Oh, reading this Topic post I decided to start a new Topic based on the mention of " fullers " and possible secrets i.e. shapes that would change the handling of a sabre but also swords in general:

Elling Polden wrote:

Hi I suspect that there was some manufacturing trick (extremely deep hollow grind, or some such) that have simply been lost. If I had a cheaper/plainer sword, I might try to "tune" it, but the engravings on the Haidic is simply to nice to mess with.

Extremely deep hollow grind are a possibility when narrow and using a very small wheel to grind them out, but a wide deep fuller might be made differently ?

Mostly, today I think that all or most fullers have a simple circle arc " profile " being shaped as to width by using wider or narrower grinding wheels.

What I'm wondering about would be fullers with varying geometries where the fullers might have a flat bottom and curved corners or even squared off corners ? Sort of " U " shaped. Oh, the opposite of fullers could also have large flats but sharp and narrow centre ridges, more like " ---I--- " .

CCM machines might be able to do this in a modern manufacturing context but in period and today I would assume that forging in a fuller would make various profiles possible ?

With grinding wheels I think that one could cut a double fullers using a narrow wheel and them grinding out the centre rib between the fullers to create a flat and a wider fuller of " U " shaped geometry: Some modern makers may do this but generally the round fullers are shaped by just using varying diameters of grinding wheels on belt grinders.

Anyway, period swords seem to have more variety in the way fullers are shaped I think than is commonly reproduced today for the sake of keeping the making of the fullers simpler.

It is my understanding that until fairly recently, fullers were roughly forged into shape, then finished with scrapers. With scrapers one has alot of options on the shape of the fuller, it just requires patience and time to do what in many cases would be impossible by other means.

Weapons from the middle east and India are the most complex I've seen, as far as complex fuller shapes go.