[William Knight]

Has anyone out here fought or conducted cutting exercises with longer arming swords of a 15th century style (type XVIII in Oakshott terms)?

I'm thinking of swords like the famous Wallce Collection Fish-tail sword (http://wallacelive.wallacecollection.org/eMus...detailView) or this lovely sword from the Cleaveland Museum of Art [urlhttp://www.clevelandart.org/art/1919.69][/url]. Both have blades of around 34 inches, and both noticeably but only gradually come in toward the point. How does such a sword handle?

[Bram Verbeek]

I have cut with the Hanwei Tinker bastard sword one handed, and am planning to convert it for purely one handed use. The Red Dragon single hander synthetic has a very similar length. It has a blade 33 3/8 inch long.

I am not a good cutter, but one handed it does perform quite satisfactory, especially of one changes the grip a bit to resemble dedicated one handed swords. The longer length makes tip speed quite fast, and this blade has quite adequate cutting profile (the Cleveland sword looks similar in profile, but thicker at the tip). The thrust is a lot less defined than the h/t longsword, but it flows really nicely and wants to stab something.

It first, it does feel clumsy, but it is something you get used to with more strength. I have not found the length of the blade problematic, though the length of the grip was with some movements where I emulated i:33 to see what the effectiveness of certain cuts was.

I must also say that, when properly sharpened, the tip is really scary. I had it lying quite unsafely on the couch a week ago, and brushed past it with my leg, slicing through my trousers and in my leg. Only half a centimeter deep and some 4cm long, but it was effortless.

Now this is from an inexperienced cutter for a specific example that seems to have less blade thickness in the tip than the examples you posted, so take it at value, but I hope I could contribute something.