J.D. Crawford wrote: |
This leads to other conundrums though, at least to me. This may be heresy for many of you, but I am somewhat ambivalent towards the higher end production lines, e.g., Albion. Historically accurate in dimensions and hilt construction for sure, beautiful works of technological art no doubt. But are they TOO perfect to be historical? |
Ah, now we're getting into another discussion entirely. I have my thoughts/theories on this, but maybe a new thread should be started. :)
To get back to my main original point. In my opinion: If you're testing historically inspired swords and you're interested in historical performance, the best test media would be replicas (as accurate as possible) of what the weapon was designed to face. If those aren't available/affordable (and many aren't, like good riveted mail), then there are simulators of varying qualities that should be used.
I find tests against non-historic materials (tires, plywood, concrete, etc.) to have little value, at least to me. They will tell you if a sword is durable, but not if that durability came at the sacrifice of accuracy in some fashion.
In an ideal world (which we don't live in), we'd establish baselines for performance based on the performance of antiques. Barring that, the tester would have to use their knowledge of antiques to interpret the results in that context, which some reviewers already do. As that will have inherent subjectivity, we must know that it may be difficult to have truly objective standards.
In my opinion. :)
Since I seem to be repeating myself, I'll bow out of this thread unless I have something new to add. :)