Dannyalcatraz said:
I thought this might be of interest, given the original post:
The double bladed dagger- the Sudanese Haladie
http://www.geocities.jp/bowen_dragon/taki/touken/haladie.htm
http://therionarms.com/sold/com090.html
So, there were weapons out there like this that were made...but how common were they? I don't know.
Thanks for posting the link, I have seen those before but I never really considered them relevant, maybe that's Eurocentric of me. But as unlikely as that thing is, it's a dagger, not a sword or an axe. Daggers have been made with spikes going in all different directions. As to how functional they actually are, I have my doubts....
While it DOES look a little chromed out to be one built for use, it does, however, conform in general to the standard Kwan Do,in proportions and details down to its spiked butt. There is another, similar weapon that has a smaller primary blade and a ring or spherical butt.
I never said otherwise. Some of the serration etc. looks a bit fanciful to me but essentially it's roughly equivalent to a rather short variation of a European Glaive. Given that, I'm sure it's a pretty efficient weapon.
Unfortunately, you'll note that this legend has made it into martial arts magazines and books in such a fashion that implies that the legend was fact.
IMHO, too many legends and myths of this type make their way into EMA as unquestioned fact, though undoubtedly the same will happen with WMA when it gets more mainstream....
Of the 40lb aspect of the post- I correspond occasionally with the curators of (snip) The heaviest weapons "routinely" used on a battlefield topped out at around 7.5lbs- mainly large 2 hander swords, axes and maces/mauls- but they were still rare. According to them, most weapons used to arm the hand weighed in at around 3-5lbs.
I'm active on several discussion forums with many of the same people, among others, and have been studying hoplology for about ten years... I would actually say you could take this a step further and say that almost no battlefield weapons in common use weighed more than about 5 lbs, and even the largest swords rarely weighed more than 4 lbs.
A lot of the 6 and 7 pound two handers they have in Museums have turned out to be non-functional parade swords. Several functional renaissance era six foot dopplehanders that were examined at a major auction house in Switzerland last year turned out to be around 3.5 lbs.
Most single handed swords weighed from between two and three pounds to as little as a pound and a half for some cut and thrust types.
Why? First, you would have to be superhumanly strong to whip around that kind of mass without exposing yourself to a deadly counterattack. You would be thrown off balance by a weapon that has that high a percentage of your own body mass. Second, throughout history, the typical top mass any warrior was asked to tote by himself was around 60lbs, and that included armor, primary and secondary weapons, bedding, tools, rations, etc. Much more than that, the soldiers bogged down and became fatigued to the point of uselessness.
Very true, the amount a soldier carries has remained remarkably constant over the years.
To me, understanding weapon weight is simple though. Like I said, go to a hardware store, flex a 6 pound maul, and try to imagine fighting off someone with a machete, or a spear or a quarterstaff.... Swords, and even hammers and maces had to be as quick as the weapons they were likely to face, or else they were essentially useless.
Real medieval swords, if you ever get to handle one, are remarkable, almost magical feeling things. They are better made than you expect, they are usually longer than you expect, and they are so well balanced they almost don't seem to weigh anything. The real thing are many, many times better than anything they can produce today. The technology and artistry of our forbears was not nearly so crude and primitive as we have been taught to believe..
DB
You have to learn to manage this in your mind, it is a responsibility.
