[Nathan Robinson]

That's a good post, Josh. I wish I had articulated my thoughts as you have. Well done.

[Peter Johnsson]

It is always good to put light on what swords are capable of doing and what we expect them to be capable of doing.

I hope Dustin wil contact Albion and have this discussion with them, as they are the only ones who are best able to say if the sword in question is outside the norm of what is being produced. If it is flawed, there is a warranty for the security of the customer.

As a designer I am faced with some dilemmas in my work. I see many fine swords and am often struck both by the quality of the craftsmanship and by the variation of the design solutions. They were keen abut sharp edges!
Shall I do my best to incorporate the features I see when I document swords, or shall I do my best to incorporate those features I believe contemporary customers most appreciate?

In the Deutsches Klingenmuseum there is a beautiful Malchus (a kind of Falchion or saber) from the 16th century of the finest quality.
This is a sturdy and hefty weapon with a rather powerful blade presence. It weighs 1360 grams and has a point of balance that is 125 mm in front of the guard. Total length of the blade is 770 mm. At the base, the back of the blade is more than 9 mm thick and it tapers down to about 6 mm just before the false edge (that is sharpened). The blade has a cross section that is sometimes described as a saber grind. This means that the sides of the blade have wide fullers that go from the back down to the ridge of the final edge bevel. It is a type of grind that you start to see on falchions, stortas and some messers in the 15th century and it becomes a standard for military blades in the 17th and 18th centuries. The normal edge you expect to find on such blades is a nice and tight apple seed edge, like that on a fine carpenters axe. A reasonable design as it combines good cutting performance with decent durability.

Yet on this Malchus the edge is hollow ground. And pretty extremely so. There is hardly any secondary bevel or apple seed finish on this hollow grind. The radius reaches all the way down to the sharpnes of the edge with only the narrow margin brought on my a honing stone. It is an extremely sharp and fine edge. At a distance of 1.5 mm from the edge, the blade is 0.5 mm thick. I estimate the final angle of the sharpness to be about 26 degrees total. That is an edge that is comparable to many chef knives with no more material behind as support and resilience.

A rule of thumb is that sturdier and heavier swords will have slightly thicker edges that are sharpened with a more obtuse angle (as always, please not there is a great variation in the material, so this is no universal truth, just a tendency).

The Malchus in the Klingenmuseum is not an example of sloppy workmanship. It is not badly made. On the contrary, everything about it screams excellence and mature understanding of the craft and of the weapon. Why design and make a sword this way?
If this edge caught in a bone during a cut while the limb was rotating it would probably roll the edge.
A parry against another blade would surely cause an ugly notch.
If the blade was stopped by metal armour it would take more or less damage.

There must be something that balances these shortcomings.
With a blade like this: heavy, powerful, with an aggressive curvature and an extremely sharp edge, you do not have to put much effort or motion into delivering a cut that would slice in a major way. Touch your opponent and he will bleed. You can make a small quick motion and the energy generated will make the edge sink deeply into an exposed part of your opponent (especially soft parts of the body). In the hand of an expert swordsman, this would be an extremely dangerous weapon.
A swordsman that is a master at determining distance and timing could end a fight very quickly with a dangerous sword like this. Perhaps even before his opponent knew what was coming.

Perhaps this is the reason behind this design? Perhaps it was made to answer to the request of someone who knew exactly what he wanted?
I am quite sure this Malchus did cost more than a machete.
I am pretty sure that the machete has a more resilient edge.
I am not convinced the machete is the better weapon, however.

Please understand that I do not write this to defend the failed edge of the Soldat. I think Dustin should contact Albion and discuss the matter with them! I say it again, just to make that clear :-)

My hope with this post is to add some perspective to the discussion. If it was a matter of always striving for the most resilient design, it would be very easy to make swords. You simply make machetes or cleavers and all is well. Looking at the fencing manuals it is not very often you see the fighters use machetes or cleavers, however.
When we study what swords looked like back in the day when they were actually used we will see that they wanted something else and something more. Strongest was not always the best. Most resilient will not always prevail. Sometimes sharpest was better. Not always, but sometimes.
By observing the variation in the material, we can learn something about the nature of personal armed conflict of that time. It is a way to understand more about swordsmanship and the craft of making swords.

