Hey,

My first time posting so I hope I'm putting this in the right place.

But I'm a life long martial artist with a background in mechanical engineering. For the last decade, I've been studying a historic Indian battlefield art mainly focussed on armed combat. Part of this training is learning how to assess the balance of Indo-Persian weapons and since I have seen anything about our methods online, I thought I'd write an article on it for one of my senior's martial arts blog. In the article, I briefly outline the how's and why's of assessing weapon balance by making a comparison to sports cars.

Hope you guys enjoy

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Hello,

I have been obsessing over sword dynamics for a long time now, but I will readily admit that my research has been mostly dedicated to straight or slightly curved swords. It is refreshing to read this article because it does not take the usual approach. It feels different in the things it considers.

Of particular interest to me are the practical tests that you outline for these blades. The hilt ergonomics and tipping points were nice to read about. I have been gradually incorporating more and more hilt details in my own approach and I will certainly ponder on this!

If you wish to pursue this further I suspect you will need to actually measure physical data on these swords with more precision. Perhaps my measurement protocol could provide some basis for you to work upon. As I've written above it has mostly been tested on straight blades, you might have to adapt things.

Sword behaviour during a cut is often more complex than we feel or believe. Our body does strange unconscious adaptations, which make models such as the ones you show in the video a bit less realistic. I am currently learning lots by analyzing videos of cuts taken in a proper plane, and I would suggest you do the same. This will make it easier to build the bridge from the relatively static tests to the actual cutting dynamics.

Thanks for sharing!