Blade
For other uses of the word blade, see Blade (disambiguation)A
blade is the flat part of a
tool or
weapon that normally has a cutting edge and/or pointed end typically made of a metal, such as
steel used to cut, stab, slice, throw, thrust, or strike.
Material for weapon blades has to be carefully selected, as a balance between
hardness and
toughness is required to function properly. In antiquity, the main
metal used was
copper, then
bronze,
iron, and finally steel. Prior to the invention of steel, several techniques were developed for reducing the brittleness of iron. Perhaps the most well known is
pattern welding, a technique used for
katanas (
samurai swords) or 'damascus' blades. This was a very labor-intensive technique - and thus such swords were very expensive.
Various techniques may also be employed to make the blade stronger or harder. Copper and bronze can be "
work-hardened" by simply hitting the blade with a hammer while it is cold. Blades made of
steel with a high enough
carbon content (greater than 0.2%) can be
heat-treated by heating the steel up to a critical point (most alloys become non-
magnetic at that point), then
quenching it in water. Quenching puts an enormous amount of stress on the metal, and oftentimes a sword would break into pieces during that step. If the sword survived heat-treating, it would be
tempered by heating it to a relatively low temperature for an extended period of time. The tempering process would make it slightly softer, but also tougher and "springier", and thus less likely to break or chip during the rigors of
combat.
Case hardening is a process of increasing the carbon content at the surface of very low
carbon steel. It is done by placing the object to be hardened in a sealed container along with carbon-containing material; in antiquity, this material was usually horn or hide. The container would then be heated until it was glowing red, and held at that temperature for awhile, based on the size of the part being hardened, allowing carbon to penetrate the steel by a few thousandths of a
centimeter. At that point, the object would be dumped out of the container into a water bath to quench it, resulting in a very hard surface, but completely unhardened core. There is very little evidence of this having ever been done to swords except, perhaps, the very earliest of
iron blades.
Another important aspect of many blades are so-called "fullers". Despite popular belief,
fullers were not "blood groves" that facilitated quicker bleeding of the victim. Rather fullers helped to make a blade lighter while still retaining much of its strength. They were made by positioning a heated blade over a bottom fuller, setting a like sized top fuller on the top side of the sword, and hitting the top fuller with a
hammer.
Decoration
Decoration was often applied to the blade - usually
engraving and sometimes inlaying with
gold. In the
19th century, it became common to etch designs on the blade using
acid and a wax template.
Shape
Swords may have either a straight blade or a curved one. A straight sword was primarily intended for hacking and stabbing, whilst a curved sword was better at slashing. The difference between a hacking cut and a slashing one is essentially the same as the difference between using a
butcher's knife and a
chef's knife; one forces an edge straight into a material while the other is pulled along the material to get more of a slicing action.
For a horseman, stabbing was not practical because it is hard to make a
horse move swiftly backward should the thrust fail to strike the victim. The cavalryman would then be at the mercy of his erstwhile victim. This was not so important in massed
cavalry charges, in any case in such attacks the cavalry would often be in closely packed formations in which slashing would not be possible. Consequently,
European heavy cavalry generally had straight swords.
Some variation included
*the
flamberge blade (ondulated blade, for both psychological effect and some tactical advantage of using a non-standard blade: vibrations and easier parry)
*the
colichemarde, essentially found in
smallswordBacksword
Cavalry that engaged in single combat or in looser formations normally had curved swords. In order to cut, a sword had to be drawn across the victim's skin, and a curved sword was more suitable for this. The blade was only sharpened on the outer edge and the
radius of curvature was equal to the distance from the centre about which the blade was rotated - i.e. the distance from the blade to the shoulder.
In curved European swords, this was usually a full arm's length, but in the
Middle East and
Indian swords it is generally a much shorter distance - typically 50 cm or so (see
scimitar). This gave Eastern cavalry a great advantage over their European counterparts because they were able to fight at a closer distance than the Europeans were used to and therefore get inside their sword arc.
Single-edged swords have a back (hence their generic name of
backsword). This is the unsharpened edge. Early 19th century swords had a "pipe-backed" appearance, whereby they had a thickened ridge along the back to make the blade stronger.
