Three swords compared

Hello everyone it's Greg from Edinburgh Renaissance Fencing Academy here with another video. Today I'm going to be analyzing two good quality training swords that I own and I'm going to be talking about how each of them handle and they are quite different. And then as a kind of bonus extra section I'm going to look also at a kind of generic training sword that I have, so a lower quality one, and talk about ways that that is different from the better quality ones. This is more or less a follow-up to a recent video I did where I talked about possible factors or design features of swords which can affect how they handle and use when fencing. So you can think of today's presentation as being a sort of case study of that in action. Let's get into it. Okay so the first weapon that I'm going to analyze is this Feastspada swept hilt rapier. A quick note before I begin discussing it, it is currently fitted with a fencing blunt on the tip end of the blade. Now this does slightly affect the handling of the weapon but not enough to make a significant difference to the points that I'm going to be making today. So just ignore this for now. The first thing I'll do is just hold the sword statically in my hand. What does it feel like? Well it wants to sit forwards in the hand, so with the point directed ahead of me. That's because there's definitely some weight, some heft to the blade. It's tip heavy in the balance in other words. Now if I start to move the weapon around forwards and backwards, up and down, then circling around side to side and then bigger actions more like cuts, rotating from the elbow. How does it feel? So the weapon feels good moving like this. You really get a strong sense of the reach and power of the thrust, in other words of the tip of the weapon. So it has very good presence in the tip. Similarly if I perform simple disengage actions by just dropping and lowering the tip of the weapon, it handles very nicely like this and again that's because of the weight or presence of the tip. As we perform more circular actions though, like more sophisticated disengagements and then things more like cuts and beats, the weapon struggles a little bit. It feels slightly clumsy when you do this. It feels a little like you're fighting against the weight and mass of the blade and you can feel a little bit of strain in the forearm muscle up there. So it takes quite a lot of effort to perform these actions. They are possible but I wouldn't say they felt easy or nice as such. But the thrust definitely feels good. So what are the design features of the sword that facilitate this? Firstly if I move a little closer to the camera, it has let's say a medium-sized handle or grip of the sword which allows you to take a kind of long grip of the weapon which definitely facilitates that tip forwards position. When we look at the blade itself, so it's narrow in this plane and it's quite thick in this plane. So I've got a reasonably thick ricasso and there is some distal taper. So in other words it gets thinner as you go down the blade. However this distal taper is mostly in the let's say the body of the weapon but it features a reasonably pronounced central ridge which runs along the middle for the entire length of the weapon and there's only a little distal taper in this central ridge. So in other words the mass of this weapon is distributed in quite an interesting and complex way and it really contributes to that a tip heavy and very thrust oriented feel of the blade in action. Okay so the second sword that I'm going to analyze is the sidesword from the swordsmith Deltin in Italy. This weapon is also a very high quality training sword but it feels quite different from the Fispada Rapier. So firstly if I just hold this statically in my hand I would say this sword wants to sit in a fairly neutral way. I can feel the blade but I feel its presence more down here than at the tip so this sword naturally wants to sit somewhere between a point forwards guard and an edge presented guard. So somewhere in between those is probably the optimal for this blade and when I start to move it around forwards and backwards up and down circular motions disengagements cuts this really feels different from the Fispada Rapier. This sword can move in any of these directions really nicely and it feels extremely nimble in the hand. I'm actually not that aware of the weight of the weapon and there is a presence to the blade but it does feel like it's more down here and less in the tip. So I can maneuver it by disengaging in any way I like and changing between cuts and thrusts or cuts and cuts in different directions very easily. So in a simple sense we could say this sword feels nicer in the hand than the Rapier however if we stop to analyze it and think about it in a slightly deeper way I would say that you can definitely feel like it doesn't have as much power or reach in the thrust. It can thrust but I feel much less of a sense of where the tip is and it doesn't really feel like the tip is kind of punching forwards the same way the Rapier does. It's much nicer in the cut though and it feels like it just wants to flow between different types of cut and beat. So why does this weapon feel so different from the other one? It is a little shorter but let me come close to the camera so we can talk about some more specific features. So the grip or handle is a little shorter which means the weapon naturally wants to sit with a slightly shortened grip