[Aaron Schneiker]

When you are discussing the fuller as a design aspect of the sword you have to focus on more than just the shape. If we were discussing an object made of a material with homogeneous properties you would be fine. With steel you are dealing with a heat treatment process after the forging process which results in a variety of material properties based on the shape of the forged object and the heat treatment it receives. What I am getting at is that perhaps the fuller was not designed for anything functionally in the finished sword. Perhaps it was specifically disigned for the heat treatment process to yield the desired properties in the steel at the correct location on the blade. If I had to guess, I would guess that the addition of fullers were primarily to add stiffness to a wide blade while also slightly reducing weight. It seems counter intuitive that thinning an area would actually increase stiffness, but like I said, with steel you are dealing with another process that changes the materials property. The thinner cross section of the fullered area would heat through more quickly as well as quench more quickly. This would create basically a line down the spine of the sword where the steel was harder than the rest of the core. As was discussed before, the shape is basically an "I" beam which does not degrade the strength significantly and you now have a harder more rigid material forming the spine.

Just my thoughts.

-Aaron

[Craig Johnson]

Evenin Aaron

Good point. I thought along these lines as well for quite a while. The theory is good if the carbon content of the core of the blade is conducive to this. The problem is many blades seem to be made with iron or low carbon cores. The item would not gain stiffness from heat treat in these cases. The other issue is that some of these blades where not even heat treated.

Best
Craig

[Joseph Fonzi]

Aaron

the hardening of the spine would not matter for the sword flexure in cutting direction.
to take the I beam to next lighter case would be bar joists, you only need enough material to keep the ends apart and from warping about each other.

[Joseph Fonzi]

sorry i meant to explain the image.

you can see that a blade cross section with a fuller and the same section without. the area increases by over 20% but the stiffness "moment of inertia" about the X axis is only increase less that 10%.
a great saving of precious material for the smith.

Joe

[Vincent Le Chevalier]

I think there are several issues mixing here:

1) Why people thought that fullers were good
2) How they named them
3) Why are fullers actually good

2) is likely related to 1), but 1) and 3) do not have to be exactly related, as it depends on the level of scientific analysis done. I can easily picture a smith forging in a fuller as a blood groove, ending up with a blade that performs better for other reasons, but keeping in mind that it's really the "blood groove" that makes it better... Of course I'm not saying it's exactly what happened, just an example.

In other words, why fullers are actually good is not really informative about how they coud have been named in the past. What's important is why people thought they were good. They might have been wrong just like they were wrong on other things, and still end up with good designs through some sort of natural selection...

[Craig Johnson]

Thank you Joseph

May I use this diagram for lecturers. It details nicely what the fuller does to weight.

Something else occurs to me in light of the recent article by Williams on "Crucible Steel in Medieval Swords" The ability to save approximately 20% per blade, as Joesph's figures indicate, on materials would be very attractive to a smith who has had to purchase an expensive raw material to produce a blade. The fuller seems to have multiple design advantages for a minimal increase in time expenditure which was the commodity in abundance to the period craftsman.

Best
Craig

[Robin Palmer]

Hi all

Many thanks as I said I am quiet happy to except that I was wrong in my view that fuller was an old term I stand corrected.

On the matter of the purpose of fullering I would raise one point as a blade smith i do a fair bit of general forge work making quillons and such. Today we tend to take a plentiful supply of steel for granted in fact up to the industrial revolution this was not so. An important part of the blacksmiths art has always been echonomy to get the maximum out of a given weight of steel. Today we tend to simply machine or grind away what we don't want to get the end product. Fullering is the most cost effective method of making a blade moving metal from the center creating the thicker edge ridges widening blade all in one move. Simple echonomical in time materials and effort plus having all the advantages already quoted.

Yours Bob Palmer.

[Aaron Schneiker]

Craig and Joseph,

Good point Craig, I figured this might be the case. Although, as your article on blade hardness on this site points out, the hardness on all of the swords that were tested varied greatly throughout the sword even if the blade was not heat treated. Perhaps I went the wrong direction assuming they were trying to stiffen the blade, but I still think part of the intent of the fuller was to manipulate the material properties by changing geometry. To Joseph's point, I would concede that it would make sense that the first and primary reason for a smith to add a fuller would be to reduce material if they found they could do so without affecting functionality. To this point I believe that if the name for the fuller was given by the smith, it would never have been referred to as a blood groove. So to Vincent's comments I think there needs to be a 2a) Who named them. In this case if the who is someone that knew why fullers were good, then that information would be informative.