I attach some images of the Malchus and details of my tracing of the blade. To get an idea of the scale, you may note that the maximum thickness of the blade at the ridges of the edge bevels is 2.5 mm. You may note the form of the cross section of the edge and how it is sharpened. What you see is not the result of wear and tear. This is a pristine blade that may as well have been made a couple of years ago, not half a millennia. It was made to be exactly like this.

This well illustrates my dilemma. I see this extremely fine sword and I am deeply impressed both by the quality of its making and its design. Yet I know it is a difficult sword to make today. Not just technically as the skill level needed to grind a bade like this is high, but also in aspects of marketing and customer support. It is not a sword I would develop to be produced by Albion. The first time someone would take this sword to some small tree we would get reports of catastrophic failure since the edge probably would sustain some kind of damage if it twisted in the cut while caught in hard wood.
If someone would cut the head of a pig and accidentally hit the teeth of the animal, there would notches in the edge. The story about the softness and fragility of Albion made swords would live on for years.

Looking at historical swords I can only conclude that edge failure was not an uncommon result of sword fighting. Sometime swords had very fine and very sharp edges somewhat on the expense of some of their resiliency. Some swordsmen obviously knew how to make good use of such weapons and wanted to have blades just like that.
I know that by writing this, being the designer of the historically based swords that Albion makes, I am running the risk of perpetuating the idea that Albion makes swords that are not as strong, sturdy and resilient as the swords of other makers.
There is not much I can do about that, but hope my reply is appreciated as an honest attempt to bring some further basis for understanding swords and the nature of their sharpness by showing the result of some original research.

The swords I design for Albion have the kind of edges that original swords of the same type has. My hope is that customers appreciate the opportunity to examine such swords first hand to learn about the functional reality of the european sword.

The damage sustained on the Soldat in this thread can most probably be hammered out with a polished hammer without no great problem. *But* I think that Dustin should contact Albion with his concerns. Please do that Dustin, and let us know the outcome.
:-)

[Lancelot Chan]

I do want to make a public apologize that the pig teeth were indeed too hard for any sword edge to take. So back then when I cut the pig head 8 years ago and hit the teeth, it was not a good assessment of the edge survivability.

Though I also noted that the edge didn't just got damaged on the teeth but pork arms as well. But well, that's another story I guess and I don't want to go down that path.

[Michael Edelson]

Peter makes an excellent point...sometimes we are our own worst enemy. It's very sad to me that a beautiful sword like that would never be produced on today's market for the reasons he mentioned. Oh well, such is life.

As for Albion quality, this is the playlist for the BSG 2012 cutting tournament. Almost 20 competitors, multiple cuts against something like 60 tatami mats (real mats, not beach mats). All done with my personally owned Brescia Spadona that I loaned to the BSG event hosts to use in this tournament. Many cuts were failed, pegs were hit, I think the stand was hit once or twice. The sword? Unscathed, unbent, razor sharp to the end (sharp enough to cut through the coarse linen wrapped mat at the tie breaker final round). And the entire time, the idea that the sword might be damaged never occurred to me. That is how much faith I have in Albion's products.

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLK8uJU6...e=view_all

As for Dustin's sword, I would definitely send it to Albion. As I said before, if it's defective, they will take care of it. If it was user error, they will tell you, and you can believe them, because they go to great lengths to not have defective swords floating around the marketplace.

Until the sword is sent to Albion and they pronounce the verdict, discussing this almost completely pointless. If we find out the sword is within specs, then we can argue about what the Soldat should and should not be able to do without damage. Until then, what's point? For all we know we could be dealing with a freak sword.

[Josh S]

I agree that Albions are good stuff. I have a Sovereign, Fiore, and Chevalier, and have no complaints as to the blade's strengths in any of them. In fact, I have such a degree of trust in their product (and their customer service) that I am also paying off both a Crecy and a Ljubljana, the latter of which I am particularly looking forward to. I also intend to get my hands on a Viceroy and Templar. If money grew on trees, I'd gladly snatch up about 80% of their entire product line. I have no problems with Albion.

I also agree that the Malchus is very beautiful, interesting, and overall plain cool. I also think it would be scarily effective in slicing something(or -one) open. Personally, however, I would not want to rely on something as delicate as Mr. Johnsson describes to save my life in a battlefield situation filled with armored men. I recognize this as a personal choice; I simply would not voluntarily rely on my own skill, even if it were a thousand times better than it is, to fully counter simple unpredictability. Perhaps its delicateness dramatically decreases once you get past the double-edged area. This is nothing more than an impression based on the comparison between the cross-section sketches in the various photos. Either way, it's one of those blades that definitely grabs your attention

The question is not whether or not the Soldat is a model made with skill, or whether this particular copy is defective, or whether Albion makes a quality product:

[Christopher B Lellis]

As I have stated already in this post, I also own Albions and I am very happy with them, I have done similar tests and have not experienced this failure on my swords except for one which wasn't an Albion.

