Well, the thing about Mjolnir is that it was actually sabotaged by Loki. That's why it's so short.
The Prose Edda Index
The Mystery of The katana
The Prose Edda Index
Salamandyr
Adventurer
No. That's not true at all. The purpose of pattern welding is to try to get consistent high carbon steel throughout a blade. At the time the best way to do so was to 'fold' the steel over and over, creating layers of higher carbon sandwiched between layers of low carbon. It also helped with consistency. Pretty much every culture that went through an iron age discovered and used it. The Vikings, for instance, were very advanced (they added bird poop to the mix which added, IIRC, phosphorus to the alloy). The same technique was used in the Middle East. There were no 'secrets' that the Merovingions had, that were lost that somebody else didn't have themselves. Metallurgy was in a constant state of discovery.
Around 1300, Europeans developed better ways to create consistent high carbon steel and largely abandoned folding, except for decorative purposes. Swords became less expensive because they were easier to produce, not because they were made less well. They were over all, better; they could be made longer, for the same weight, with more flexibility. European swords are massively superior to Japanese swords in terms of flexibility, being able to bend better than 90 degrees from true.
The Japanese essentially became the foremost masters of an obsolete practice, continuing to fold steel rather to make their swords long after the rest of the world had found better techniques. From an aesthetic standpoint, they were fantastic, but functionally, their weapons were no better than anyone elses.
The sharpness of their blades came not from the folding, but from the differential tempering. The edge and back of the blade were tempered for different periods of time. This caused the katana's stereotypical curve (in later years, improvements in the process allowed for straighter katanas), and led to a fantastically hard edge. This was both good and bad. Good, because it would hold a fantastic edge. Bad, because the resulting blade was stiff, and often brittle. Also, any damage to the blade that extended past the hardened edge could never be adequately repaired.
In regards to the martial arts, Western thought has generally embraced the new, envisioning it as an "improvement" over previous styles, rather than merely a change to fit different societal needs. As such, we have the 19th Century Romantics, who glorified the French school of swordplay as the "most advanced" while falsely maligning earlier schools as "merely beating on each other with bars of metal". Nothing could be farther from the truth. Single time fencing is, at least in my opinion, even more elegant and advanced than the later double time style.
Sources for my info was picked up here and there, over the past 5 years or so of fencing and HEMA, and reading various websites and books on swordmaking, from ARMA, Armory.com, metallurgy sites, and encyclopedias. For a halfway decent overview of the history of swordplay, which goes over some of this, try...
[ame=http://www.amazon.com/Sword-Gladiators-Musketeers-Swashbucklers-Paperbacks/dp/0812969669/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1287081203&sr=8-4]Amazon.com: By the Sword: A History of Gladiators, Musketeers, Samurai, Swashbucklers, and Olympic Champions (Modern Library Paperbacks) (9780812969665): Richard Cohen: Books[/ame]
El Mahdi
Muad'Dib of the Anauroch
I don't even know where to start with this...other than all of this is just...wrong! Where did this stuff come from?!
For the most part, I guess I'll just leave it with what Dausuul and Salamandyr said.
Except to add that, although Durandal and Excalibur are purely "fictional" swords... Durandal was Rolands sword (most likely making it Carolingian - the successors of the Merovingians), but in legend was originally the sword of Hector of Troy (placing it in about the 12th century BC - almost 2000 years before the Marovingians). Excalibur was Celtic, and predated the Marovingians.
And Bayard was a horse...
I'm cool with everything you said, except for a little about this. The sharpness of the blade came from a combination of using a higher carbon steel for the "edge" side of the blade (and a lower carbon steel for the spine, sandwiched around the "edge" steel, for flexibility), along with differentially tempering the blade. However, the different parts of the blade were not tempered for different times (which would be impossible since they are attached). They were tempered at different "temperatures" by using clay to insulate certain areas of the blade, and leaving the rest of the blade fully exposed to the heat.
The curve is created with a combination of the initial forging process (forged into a specific curve), and the final quenching after tempering. The blade is taken straight from the oven (where it's being tempered) and dipped into a quenching tank at a specific angle. If done correctly, part of the blade cools faster than the rest (with that part contracting faster) and actually causes the blade to "warp" into the final desired curve. If the angle of the quenching is wrong, the blade can end up warped left or right rather than back to front, and ruin the blade.
I've seen footage of this being done, and it's absolutely amazing to watch.
I can think of a few that used various blunt weapons as their primary melée weapons, almost all in cultures in the Americas and Africa that didn't have metal armors.
But even in cultures that were wearing metallic armors, BFT to the head and hydrostatic shock waves transferring energy through our mostly liquid bodies were real killers. Which is why, despite their cachet as weapons of nobility, flails and (especially) maces were popular secondary and even primary weapons among he fully-armored set...and the Mordhau/Mordschlag was crucial for mastery of swordplay.
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Hungry Like The Wolf
First Post
Chanbara fantasy has brainwashed me into thinking katana wielding yakuza fighting demons and mecha is the coolest thing ever.
I like the katana because of the camp qualities usually associated with Chanbara movies. I'm sure any kid growing up with Asian cinema would say the same.
I like the katana because of the camp qualities usually associated with Chanbara movies. I'm sure any kid growing up with Asian cinema would say the same.
Yeah, riiiiiiiight....
Pierre Terrail, seigneur de Bayard - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
He was just the most famous knight of the late 15th, early 16th century.
Regardless, the fact that the sword of a contemporary historical figure did not get a fancy name and associated legends (as opposed to the weapons of heroes from the distant past) is hardly evidence for anything regarding the quality of medieval swordcraft.
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El Mahdi
Muad'Dib of the Anauroch
I stand corrected. But although Famous, I've never heard of him...
The only "Bayard" I know of is Roland's horse.
Perhaps Pierre Terrail had some qualities in common with a horse...?
Anyways, I'm thinking he probably didn't have a "named" magical sword more because of the time that he lived (magic swords were for legendary heroes of the past, mostly written by what would have been Pierre Terrail's contemporaries), rather than a percieved lack of quality in the swords of his time...
I will answer about the swords. I'm looking/waiting for my sources. As soon as I have them, I will either be happy to have de-learned something wrong or to have proved to be right .
As for Bayard, he is the kind of historical characters that get forgotten nowadays... Who cares about the last stand of medieval knighthood against the rise of modern military ? He was killed by a firearm...
.As for Bayard, he is the kind of historical characters that get forgotten nowadays... Who cares about the last stand of medieval knighthood against the rise of modern military ? He was killed by a firearm...
I guess not... It has been theorized that one of the wounds he suffered emasculated him, explaining why he never got married. The names are unrelated. I had never heard about the horse myself.
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That does sound like the coolest thing ever. Can you recommend any titles?
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