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Jonathan Waller
Location: London Joined: 08 Dec 2004
Posts: 22
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 Posted: Wed 08 Dec, 2004 2:41 am Post subject: Hanwei Willaim Marshal sword |
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I used a number of these swords a while ago teaching a seminar in Germany. I think there were about 6 of these swords at the event, that someone had been given to field test. The results were not good, 0ver the weekend 3 or 4 broke! This giav us a chance to examin them in more detail. They had all broken at the join between the tang and blade, the reason being that the fuller had been ground all the way up in to the tang, at least 7-10 mm on the ones that broke. Obviously this serious reduced the strength, hence the breaks.
We could also look att he pommels which were, as the cross, chromed. The pommels were hollow, hence the funny feel of balance. This was somewhat corrected by the deep fuller that reduced the weight, but I would say that there was only 1 or 2 mm of metal left in the middle of the fuller. The pommel also had a recessed nut at the top, ie. unreachable, and therefore no good for retightening the sword once it got loose, which tthey did quite quickly, due to the soft wood grips.
The proportions of the sword were not great, but usable for a cheap starter training sword, if the appropriate correction were made.
Basically it struck me as a sword that had been made by someone who hand not really examined the contruction of a sword fot he type they were copying, or they didn't really care. Though just from business sense I suspect the former.
Withsoem changes in design the sword would be ok to use as a cheap option for basic training. But I don't know, if these changes have been, looking att he pictures, I can see that some have not.
Jonathan
Above all, honour
Jonathan Waller
Secretary, EHCG
secretary@ehcg.net
www.ehcg.net
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Gary Grzybek
Location: Stillwater N.J. Joined: 25 Aug 2003
Posts: 559
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| Posted: Wed 08 Dec, 2004 5:39 am Post subject: |
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Hi Jonathan!
I beleive there was a simalar post somewhere about the failure of these particular blades. It's good to hear such feedback since this is obviously a safety issue. With any hope, Hanwei (Paul Chen?) will make some corrections and offer a more substantial replacement.
Hope all is well at the RA. It would be nice to see your team at work on the History Channel sometime soon 
Gary Grzybek
ARMA Northern N.J.
www.armastudy.org
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Steve Fabert
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| Posted: Wed 08 Dec, 2004 5:46 am Post subject: Re: Hanwei Willaim Marshal sword |
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| Jonathan Waller wrote: |
With some changes in design the sword would be ok to use as a cheap option for basic training. But I don't know, if these changes have been [made], looking at the pictures, I can see that some have not.
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The sword in the pictures that accompany the review is my own folded steel version, rather than the one the reviewer describes. It is not a new production piece - I bought it well over a year ago - and it is possible that the newest examples available for purchase today have been improved.
My example differs in some details from both the review piece and the ones you handled, but I would agree with your general assessment that it is more of a decorative piece than a working sword. On mine the hollow pommel is cold peened rather than being held on by a recessed nut, so there is no way to look at the tang without X-rays. There is also no plating on the hilt components, which have a satin finish. Because the sword feels very point heavy due to the hollow pommel, and the dimensions of the tang are concealed, I would not be comfortable swinging mine about very vigorously.
As the pictures illustrate, this blade has an exceptionally thick and wide central ridge that contains the fuller. This ridge makes the point of the blade more sturdy than any other sword I have handled, stronger even than any Type XVII that I have seen in pictures. I would be interested to know whether this is an accurate representation of the original, or whether this dimension resulted from an aesthetic choice.
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Jonathan Waller
Location: London Joined: 08 Dec 2004
Posts: 22
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| Posted: Wed 08 Dec, 2004 7:41 am Post subject: |
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Yes, though no one got hurt when thye broke, it is still worrying. If the fuller had stopped a way before the tang I don't believ that there would have been a problem.
Dad has more or less finished a film on bronze age weapons for the museum. I was involved with the filming of a fight using bronzed headed spears and dirks. There is a hope that the film will be expanded for a broadcast version.
Jonathan
| Gary Grzybek wrote: | Hi Jonathan!
I beleive there was a simalar post somewhere about the failure of these particular blades. It's good to hear such feedback since this is obviously a safety issue. With any hope, Hanwei (Paul Chen?) will make some corrections and offer a more substantial replacement.
