So, the Albion Lancaster thread got me thinking about the issue of hilting.

I always find discussions on sword performance to be rather intimidating. I'm the kind of guy who understand stuff like balance and tapers and blade geometry fairly well, but when I get to stuff like nodes and harmonics and rotations, I tend to get dizzy and find an excuse to back away from my computer. But the impression I have is that making a sword -at least one that performs well- is a complex matter that involves how the various parts interact with each other.

On the other hand, I also know that historically, a lot of blades were made in one place and then fitted with hilts somewhere else by a different craftsman, sometimes in a completely different country. This is something that has been on my mind lately, since I myself do not have the resources to make my own blades, but consider myself crafty enough to maybe make my own hilts.

So I guess my question is: How much skill does it take to successfully fit a hilt on a pre-made sword blade? Does it require an in-detail understanding of how the sword should perform to get it right, to the point where you could potentially make a whole sword from scratch? Or is that stuff so to speak built into the blade by the bladesmith? Can the person doing the hilting just go by what feels right, without necessarily having to understand the dynamics involved? Or, when a blade was imported, did it come with helpful instructions like; "Maketh the cross/basket and pommel so and so heavy, or thou shall surely mess up the harmonic nodes!"?

Speaking as someone who has been thinking about sword balance more than is healthy, but who is not a swordsmith...

My gut feeling is that it's perfectly possible to learn how to hilt a blade without learning all the details that must be taken into account in order to design a blade. Of course the hilt you put on the blade is a function of the properties of the blade, but most of the work is already done.

Think of it in terms of degrees of freedom: basically the only thing you have to adjust carefully when you make a hilt is the weight of the pommel. Maybe its shape too because it influences the location of the weight. Other than that, the cross shape is basically irrelevant (you just make it as light as you can while remaining solid, and beautiful :) ), the grip itself is so light that the influence on balance will be minimal. On the other hand, when you make the blade you have to design its whole profile, care about temper, focus not just on balance but on edge profile too, because part of the cutting performance comes from that... It really is more complicated, a lot more I'd say. It's critical too; you can't really make up for a bad blade with a good hilt.

The one thing that is difficult with the hilt is ergonomics, learning the proper grip shapes that will make the sword easy to grasp and handle.

I believe that if you already have the experience of good swords and go by what feels right, you won't be far off the mark. It surely helps to understand the dynamics, but most of the problems are solved when building the blade.

Regards,

Actually...the handle weight may not be negligible. When I switched the handle on my hanwei tinker sword to wenge, the weight of the handle was enough to utterly ruin the harmonics on my sword. I had to do some serious fiddling to get it back right. If you don´t know a lot about how swords should feel, mucking with the hilt can do bad bad things to your sword. However, how else are you gonna learn other then to muck with it? :)

Well the wenge is pretty dense compared to most wood...compared to the lightweight handle the hanwei came with, it was a noticeable difference. The primary node shifted down from at the hilt down to at my middle finger. The CoP moved down to about 14 inches from the cross...the PoB was shifted back a grand .5 inches. So yeah a handle did quite a bit to that sword. weight wise, not too much difference...but boy was the sword horrible to deal with until it got fixed.

Hello all,

When I said that the effect of the cross was usually not that important, I did not mean that there was no effect :) Of course a different cross will change the CoG, but it just creates a different balance, not a bad one in my opinion. For one thing it does not change the CoP (rigid body sense) associated to the cross, which is one of the most significant point as far as I've been able to find out (measuring several good reproductions).

The grips on most of my swords are significantly lighter than the rest of the components, that's why I tend to neglect its effect but of course if you take a much heavier grip it changes things. I'm not sure how "bad" it makes the sword, or if it just makes it different. Probably a bit of both as there are bits of the grip near the pommel and bits near the cross...

All in all I still think it's easier to build a hilt than a blade. As far as I know the blade maker has to figure out the effect of the hilt and use that knowledge to give the proper dynamics to the blade, so it's even more difficult for him. The hilt maker just has to figure out what hilt the blade maker intended, but does not have to understand how he made the blade.

Regards,

I used CAD programs and programs that identify nodes harmonics. (PRO-E and ANSI 12).
Physical properties can be known before making a sword.
I realized one thing: if you make a blade as well, grip and the pommel are almost a normal consequence.
The weight of the pommel must comply with sword , within acceptable limits.
If you do this, the physical characteristics do not change much.
In according with Vincent.: The hard work has already been done on the blade.