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Nathan Robinson
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PostPosted: Sat 12 Nov, 2005 4:33 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

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Mark Eskra




Location: Hillsboro Illinois
Joined: 14 Jun 2006

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PostPosted: Wed 14 Jun, 2006 2:37 pm    Post subject: slab it         Reply with quote

i'v never had luck with anorexic tangs. Personally, i temper the whole thing from end to end with a full-length, almost grip width tang, copper pin my grip slabs on, spin the thing into a spiral with a file, then wrap and sew into rayskin. Not exactly "historically accurate" but i'v never had one break
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Josh S





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PostPosted: Sat 29 Oct, 2011 6:30 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

At the risk of stating the obvious: doesn't the cross-guard usually (almost always?) enclose the juncture between the blade and tang? And rather snugly at that? Sure, if one were trying to simply snap off or even just bend the tang on a blade blank, that really wouldn't take too much force with how thin most tangs are - regardless of how excellent the heat treatment was. But with the typical European cross fitted over that juncture(or even something as "insubstantial" as a Scandinavian or Roman type guard), you're no longer talking about creating stress in that juncture alone; in order to cause failure there you'd have to create enough force to do the same to the surrounding guard as a whole, which would be pretty much impossible using just human muscle... And in cases with tangs made of softer material to avoid breakage, bending is made more difficult by the grip itself, in either its material, thickness, or both.
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Jean Thibodeau




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PostPosted: Sun 30 Oct, 2011 9:09 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Josh S wrote:
At the risk of stating the obvious: doesn't the cross-guard usually (almost always?) enclose the juncture between the blade and tang? And rather snugly at that? Sure, if one were trying to simply snap off or even just bend the tang on a blade blank, that really wouldn't take too much force with how thin most tangs are - regardless of how excellent the heat treatment was. But with the typical European cross fitted over that juncture(or even something as "insubstantial" as a Scandinavian or Roman type guard), you're no longer talking about creating stress in that juncture alone; in order to cause failure there you'd have to create enough force to do the same to the surrounding guard as a whole, which would be pretty much impossible using just human muscle... And in cases with tangs made of softer material to avoid breakage, bending is made more difficult by the grip itself, in either its material, thickness, or both.


Interesting idea and it might be true in some cases but most guards are fairly narrow affairs and not always precision cut for the tang i.e. not particularly close tolerances. Even if wedged tightly I'm skeptical that most guards would offer much support by themselves ? The guard plus the wood core handle and pommel acting as a rigid unit does mean that the tang in mid handle is not likely to bend I think.

One thing I did mention at the beginning of this Topic is the observation that if one bends the blade of a sword or dagger and the whole bladed seems to arc over it's whole length versus seeing the blade bending at the tang and very little over it's length one can assume that the tang is not the weak point it's dimensions lead one to fear.

If a blade has no distal taper then the bending forces would tend to concentrate at the narrowest part of the blade at the tang/blade shoulders: I tend to think that because of the distal taper the bending forces tend to be distributed evenly and the tang being usually at least as thick as the forte it should be strong enough even when it look dangerously " wimpy ". Wink

Maybe someone with an engineering background would have the math and scientific skills to confirm my above guessing. Question

Well, basically what I wrote in the very first post initiating this Topic, but maybe explained a little differently. Blush
Since that first post was written quite a while back it does seem that my reasoning is pretty much the same !

One can say that if narrow tangs where bending or breaking easily, and all the time, I'm fairly sure they would have started making them thicker and wider because there would have been a lot of angry warriors with broken tangs either complaining or not complaining " dead " due to equipment failure?

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Johan Gemvik




Location: Stockholm, Sweden
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PostPosted: Tue 01 Nov, 2011 5:19 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

I've had one sword break on me at the tang/blade intersection. This blade had a fairly wide tang that looked sturdy, but intersected with sharp corners and probably not annealed at all but the same hadness as the rest of the blade. The corners are where the stress concentrates and it's where the break occurred during a hard cut. Hiltless pointy blades are no fun flying around, I can tell you that much. In that case a well supporting crosspiece and the rest of the hilt didn't help enough.

That sword is now retired and re-ground into a shorter seax with a wide tang and well rounded intersection corners. Actually turned into a pretty decent short cutter after all, though it'll never really look right for a seax with its' broad sword fuller.

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