of the hand so it doesn't want to sit in a long profile like the Fistbader. It wants the hand to be more snug to the guard I would say. Now the blade is a little broader in this plane but the interesting stuff happens when we analyze it this way. This blade has a reasonably thick recasso still but it has a lot of distal taper really a lot so from being moderately thick here at this end it is very thin indeed. It's quite close to being sharp even though it's a blunt training weapon just by virtue of being thin. It has a very light central ridge in the middle and actually a fuller so a groove in the forte in the strong section of the blade. So the reason this handles so differently from the other sword is to do with distribution of mass in the blade. So this one has a lot more presence down here than it does up here and therefore it flows in a different way as we put it through its paces. All right so as a little bonus extra section I'm going to talk about a third weapon which is this much more generic off-the-shelf type of training sword. So this is really at the cheaper end of the market for historical fencing and HEMA weapons. So this has an economy dark brood armory hilt fitted with a 43 inch Hanwei practical rapier blade. So let's go through the same procedure as with the others. So when I hold this in my hand much like the Feastbat rapier it does want to sit in point forwards as you would expect from a thrust oriented rapier design of weapon. But it pulls a little bit too much with the tip so actually to be honest this naturally wants to sit with the tip pointing a little bit downwards rather than at the opponent. So I feel like I have to work a little bit to keep the tip on target. So as I go through the same procedure of moving the sword around forwards and backwards up and down circular disengagement type actions and then larger beats and cuts barking the blade from the elbow. The sword doesn't feel as nice as either of the other two weapons. It's not too bad thrusting straight forwards although I can feel that the point does want to wobble around a little bit more on that later and disengaging up and down is okay. The circular actions feel quite clumsy I would say. It's quite hard to control the alignment and direction of the blade. Now I should say this sword is perfectly usable. If you're using it for fixed drills for example it's fine. I have used it that way but if you try to free fence with it it doesn't feel particularly nice in the hand as I've just attempted to describe. So why does this weapon feel worse than the other two? Let me go close to the camera. So we'll ignore the hilt and the grip. To be honest this is all fine. I'm quite happy with the hilt on this actually. The problem is with the blade. In this plane it looks fine. It's not very broad. It's not really narrow. It's generic. It's okay. If we flip it this way though we can see the blade is quite flat. It's thicker here than at the tip end and so it does have some distal taper but the distal taper happens quite gradually over the full length of the blade. There's the vague suggestion of a central ridge but overall the profile of the blade is quite flat so yeah it just doesn't feel like a proper sword blade and in fact it's also a little bit too flexible for my liking as well. So when we combine all these things together we get a blade that just doesn't handle that well and it's fine for training but it doesn't feel like a real sword and it's not the nicest thing to do free fencing or even competitive fencing with. So yes this definitely handles worse than both the Fist Spada and the Delta. So in conclusion I've got a few points to make. So number one you get what you pay for. If you want a training weapon that feels more or less like a real sword and that handles in a historically accurate way you basically have to invest a reasonable amount of money to get a high quality reproduction. Generic off-the-shelf weapons are fine to do basic training but just be aware they do not move really the way that a proper sword does. Second point is good quality reproductions can move and handle in very different ways depending on how the blade is designed and constructed. Some swords are very good for thrusting other swords are very good for cutting still other swords are cut and thrust weapons and some are optimized for long reach some are optimized for maneuverability and nimbleness at a closer distance and so on and so forth. And the thing that probably makes the biggest difference between these different types of blades different types of sword is the way the mass of the weapon is distributed along the length of the blade and of course other factors like the pommel and the length of the grip and so on and play into that as well. All right so that brings us to the end of today's video and I will put a link in the description below to the earlier video about factors affecting sword handling and also this is a good opportunity to remind you all that my book The Renaissance Fencing of Giacomo di Grassi a Modern Training Manual is available for purchase now and through lulu books or if you prefer you can get it from amazon and I will include a link to that also in the description below and if you like my approach to fencing and swords and you're interested in di Grassi then please do go and check the book out and I believe the price for it is very reasonable. All right that's it for today take care everyone I'll be back soon with another video bye for now