand weapons--may have been cut down or reshaped after breakage. Some Scottish dirk blades are cut-down/broken backsword blades.

When talking about the lifespan of swords we should also remember that some swords had peaceful civilian careers after they had outlived their usefulness in combat. I'm thinking specifically of two-hand swords that became swords of state/bearing swords.

Thanks Bjorn, Patrick, Russ, Brian and Sean for some very informative and thoughtful replies to a rather rambling question. I'll try a few supplementary questions:
If use in battle is relatively infrequent, would that also apply to training with the sword. Would people have cut with the sword in training? In the case of boxers, it has been suggested (can't find the reference) that a lot (most?) of the long term brain damage is a result of frequent blows against the 'protected' head in training, rather than the much harder, but less frequent, blows in actual fights. Could something similar apply to wear in historical swords, or would practicing be with different weapons, or weapon substitutes?

What proportion of the historical examples of swords that our knowledge is largely based on (and that the 'gods' can reproduce) represent pristine, or used but still good, or sloppy old worn out, or made for show, swords?

I've seen suggestions that generations of polishing may have changed historical (e.g. some japanese) swords. Would/could this apply with western/European blades?

Given the comments about assembly of swords from components made elsewhere and about rehilting of older blades, would the person responsible for the final 'feel' of the sword have been the one who put the bits together, rather than, for example, the blade maker?

And finally, not a question but a comment. The 'migration era blade into katzbalger' story is fascinating. I'd LOVE to own that one.

Thanks again for all the replies
Geoff

There's ample evidence for period training with wooden "wasters" or purpose-built blunt steel weapons, especially during the renaissance. These allowed one to train effectively and in relative safety. At least one classical Roman text refers to military training with wooden swords. I don't know about the intervening centuries. A certain amount of training could be done with sharps, and those whose lives depended on learning properly likely accepted the risk. Certainly there are historical accounts of injuries, even lethal ones, sustained in training. On the other hand English gladiatorial fighting in the 17th c. included bloody but intentionally non-lethal fights with sharps. Now THAT'S training! This historic precedent for training with wooden wasters or blunts strongly informs training in ARMA (see www.thearma.org) You'll find plenty of articles and threads on the subject at that site.

As Sean stated .... there are many examples of period basket-hilts being fitted to older blades !

The Baron of Earlshall wrote an informative article , for the 'Thirteenth Park Lane Arms Fair' catalogue, entitled ;
"Observations on some Blades found in Scottish Basket hilted Swords" , which is an excellent read ( I'll post two pic's from it here) .

Although some of the blades, originally believed to be medieval, proved to be of a later date , many were indeed much older than the hilts !

A good blade would always be utilized , no doubt about it ! Mac

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1325!!! Now THAT'S thrifty!

Geoff, more interesting questions.
As the others have said already, I have read that training -- at least for the professional warrior -- was often done with dummy weapons. The question of sword ownership and usage is tied into the question of social status. For most of the historical period we are talking about it would be quite rare for someone to own a sword. Perhaps it is an over-generalization to say that only the aristocracy and the professional warrior class owned swords, but it probably wasn't far from that. Therefore these are people that can afford specialized implements for training, instead of "using up" a valuable sword.

As to the nature of the swords that have survived for us to study, the answers are all over the place.
--A select few swords have survived in near-pristine condition due to some religious and/or state significance. Some are clearly "Monarch Grade" weapons, like the Edward III sword. Some are plain fighting swords, like St. Maurice of Turin.
--Some cultures buried swords as grave goods with the dead or as "offerings." These swords may -- or may not -- have been actually used. For example, some sword hilts were buried sans blade as offerings.
--Some swords were lost one way or the other and conditions in the ground were right to preserve them to one extent or another to this day.
--The above doesn't even touch on the fate of the vast majority of swords made in this time period. Swords broke in use and were recycled into other iron weapons and tools. Medieval swords were probably smelted wholesale in the renaissance period. Swords were lost where conditions in the ground were such that they were totally disintegrated over time.

We have a pretty small sample size to try to gain a lot of insight.