[Dan Kary]

Hi everybody. Please help me understand this.

You don't use a tip, generally, for cutting. It's for stabbing. If I am right, why not always have a reinforced tip? I understand that it is harder to do and so you might not do it for labour or cost reasons. Setting those aside...why not?

Maybe it messes up the balance? Would it really mess it up that much? On daggers, I don't think that matters much.

Thanks!

[Ryan S.]

Adding extra weight to the tip would affect the balance more than adding weight somewhere else. This is the principle that Indian clubs take advantage of. I am not sure how much that mattered. I have heard that historical swords are poorly balanced, or at least the balance is all over the place.

[Dan Kary]

Thanks for the reply Ryan.

Yeah I think for swords it would matter a lot more because of balance. I'm just not so sure for daggers. If you have a needle point, it might be great for getting through soft armours I guess, but isn't there a significant threat of tip breakages? Maybe I'm wrong about that, but that seems to be, precisely, the reason for the reinforced tip.

[Bart M]

I suppose a reinforced tip makes sense when you want to stab an enemy in a military context, e.g. wearing maille. An example would be the late Roman gladius or maybe some of the Castillon hoard swords .

From my limited experience testing stuff, thicker and strongly reinforced points are actually worse at penetrating cloth and meat, compared to a standard pointy and properly sharpened tip. It is a trade off and a compromise, like almost everything in arms and armour. The durability and ability to put more force into stabbing a heavily armoured enemy, becomes a drawback against lightly armoured enemies.

edit. Now that I think about it, my argument doesn't make as much sense as I had thought. After all, a soldier would wear some sort of a gambeson under and/or over maille. But maybe having a reinforced tip was still worth it for durability reasons, or at least for peace of mind. Besides, swords were probably not used that much in most battles and pole weapons or bows were the main thing anyway. I'm pretty sure the point below still stands, as it is based on my experiments.

Another reason, related to swords of Type X (Dark Ages to XII century) and similar, is that a lot of arming swords, especially shorter ones ca.70cm can be efficiently used for tip cuts. These, the way I see it, would be mostly used in a non-military context, when both combatants wear normal clothing. These won't kill outright, but let you use your maximum range with a weapon and can definitely put whoever you are facing out of the fight very quickly.

[Dan Kary]

Thanks Bart. The non-military context makes sense!

[Leo Todeschini]

HI Dan,

They seem to be around, but not that common, so presumably not amazingly useful or they would be everywhere, but I mainly associate them with military knives, though I have seen a couple of bollock daggers with very subtle and very small reinforced tips.

Tod

[Dan Kary]

Thanks Tod! Yeah that sure seems to be the case! Although one exception might be khanjar's in the mid-east where they seem to be fairly common - although a lot of those are pretty fancy. So, maybe, it's also aesthetics? A reinforced tip is harder to do and so it adds a bit of extra fancy to your fancy dagger? Of course, it could be a lot of reasons mixed together...it's probably complicated (like everything!).

[Dan Howard]

The more you reinforce and build up the tip, the harder it is to penetrate armour because you are increasing its surface area. IMO these reinforced tips are intended to stop them from breaking when they incidentally hit bone or armour.

[Pedro Paulo Gaião]

[Leo Todeschini]

Personally I am pretty much with Dan on this. A reinforced tip can under certain circumstances penetrate plate and the increased width would hinder it compared to a good stiff an thinner section. However I cannot believe this was ever the real intention as it would unlikely go deep enough to be an issue. A detox of course is a different thing. Reinforced tips are much better suited to staying intact IF they hit plate whilst going for mail reinforced areas. Mail with a bit of padding could be massively compromised by a reinforced tip even though a non reinforced could go deeper, the thicker will still go deep enough. My opinions based on striking all three materials.