Looking at pics of how they were used they seem to me to be more for slicing and draw cutting. In some plates is shows severed hands and and such but with the grappling and slicing and cutting of lighter targets such as hands. Were they thinner in a distal taper sort of way or did they have a fat spine like a falchion? Thanks guys.

I know more about falchions than about messers, but since I know for sure that at least some falchions had much distal taper and not very thick spines at the CoP, I would guess that would be true also for messers...

Oskar Hasselhoff offers Grossmesser training (Hollow Earth made some customized wooden trainers for him). His techniques do focus on cuts from the wrist directed at opponent wrists and arms. If the trainers are accurate, they exhibit very little distal taper until the clipped point...

Very interesting fighting technique to watch.

the few I have seen have a non-linear distal taper ( a lot like dao, actually). The area near the forte is quite thick, with almost no taper for about 3-4 inches. Then there is rapid taper for the next 6 inches or so. The blade tapers very slightly after that until the clip. At the clip, the taper becomes rapid again until the point.

hope this helps. Think of the blade as having different zones, with each adapted to specific uses.

they are quite complex instruments, and far from just a sharpened bar of steel.

take care,
kc

There are others (both messers and falchions - and Chinese dao, too) that have very little distal taper, instead having a blade that is very thin along the whole length (say, 3-4mm, or even under 2mm). One can't really generalise in much detail about such broad categories. There's lots of diversity.

Thanks a bunch guys, I have owned a dao in the past like some of you reference. It was a decent chopper though I would not say a dedicated one and the broad curved tip made for a good tip slicer/ draw cutter.

Also whats with the disembodied hand in this slide?
http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/bsb00...p;seite=69

I do not know about the slide specifically but it appears to be pointing to some very important detail which is probably described in the text.