[Aleksei Sosnovski]

I recently purchased a bare blade for a training zweihander. Overall length of the blade is around 155 cm and weight is around 1.85 kg. Now I need to make a hilt for it, and have some problems with deciding how heavy the pommel should be.

A friend of mine purchased a sword with same blade. The sword weighs around 2.85 kg and has center of balance around 13.5 cm from point where handle meets crossguard. POB location is very close to that of A&A montante and spadone trainers. The sword is heavy, but according to data from this article http://www.thearma.org/essays/2HGS.html there is quite a lot of swords of comparable length weighing around 3 kg.

At first I wanted to make a sword with same parameters as my friend's, but then I started to doubt whether it is the best solution. I myself am relatively light, so the lighter the weapon-the better. Pommel of my friend's sword looks huge, so I thought that maybe I can make mine lighter and still get a weapon that handles well. So here is the question:

What is a good balance for a two-handed sword? Any historical examples? Personal preferences?

Aleksei.