Hello

I'm not posting this thread to degrade windlass in any means, but I just think it's kinda of ridiculous how a sword tang would snap right after the first couple cuts. I do however admit it was a bad cut, because it hit the intented target and the wooden block under it, and that's how the tang snapped. But I never had this problem with other windlass swords, has anyone else ever had this problem before?

Ed

Ouch! I have no objective data for what I'm going to say here, so please take it with a grain of salt.

• I had a thick Windlass knife blade from Atlanta cutlery. I chopped into the edge of a stump once and that started a crack from the edge inward. I have little doubt the crack would have spread through to make a clean break of this kind if I had continued to chop. My conclusion is that the blade was too hard.

• In my experience, cold peening a Windlass sword tang is very, very difficult because the steel is usually so hard. Maybe they want it hard so the threads won't strip on screw-pommel swords. Anyway, the point is that they might be taking their hardening a bit too far in some cases, making the steel brittle and prone to this kind of catastrophic failure against a hard target. Policy? QC issue? Who knows, but of course there are many surviving, but broken, swords out there. A sword that can survive any shock probably is no sword at all.

The good news is that although you no longer have a whole sword, you have a whole (if shorter) blade as well as a pommel and guard. PM me if you're interested in selling those bits.

BUT, if you bought this new you should try for a refund. Windlass/MRL should stand behind that product. I don't think your cutting is outside the expectations for their swords.

Thanks for the reply Mr.Flynt

You are absolutely right about the blade being too hard. When I received the sword yesterday, I was under the impression that the blade was not whippy at all. It was solid, everything else was solid too. I did some cutting with the sword, and it did perform well. However, the last cut I made went through the target and hit the wooden block, that's how it snapped. Good thing the blade didn't bounce back at me, even if it did I was wearing armor anyways :lol: .

Ed

Yeah, I owned that sword once and was impressed with it. Very robust. That break is at the thickest part of the blade, too. I'm pretty surprised by that failure.

Possibly too hard. But also possibly too SOFT.

I base my data on ONE experimental point - to get GOOD data, I would have to repeat my experience at least 9 more times :).

The sword in question was a Windlass European Sword (http://kultofathena.com/product.asp?item=500664). I tore this sword down for regriping.

First, I was a bit amazed at how thin the tang was, compared to other swords I had torn down (at least 15) - MAYBE 4mm thick. And as I worked on the tang area, I became aware of how SOFT it was, compared to others.

This is the only sword I have EVER torn down that suffered from a snapped tang during the reconstruction process. I salvaged all the fittings, cut the blade down, and turned what was left into a nice dagger:

[ Linked Image ]

Could I have gotten a dud? Absolutely - the Windlass European Sword actually has a pretty good reputation. But in the course of making that dagger, I had to cut the main blade for a new tang, and DRILL it. I've worked a bit of steel... what I did was just a wee bit too easy - leading me to believe that the steel was relatively soft.

I can offer you a similar experience, right at the root of the tang, although not with a Windlass.

It was one of my own blades, one of the first processed a new heat treater. They kindly tested the remains for me and found that the hardness at the break was 57 Rockwell C . Clearly, much too hard. It turned out to be a case of operator error, and the tang hadn't been shielded properly in some part of the process.
Since specifying that tangs are to be left unhardened, the problem hasn't happened again.

The same thing happened to me last week with a brand new Windlass Xiv, broke in the same place, too.

I've heard of a few of these kind of Windlass cases in the past but they tend to be few and far between (and almost everyone has a failure now and then). Remember seeing video of a Towton snapping in ARMA forum (I think). I've had one of those Type XIV's and to hear of one snapping is a surprise. Mine from years ago was very robust. Perhaps they have a bit of a rough batch they're working through from whatever cause?

Whelp, I have multiple Windlass swords and used my Verneuil even for partner practices for one year. Not full speed sparring but still - it had to take quite a beating to be honest. But no problem so far. Maybe your's was a bad badge?