Hope all is well at the RA. It would be nice to see your team at work on the History Channel sometime soon |
Above all, honour
Jonathan Waller
Secretary, EHCG
secretary@ehcg.net
www.ehcg.net
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Aaron Justice
Location: Southern California Joined: 21 Aug 2003
Posts: 183
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| Posted: Mon 10 Jan, 2005 11:54 pm Post subject: |
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Unless I am mistaken I believe the actual sword being replicated had a full length fuller on the tang itself, much longer than on these sword.
Most of my fullered swords I dismounted had fullers extending up the tang, it certainly isn't a rare feature.
I would be interested to know what was being done to the swords to cause them to fail. Hopefully they weren't being used for sparring, being sharpened as they are.
How can there be a perfect sword when PEOPLE come in all shapes and sizes too?
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Peter Johnsson
Industry Professional
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| Posted: Tue 11 Jan, 2005 2:02 am Post subject: |
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| Jonathan Waller wrote: | Yes, though no one got hurt when thye broke, it is still worrying. If the fuller had stopped a way before the tang I don't believ that there would have been a problem.
Dad has more or less finished a film on bronze age weapons for the museum. I was involved with the filming of a fight using bronzed headed spears and dirks. There is a hope that the film will be expanded for a broadcast version.
Jonathan |
Jonathan,
Glad to see you posting here. We´ve never met, but I met with your father once at the Royal Armouries in Leeds. He was most generous with his time and for me it was a good meeting. I brought along on of my swords for him to see and he showed me some of the material used for reeanctment demos at the museum.
I got to document three swords from the Castilion find and could so bring home some imprtant information.
I work as a swordsmith and do also work as designer for Albion armorers in Wisconsin.
The issue of the fuller continuing into the tang is something that is very common on historical swords. If this is done right there is no problem with strength. It will actually help even out stress points.
On the contrary there can in extreme cases be problems if the fuller stops abruptly just at the shoulders of the blade, since that will create a stress riser.
If the fuller is not too wide but leaves a sound margin of material on both sides, this is something that has other beneficial qualities as well. It makes it possible for the guard or cross to get a better purchase as it is seated on the sword.
A new area of product development for Albion Armorers is safe sparring swords for WMA practitioners. I am always interested to hear input from practitioners and I would be happy to hear about your thoughts on this matter.
Practitioners of WMA are always on the lookout equipment within a tight budget. The market responds to this producing products at lowest possible price point. This creates a problem with general level of quality of the products on the market. That is sad, not only from a safety standpoint, but also since training weapons made with that mentality seldom hold up very well to comparison to actual original swords in looks, finish, heft or dynamic balance.
A compormise has to be found.
Not all swordtypes lend themselves well to be turned into safe sparring tools. Some types have inherent problems, such as blades being too wide, and so will become to heavy if given safe edges, other types are too pointy and will still be lethal even if rounded.
To find a good design I think one should start with a type that by itself has a good potential to become a sparring tool.
There is much to disuss about these matters.
The study of riginal swords, the understanding of sharp edges, exploring historical fencing manuals and understanding the effective use of the sword, needs a shifting perspective and varying approaches.
It would be interesting to hear some of your thoughts and experiences here.
Thanks
Peter
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Roger Hooper
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| Posted: Tue 11 Jan, 2005 8:57 am Post subject: |
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| Peter Johnsson wrote: | Not all swordtypes lend themselves well to be turned into safe sparring tools. Some types have inherent problems, such as blades being too wide, and so will become to heavy if given safe edges, other types are too pointy and will still be lethal even if rounded.
To find a good design I think one should start with a type that by itself has a good potential to become a sparring tool.
There is much to disuss about these matters.
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What types do you recommend to model sparring swords after?
For longswords, I would say XIIa or some kind of XVIIIa/b. For a singlehander, Xa ,XII, XIX.
I love the looks of the Squire XVa, but am wary of its point.
