I'm just curious if anyone knows of any dagger blades that are from 18" to 24" inches in length? :?:

There is a quote from the book called: "The Complete Encyclopedia of Arms & Armor", and it says:

"Metal served to lengthen the blade of a dagger: from blades measuring 4" - 8" inches, which was the normal length of a stone dagger, there was a fairly rapid increase to blades measuring 12" - 16" inches and even longer. The length of the blade continued to increase, but when it exceeded 24" inches, a new type of weapon was created: this was not so much a long dagger but rather a short sword."

Here is another quote on the length of dagger blades. From the book called "Warriors' Weapons" it says:

"Dagger blades were from six to twenty inches long, single or double edged, straight or curved."

Hello.

The most prominent long dagger/dagger hilted short sword is the Schweizerdegen, basically a 15th century basilard with a short sword length blade. In the collection of Bad Urach, Germany, they even have a roundel dagger sporting a thrusting blade with triangular cross section the blade of which measures some 45 to 50cm, so roughly between 18 and 20".

Regards

Ivo

In the bronze age (where these quotes relate to) there is not a very direct distinction between rapiers/swords and daggers. If you look at seax, you see a range from truly small to too long to even be considered a short sword, similar with daggers and swords. It could well be that one person makes a longer version of one type of blade, and another only has steel for a severely shortened verion of another blade, whose type commonly is larger.

The problem would be what you consider a dagger, and what no longer fits that description. A hilt style without a weighted pommel could be used, but the long celtic swords would fit that bill too, the next could be its length, but since the question is about the longest length dagger, this would leave much to be desired as well (the definition would answer the question).

I think it is better to think of the weapons clearly daggers, like you sort of suggested, I was merely pointing out that it is not always simple to draw the line.

I define a dagger as a double-edged blade that's short enough to draw and use in either hand efficiently, in either the conventional or reverse grips. For me, this means a maximum total length of about 20". For example, this Cold Steel "dirk" is about the largest thing I have that I would still call a dagger.

Swetnam suggested using a dagger at least two feet long.

I am not positive but I thought the word Dagger orginates from Dag meaning pointed mountains as in Dagestan (town of pointed mountains)

Attached is a picture showing a typical Kinjal (double sided dagger)

[img][/img]

Hope this is not off topic?

Cheers

Jason

erm FWIW Dags in Australian are the things that hang of a sheeps backside. ie, An expression to hurry up is "rattle your dags" :D

... and here is a picture showing various lengths of a kinjal, check out the bloke on the right!

[img][/img]

If swords were not allowed in some places due to restriction or class, then the simple 18" "Dagger" was most likely allowed instead for defence.

That's how I would call it. "Dat's not me sword! Dat's me Dagger! A bloke gotta have something to eat with!" :) :D :lol:

I'd have to say that the maxium blade length for a dagger should be 18" inches.

But, as in previous posts there is no real way of classifying the blade length of a dagger.

There's also a rondel dagger with a blade length of 19 1/2" inches on this very website. Go figure. :lol:

I feel like we get into a lot of trouble when we try to apply terminolgy from our age to items and ideas from long ago.

We really like to categorize things... Probably it's related to the fact that nearly everything we make is created by industry and things are more alike then they are different.

For example, if you look at the different types of guns that are made today, you can easily categorize them by their caliber, rates of fire, bolt configurations and a few other statistics.

The problem is, when you go back to the bronze age, there was no such thing as standardization. Everything is hand made and there is no standard to build on (nobody used blueprints).

For me, it doesn't really matter if you call a blade wielded by an Egyptian in 1,000 BC a "dagger" or "sword" or "khopesh" or a "hoopti-doo." Show me a picture of it (or describe it as best you can) and i'll know what you're talking about.

We can't even use they're name for these weapons because, again, they did not standardize so the name could represent any number of weapons from any number of locations made from any number of materials.