I'm thinking that edge wasn't properly heat treated, something is probably wrong because I don't believe that should have happened, at least I'm hoping that's the case and that this was just a lemon.

[Bartek Strojek]

[Glen A Cleeton]

I had the opportunity for a few years as a teen to use and maintain edges on a variety of tools. Those mostly including scythes, machetes, axes and even various saws. Heck, I even used to sharpen my $2 bow saw blades.

One of the best examples of "gotcha" was with axes.

I owned my own axes but there were house axes as well. My own use tried to keep in mind the very cold temperatures and general use. Yes, I had a limbing/camp size Collins that was a slim cross section and fine edge but I did not reduce the cheeks on the bigger axes much. I did file down the cheeks my first Plumb a bit but the edge remained stout.

A mate acquired a very nice double bit and actually got a waiver for one day's work to spend time with files and stones. Scary sharp by the end of the day and he was one proud puppy. All this while, getting a bit chided by some that I always went with a utilitarian edge. Next day I was on kitchen duty but the "racing" ax went out to work. It is not like it was super cold, nor that the slimmed down ax wasn't capable enough within new limits. The crew came back in for lunch and there were some grins but one very long face. The guy showed me his pride and joy with a chip out right down into the cheek about an inch into it and more than that wide. Figured it must have been a water frozen log and not a standing fir.

Oh Well (poor ax)

Cheers

GC

[Kevin Coleman M.]

As someone who is looking for his next sword purchase, I've been reading this thread with much interest; that said, there is one point, which Mr. Strojek made, that seems to have largely been overlooked.

[Michael Pearce]

While it is valuable to discuss these matters publicly this is a tempest in a teapot. II wouldn't find this damage at al exceptional on a period sword of this configuration. Given modern steels and heat treatment maybe this shouldn't have happened. But every manufacturer occasionally has an 'oops.' While it seems likely to me that is the case here I haven't examined the sword or target. It has been pointed out several times that Albion has excellent customer care and will take care of the matter in a prompt and appropriate fashion.

[Dustin R. Reagan]

Thanks for all of your advice and perspectives. I will contact Albion about this, which I had planned to do...I was more interested in sharing the results of this cutting experience and getting some opinions and less on making value judgments about the work that Albion does. To me it was more of a "huh, ok...so this particular messer can't cut through a pig's limb no thicker than my wrist..." type of moment. It made me curious about expectations of performance, more than it made me angry or disappointed about my messer. On one hand, we see images like:



On the other hand:

-It's just an image.
-Some edge damage might still be expected to occur in this case, and the image does not/can not show it.
-The cut occurs with a part of the blade edge that is, if we are comparing it to my Soldat, a bit beefier than the portion that I used to make my cut with.

[Peter Johnsson]

So what is the intended use of a particular sword with a particular edge?

That is very difficult to say exactly. It will depend a lot not only on the characteristics of an individual sword but also on the swordsman. Give ten persons the same kind of wood chisel or kitchen knife. I am pretty sure they will have to resharpen the tool more or less often depending on how they use them, even if they cut the same salmon or the same lime wood.

Fine edges take more attention to keep at their best and perhaps more awareness and skill in their use.
Fine edges are also more difficult to produce if they are to be reliable, so they put a higher demand on the level of standards in production and on quality control with the maker.

I don´t think it is to be expected that the edge of this messer should roll in a cut against bone like this, but in our less than perfect world it may still happen.
If it does happen it may be a shortcoming with the sword or it might actually be from a mistake made by the swordsman. Bone *can* be a tricky target. Normally nothing *should* happen but sometimes it does anyway. The damage on the edge is not beyond repair. The notch looks like it can be hammered out. Note that it is better that an edge rolls than that it chips out. Better bend than break. It is not a catastrophic failure, but a sad sight non the less.

