| Lafayette C Curtis wrote: |
| Can anyone speak from practical experience (whether from handling antiques or from experimenting with accurate reconstructions) about how well these round grips performed with regards to maintaining edge alignment, keeping the grip from slipping/sliding around in the hand, etc? I've had mostly bad experiences with round grips on steel swords since these grips not only make it difficult to feel the correct edge alignment but also provide a rather insecure hold (so that the sword can be easily knocked out of my hand with a strong beat or even a firm block/parry), but bronze swords seem to have shorter grips in general and I have to wonder about whether this would mitigate the problem of edge alignment and a firm grip by forcing the user to hold the sword in a different way or something like that. |
In my (very limited) experience, my hand includes the wider part of the grip (the bit next to the blade) when I hold the sword (it's a Burridge Ewart Park), so the my thumb and part of my forefinger are telling me the edge alignment (rather like when holding a gladius with a round section grip - when the thumb overlaps the wooden 'guard). As an aside, I'm not sure of the prevalence or otherwise of round section grips. Some look a bit that way (as in the example under discussion), but in many cases, all I have seen is the bronze flat 'core' of what would be the grip, so I don't know how the (presumably organic) grip plates would have been shaped (which probably further illustrates my ignorance).
Geoff