The conclusion to the above-written is that a relatively dull sword (well, dull is not the right word because my sword is almost as sharp as it can be made. It is better to say a sword with big angle of sharpening, with axe-like edge geometry.) is still a decent weapon and can cope with its tasks. But if I had a sword that can be sharpened better (and I have one such saber) I would, and do, sharpen it better, but I would not make the edge too thin (here I speak about edge geometry, not the sharpness).
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Several "historically based" reproductions of diamond cross sections, migration era cutters, etc., that I have seen have blade edge included angles fairly close to 15 degrees. |
I do not know if anyone has ever tried to actually battle-damage his swords. Well, I have tried it twice. And the results are following: a sword with diamond cross-section cannot be easily restored after being deflected by another sword (I of course mean deflecting/stopping a sword with a flat of the blade, not edge-on edge blocks). By "restored" I mean restoring the perfect diamond cross-section. One would require a lot of skill, time and a good sharpening stone to do so. Oh, and he will remove quite a lot of metal and thus make his sword less durable. If one needs to restore an edge on such a sword he will probably end up making a secondary bevel or convex surfaces. This is much, much easier and faster. So even if a sword has let's say 20 degrees angle between faces of the diamond, the actual sharpening angle will be about 30-40 degrees. Of course if one has a servant to sharpen his sword or is obsessed with sharpness he can restore the original edge. A new sword can have a very fine edge. But if an ordinary soldier maintains his weapon that is actually used in battles I expect the edge to have a bigger sharpening angle even if originally this angle was much smaller. There are several problems with museum swords. First, many of them belonged to the noble ones and therefore were most likely maintained much better than ordinary soldiers' weapons. Second, some of them were resharpened by collectors or museum curators. Third, many of them were never used.
What I think is that swords can and sometimes were made as sharp as their design allows, but usually a compromise between sharpness, durability and ease of maintenance was used. Swords were by no means dull. They were probably as sharp as their edge geometry and available sharpening stones allowed. But the usual edge geometry probably did not allow a sword to be made as "sharp" as a chef's knife. And I do not know what stones were used to sharpen swords. In order to easily restore the edge after battle one needs a coarse stone, but to make a sword as sharp as it can be one needs a finer one. If one cannot afford two stones, he would probably choose the coarse one.
P.S. Does anybody have pictures of swords and/or other weapons that actually have signs of being used? I was always disappointed by lack of pictures of battle-damaged and heavily worn weapons and armor. Why don't we gather these pictures, along with extracts from historical documents and research materials concerning this matter? I know that there are many threads that discuss these problems, but what I suggest here is to collect all this info in one place so that others do not need to scan through tens of pages to get this information.