Wavy Blades ('flamberge') - Some thoughts on their function

Hey folks, Matt Easton here, scholar gladiatorian. Now I get asked a lot and I have in the past been asked many many times to talk more about wavy blades, sometimes known as flamberge, flame blades, whatever. Let's call them wiggly blades or wavy blades. And I have spoken a little bit about these in the past and pointed out that they are something you find in lots of different cultures. This is one of the most famous examples of a wavy blade. In this case this is a probably dates to about 1900, maybe the early years of the 20th century. And it's from the Philippines, famously used by the Moros. And this is one of the most famous examples of wavy blade but there are many other examples you can find from around the world in different periods. So we've talked about the fact that wavy blades do accentuate cutting capacity to some degree. So obviously there are many different ways of cutting. There is a simple chop, there is a push cut and there is a pull cut and you can combine any of those things. So something can be a chop and a push or it can be a chop and a pull or slice, some people might call that. So there's various combinations of these and additionally sometimes you intend to thrust and you miss with the thrust and that in itself becomes a push cut. But in all of these things having a wavy blade will make a more effective wound and will cut through meat essentially more effectively. And additionally with certain types of clothing, certainly thin clothing, perhaps even things like silk, serrated or wavy blades are more likely to get through it. On a simple basis there are two ways in which having a wavy blade increases cutting capacity. One is that if you're simply striking you're concentrating the energy or force rather into a smaller area of the blade. So rather than having a long curved or straight blade it's actually concentrating into smaller nodes and therefore increasing the force at those points. That's one way. Another way for example is with a push cut you've got an undulation effect so it's like a saw in that it's going dunk, dunk, dunk, dunk across the thing that you're slicing across so it's almost biting into, chewing into the thing that it's going across. And lastly, and it's related to that last point, it's a little bit like having a curved blade. So curved blades I've talked about the advantages because it reduces the tangent or rather the angle of the edge geometry and that can be effective with a forwards curve or a backwards curve you get slightly different effects you get more of a chopping effect with a forwards curve and more of a slicing effect with a backwards curve. Essentially one's more like a push cut and one's more like a draw cut but when you have a wavy blade whichever one whether it's on the back so in other words the curve going away from the thing you're striking or whether it's on the curve going towards the thing you're striking you're getting one or other of those effects with each of those things and if you hit straight on the front it's a bit like a small circular blade so you're concentrating more force at one particular point. So in other words curved blade rather wavy blades do give some of the advantages of curved blades and they do are definitely designed to increase cutting potential but not always cutting in the same way. Now very briefly before I wrap up this video I want to consider why weren't these more common across history throughout the world why weren't wavy blades if they're more effective at cutting why weren't they used more commonly? Well I think that there are two main factors number one it makes carrying or sheathing the blade more difficult okay so generally speaking you can make a large wooden scabbard that will accommodate this on something that's around the size of a morrow crisp it's not too much of a problem but if you have something that's sword sized like a rapier or any other type of sword certainly with the large two-handed swords which don't even have scabbards having a blade that is wavy like this can be problematic in terms of the not only in terms of getting it in and out and housing it but because of the nature of the wavy blade it's going to be very difficult to not damage your scabbard every time you pull it out and put it back in that I think is one reason although not a major one I think the primary reason is that they are more difficult to make and maintain a wavy blade is takes a huge amount more effort to make I mean the amount of effort that's got into making a fine edge geometry this is quite sharp so I'm being quite ginger with the way I'm handling it the edge geometry on something that's wavy I mean getting edge geometry correct on just a straight or a simple curved blade is difficult enough but getting it right on a blade which is undulating like this is even more difficult but remember as well as making the thing you've got to maintain it as well so even once you've made the thing every time this gets any kind of edge damage you've got to refinish those edges and resharpen those edges and that's far more difficult with this type of wavy blade incidentally I should mention morocrises don't always have this number of wiggles this is a particularly wiggly example some examples are straight some examples just have a gentle undulation but it does seem that at least in the Philippines if we're talking about this specific type of sword the number of wiggles is related to the status of the owner to some degree although the jury's out on how true that is or whether that's partly an urban myth I don't know if you know things about that feel free to post underneath on things like so-called flamberge two-handed swords you even find wavy blades on some rapiers obviously the considerations are slightly different but I do think fundamentally it's still about trying to increase the cutting capacity of that weapon whether it's being used to chop push or pull or all of the above and of course remember many of these in fact all of these weapons have two edges so it can be with back cuts as well not always just forward cuts I hope that's been interesting to you I'm sure I will talk more about wavy blades in the future cheers folks thanks for watching we've got extra videos on Patreon please give our Facebook a like and subscribe if you haven't already cheers folks