I am *not* implying that the fault is with Dustin in this case. I just want to point out that it is easy to seek the flaw in the tool and not the user.
Again, I also stress that I think that Dustin should contact Albion to get their review of the sword.
In this specific case I cannot say if this particular sword was sharpened so that the edge was a little on the thin side or if the edge was possibly even overheated slightly in grinding. Normally this *should* not happen, but we are all human after all and mistakes does happen. This applies both to makers and users unfortunately.

So what is the intended use for a specific sword?
A good question!
Look at your sword and imagine what kind of target it would be best suited to cut. Does it feel like a weapon that would cleave an opponent from shoulder to hip, or is it a light and fast slashing weapon? Does the weapon rely on power, reach, point control, biting edge, speed and precision? Not all swords will be capable of the same things. To some degree we will have to learn from each other, makers and users. No one is using these weapons on the battle field today. We are to some degree left to our *opinion* of what should be expected of different types of swords.

I test my own swords and I am present when swords are tested at Albion. I look at original swords to learn about their edge geometry and dynamic properties. I do my best to correlate these two kinds of experiences to form an idea of the function and intended use of swords. But I cannot claim to *know* the truth in these matters.

Looking at many 16th century swords it is not unusual to find very fine edges, even on weapons that are undoubtedly military. This might reflect changes in armour or changes in the tactics of swordsmanship, or both. No one can deny that Katzbalgers by and large are military swords intended for the battlefield. Yet, you will often see very fine and sharp edges on these swords. Many long swords and large two handers of this time period also have fine and sharp edges. I should also say that it is very common to find traces of some kind of damage that has been sharpened out, so it is not like swords did not get any kind of damage in use. Swords that has survived in good condition that obviously has seen action tend to have slightly snaking edges that undulate from side to side where notches have been honed out.

[Greg Ballantyne]

A most excellent post, Peter. The way you approached this subject opened several different thought directions for me, and I'm sure others.

[Jean Thibodeau]

[Justin King]

Speculation about a faulty heat treat frankly dosen't do credit to Albion's heat treating process, which is about as fool-proof as it gets, and was developed with as much diligence as one could possibly expect.

If the problem does lie with the hardness of the blade itself, it is much more likely due to other factors, one being over-heating during final grinding, as Peter mentioned, which can occur on a thin edge so fast that even an experienced craftsman can do it and not realize it.

I would speculate that if the blade came out of the heat treating process with deficient or inconsistent hardness, it is more likely related to the steel billet itself than the process used to heat treat it. I have dealt with enough off-spec, sub-quality, and/or mislabeled steel over the years to put this possibility well before any error made during heat treating.

[Ryan Sh]

However a good analog a pig is to humans for flesh it is very poor when it comes to anything with bones (aside for some medical uses.)

the reason for this is that pig bone density is about 2x more than a human's. It could be a technique issue or a quality issue but i think it most likely the fact that you used pig.

[Kai Lawson]

I'm about to run off to class in a moment, but this article had caught my eye (haven't read it, so hopefully no glaring flaws) but it does mention that "The lowest bone density and fracture stress values were found in the human samples; porcine and canine bone best resembled these samples" with "canine bone best [resembling] human bone"

http://endo.endojournals.org/content/139/2/663.full

"Results of bone density measurements and mechanical testing also show significant interspecies differences. Human bone specimens constitute a clearly separated entity compared with all other species, both with regard to BMC and vBMD analyses. It is, however, speculative to ascribe the higher fracture incidence in humans compared with other species to the fact that humans show the lowest BMC, vBMD, and fracture stress values."

However, they continue on to indicate that there are other differences in stress fracture values among other species, despite comparable densities. I take this paper overall as saying human bone would be likely easier to cut than pig bone, but not necessarily greatly so--if you can cut pig bone, odds seem good that you can cut human bone of comparable size.

[Tim Harris]

[John Malick]

I am just curious if Albion was made aware of this issue and what their response was?

[Benjamin H. Abbott]

I'm thoroughly convinced decent steel swords can cut through bone if wielded the the proper strength and skill. You find accounts of this from antiquity to early twentieth century. The historical evidence additionally indicates that many warriors expected blades to hack through wooden staff-weapon shafts (Fourquevaux, Swetnam, etc) and at least endure to blows against iron/steel armor without serious damage (Smythe, etc). Obata Toshishiro's helmet-cutting feat - which did not damage the blade used - perhaps reflects what Smythe and company wanted. However, sources suggest they many not have cared as much about superficial dings and nicks as most of us do today.