-Aaron

[Craig Johnson]

Hi Guys

Vincent, sure inject logic into the mix. You will just confuse us hammer swingers. I think you have hit the nail on the head here. This discussion has been quite free ranging and I hope interesting to those who are up to reading four pages on fullers But you are very correct in your points. The need to keep these clear will allow us to follow the several threads of inquiry going in this thread. I would in know way being trying to draw parallels from the nordic or frankish smith of the 9th C. to a bayonet designer of the 20th C.

Bob, Joseph and Aaron I agree as well that it is an example of the beautiful way the empirical world works. The economy of the smith can not be denied they would have done things with an amount of waste that I would guess we would not believe one could do it with so little lost.

Especially if things like crucible steel were being used See my post today here

When a smith named a fuller it would have been with the same economy no doubt. Though it may well have been Xhl&^%$$!!! if most the smiths I know are indicative But I am sure it was something pithy and to the point like groove,

I have a couple people checking sagas and such and hopefully we will find a nice term to hang our hats on

Best
Craig

[Xan Stepp]

I just wanted to post an update on a bit of the Old Norse and Old English research I have done over the past few days. I looked at several examples of where the term blóðrefill appears in Old Norse literature, and after that evaluation, I can say that I personally don't think that it refers to a fuller at all. Remember that this is my personal opinion, so take it for what it's worth, but I have gone through several passages that use the term and see no conclusive evidence that it is a fuller. There are some passages in which it blóðrefill could be a fuller, but some passages are a bit more troubling. One example of this is a passage from Njáls saga:

Kári klauf ofan allan skjöldinn og nam blóðrefillinn lærið og reist ofan allan fótinn. (Njáls saga 145)

Kári split the whole shield from above and the blóðrefill took his thigh and raised the whole foot from above.

(The translation is mine, and I've tried to be as literal as possible.)

The way that I interpret this is that Kári hit Bjarni in the thigh with the blóðrefill and it lifted his foot, but there is some ambiguity there. I don't think that this would be an appropriate description for a fuller. This passage combined with several others leads me to believe that the term blóðrefill was just a kenheiti for sword.

I have been unable to locate a cognate term in Old English, giving further credence to the kenkeiti idea, as well as indicating that the Anglo-Saxons had another term for a fuller.

[Xan Stepp]

I finally got my hands on a copy of the OED, and only want to add a few things to Michelle M's description. The first thing to highlight from the dictionary (which Michelle does quote) is that the term blood-groove, when it first appears, does not even refer to a sword, but rather to spears and arrows. Secondly, the base term "groove" has mutated in meaning in recent history. The oldest references to groove in Modern English refer to a pit or a mine, not a channel as we think of it today. Beyond that, Bosworth/Toller lists no noun for groove. The verb grafan means principally to dig but can also mean to engrave or carve.

It seems likely that neither "blood groove" or "fuller" were medieval terms, so this feature was either called something completely different, or simply didn't exist. It also appears that "blood-groove" is a Victorian term which has been improperly applied to swords.

[Jonathan Hopkins]

[Xan Stepp]

[Craig Johnson]

[Xan Stepp]

Craig,
I'm glad that someone else has come to essentially the same conclusion. (I'd also recommend that your language expert take a look at the passages in the Snorra Edda, I think that they may be more informative, but don't lend themselves to posting here.) However, I do want to correct one thing on your post; the word is kenheiti not kenkeiti. I noticed I committed the same error on my post, and I have a feeling that you just copied my mistake, and I just want to make sure that I get the word out here so that I don't perpetuate the problem.

Xan

[Richard Hare]

Craig,

I think you hit the nail on the head with your last sentence. I had not thought of that, but it more than makes sense.

Blood groove to me is still 'new' Years ago I never heard it.
I think it's a term that caught on as it is "sensational"..........(Ebay is dripping with them!)

In the Victorian and Edwardian age, understatement was the norm, and anything approaching the sensational was frowned upon.

I find the term most irritating!! (but then, I'm a bit Victorian!

R.

[Craig Johnson]

Thanks for correction Xan yes I had just copied from you post :-)

Saw another thread that hit some of this long ago. I always forget to check the search and there is so much good info in old posts. I think we moved the language along a bit but it is interesting.

Early thread on naming

Thanks Richard it kicked me in the forehead as I have been doing some slightly related research and that has changed how I look at this type of thing.

Best
Craig

[Søren Niedziella]

Hi,

Just wanted to add that the words: "Blod-rille" and "Blod-rende" (both meaning blood groove in danish) are first found in the danish language in 1941. The records covering the danish language that has been searched for the words go back to around 1100.

Best,

Søren

[Nat Lamb]