CS Chinese War Sword as a falchion?
Hi!

I'm in a situation where i could buy a slightly used Cold Steel Chinese War Sword for a really cheap price. This is an on-line seller, so I have no eyes on. Normally, I would not be interested, as the CS line of swords are not anywhere near the line of interest that I hold in swords(european, mainly Albion).

However, it might make an interesting project as a falchion. Looking at the blade, I figured that it looks, with modifications, a bit like an european falchion. Lenghtening the point to get rid of the hole there, and shortening the tang to a single handed dimensions, and adding an appropriate handguard and a pommel, hey, this thing might have potential.

So, how is the distal taper on this thing? Does it even have any? And how is the tang? Is it beefy enough for this project, or has some poor rat lost his tail there?

All answers will be greatly appreciated.
I think you could make a nice looking falchion out of it, but CS swords are hard, you will have tough time grinding the blade...
Luka Borscak wrote:
I think you could make a nice looking falchion out of it, but CS swords are hard, you will have tough time grinding the blade...


That won't be a problem, I have access to a full metalworking shop at my work, where we are allowed to work on our own projects during off-hours. It has all kinds of machinery and gadgetry for torturing metal. That's where I was planning to make the crossguard and pommel.
The CS Warsword has a very large and heavy blade. You could make a heavy cleaver of it, but it would not be very 'handy'. Cold Steel does a lot of cutting with these things so I suspect they're full tang; traditional Chinese construction has the tang go all the way through and then turn it into that ring at the end, so it may well be something along those lines covered up by the handle wrap.

Now if you ground down the blade considerably it might work out well, but just using the blade largely as-is, you will end up with a very heavy weapon.

It might actually be worthwhile and easier to just try converting it into a tanged staff weapon!
Kult of Athena shows some reasonable distal taper in their specs. Overall weight isn't too bad either, you might be able to make a fair handling falchion out of it, especially if you lose some mass at the far end as you re-profile the tip.
A lot of people are under the impression that falchions were generally tip-heavy cleavers, but my (second hand) understanding is that at least some of the few surviving examples actually have gobs of distal taper, putting the balance point close to hand. Wide,thin shearing blades... maybe feel more like a big chef's knife in hand, rather than an overweight machete (I had a falchion like that once, looked awesome, felt awful).

If it turns out too thick to feel lively in hand mounted up as a proper falchion, you could always grind some crazy concave stuff into the profile and mount it up like a Maciejowski "chopper"...
http://www.myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=8504
also, cold steel tend to use epoxy in their grips, so good luck taking it apart if yours is like that

Page 1 of 1

Jump to:  
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
You cannot attach files in this forum
You can download files in this forum




All contents © Copyright 2003-2006 myArmoury.com — All rights reserved
Discussion forums powered by phpBB © The phpBB Group
Switch to the Full-featured Version of the forum