Pommel weights? -- myArmoury.com

George Hill · Posted: Sat 20 Aug, 2005 10:44 am Post subject: Pommel weights?

What did pommels weight in the old days? I see fantasy novels with "And the sword had a Diamond for a pommel" And all I can think is "Diamonds don't weight XYZ and would make a crappy pommel!"

What was the weight of the pommel say, in relation to the weight of the sword? (IE, whole sword is X, sword without pommel is Y, Pommel is Z. Pommel = ABC % of total weight.)

Anyone have any good stats for this?

Oh, let's stick to cutting swords unless we have a good reason not to.

Jason Dingledine · Posted: Sat 20 Aug, 2005 12:08 pm Post subject: Re: Pommel weights?

George Hill · Posted: Sat 20 Aug, 2005 1:00 pm Post subject:

Facinating. Do you have any good resources for looking this matter up? What can we say for say, an adverage?

But to be honest, I was rather looking for information on existing swords...

Chad Arnow · myArmoury Team

Greyson Brown · Posted: Sun 21 Aug, 2005 3:39 am Post subject:

I know that there was a thread a while back (might be almost a year ago, now) in which Peter Johnsson commented that he has an adjustable pommel dohicky that he uses for trying out various measurements (I think it is in the link that Chad gave you tha ends 3189). What he said in there, and it seems to be true for a lot of things with swords, is that you have to just go with trial and error.

So, if you put a diamond pommel on a sword and it balanced/handled the way you want, it would be perfectly doable. Of course, I would want to strap it to the sword without doing all of the work of mounting it first, in order to see if such a pommel were worth the effort involved.

There was a post here as well about swords with rock crystal pommels. I would think that they would be similar, at least to some extent, to a diamond pommel.

-Grey

P.S. give me a moment, and I will do a search for that post.

Greyson Brown · Posted: Sun 21 Aug, 2005 3:46 am Post subject:

Found it!

There are links to a couple other posts within this one, but I figured I'd let you follow those if you want, and not worry about repeating them here.

http://www.myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=3101

-Grey

Angus Trim · Posted: Sun 21 Aug, 2005 11:20 am Post subject:

I don't see any reason why a crystal pommel wouldn't work in certain types of swords. Particularly rigid swords, with thick forte's and tangs. If the blade is properly balanced to start with, most of the shock waves will go towards the tip. If the sword received enough resistance, yeah, you'll get some feedback into the hilt no matter how well balanced the blade.....

And yes, the blade.......

Its been a while since this has been mentioned on either SFI or here............

Most of the work of balancing a sword is done with the blade and tang. Properly tapered, both distal and profile, will make for a blade that already feels like a sword in the hand, handling with the tang before mounting.

Many, many historical swords start real thick at the base, and distal taper quickly to start with, slower as it goes towards the tip.......This is what I call a concave distal taper.....

This accomplishes several things, one of which is that the forte is strong, and the cutting area can be real good for cutting. A blade like this is also more "versatile" for mounting purposes. Its much harder to throw off the "harmonics" on a blade like this, than it is for a thinner crossection blade.

This allows the cutler more freedom on how to mount the blade. You can go light {pommel weight}, and get a lot of feel for where the tip {and rest of the blade is}, or you can sacrifice some of this, and let aesthetics rule more without screwing up the finished sword. The dynamic balance still should be within acceptable parameters..........

For a long time now, us swordmaking types have pretty much allowed that the pommel "tuned" the finished sword. In some cases that's true, but as we've learned, its now an oversimplification. Has been for two or three years now, just no one has bothered to correct the public view of this........Of course that too is a bit of a misnomer, its not as if someone is actually hiding anything, its that everyone is a bit too busy to keep the "state of the art" up to snuff on the forums these days.....

Its no secret that the blade is the key to balance. But, as time goes on, it becomes more obvious that subtle little things can make a tremendous difference in the versatility of mounting a blade into a finished sword.......

Risto Rautiainen · Posted: Sun 21 Aug, 2005 10:25 pm Post subject:

Good post Mr. Trim. We just had an interesting thingy with a cheapo basket hilt from Fabri Armorum that reflects all that you said above. Well okay, the basket has something to do with it but anyway. My friend ordered this baskethilt with a few modifications to it. He specified length, maximum weight and the point of balance. All the specs were met but the sword felt heavy and dead in the hand. As the pommel was threaded, we of course wanted to see how was the construction otherwise and disassembled the hilt. As soon as we got the pommel off I noticed it was a whole new sword. It felt great. The point of balance moved only about an inch towards the tip and probably because of the basket the balance and the feel of the blade was improved a lot.

Just my two squirrel pelts...