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Adam Lloyd
Location: Chicago, IL Joined: 29 Jan 2004
Posts: 91
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| Posted: Wed 12 Jan, 2005 2:23 pm Post subject: |
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This review was recently posed on SwordForum: http://forums.swordforum.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=46160
The reviewer doesn't seem very experienced with historical swords like that one but the photos are good. He says it arrived bent and then another poster said the same
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Jonathan Waller
Location: London Joined: 08 Dec 2004
Posts: 22
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| Posted: Sun 16 Jan, 2005 2:14 pm Post subject: |
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Good to see you here too. The fuller was very deep, it only lfet a little material at the bottom of both sides. The reason they broke was that there was very little metal left either side of where the fuller ran up into the tang, so that basically it was extremely weak.
As you say the swords are often required to be 'cheap' and that makes it hard to produce something that works well. Also what one requires of a training weapon is not the same as what one requires of a weapon that one intends to use in actual combat, so I think that they don't really need to match up. Ultimately I belive that balance, proportion and heft are more important in a training weapon that true accuracy. For many years we have used alumnium bladed training weapons, as they fulfill these requirements, which is often hard to do with steel.
JW
| Peter Johnsson wrote: | | Jonathan Waller wrote: | Yes, though no one got hurt when thye broke, it is still worrying. If the fuller had stopped a way before the tang I don't believ that there would have been a problem.
Dad has more or less finished a film on bronze age weapons for the museum. I was involved with the filming of a fight using bronzed headed spears and dirks. There is a hope that the film will be expanded for a broadcast version.
Jonathan |
Jonathan,
Glad to see you posting here. We´ve never met, but I met with your father once at the Royal Armouries in Leeds. He was most generous with his time and for me it was a good meeting. I brought along on of my swords for him to see and he showed me some of the material used for reeanctment demos at the museum.
I got to document three swords from the Castilion find and could so bring home some imprtant information.
I work as a swordsmith and do also work as designer for Albion armorers in Wisconsin.
The issue of the fuller continuing into the tang is something that is very common on historical swords. If this is done right there is no problem with strength. It will actually help even out stress points.
On the contrary there can in extreme cases be problems if the fuller stops abruptly just at the shoulders of the blade, since that will create a stress riser.
If the fuller is not too wide but leaves a sound margin of material on both sides, this is something that has other beneficial qualities as well. It makes it possible for the guard or cross to get a better purchase as it is seated on the sword.
A new area of product development for Albion Armorers is safe sparring swords for WMA practitioners. I am always interested to hear input from practitioners and I would be happy to hear about your thoughts on this matter.
Practitioners of WMA are always on the lookout equipment within a tight budget. The market responds to this producing products at lowest possible price point. This creates a problem with general level of quality of the products on the market. That is sad, not only from a safety standpoint, but also since training weapons made with that mentality seldom hold up very well to comparison to actual original swords in looks, finish, heft or dynamic balance.
A compormise has to be found.
Not all swordtypes lend themselves well to be turned into safe sparring tools. Some types have inherent problems, such as blades being too wide, and so will become to heavy if given safe edges, other types are too pointy and will still be lethal even if rounded.
To find a good design I think one should start with a type that by itself has a good potential to become a sparring tool.
There is much to disuss about these matters.
The study of riginal swords, the understanding of sharp edges, exploring historical fencing manuals and understanding the effective use of the sword, needs a shifting perspective and varying approaches.
It would be interesting to hear some of your thoughts and experiences here.
Thanks
Peter |
Above all, honour
Jonathan Waller
Secretary, EHCG
secretary@ehcg.net
www.ehcg.net
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Jonathan Waller
Location: London Joined: 08 Dec 2004
Posts: 22
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| Posted: Sun 16 Jan, 2005 2:19 pm Post subject: |
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Aaron the swords were being used to train with, but they were not sharp. The reason they failed was that the fullers had been ground very deep and an insufficient amount of metal had been left at the sides of the fuller at the join of tang and blade, only about 3mm at most either side. This of course made the chance of a break almost inevitable.
JW
| Aaron Justice wrote: |
I would be interested to know what was being done to the swords to cause them to fail. Hopefully they weren't being used for sparring, being sharpened as they are. |
Above all, honour
Jonathan Waller
Secretary, EHCG
secretary@ehcg.net
www.ehcg.net
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