Factors affecting sword handling

Hello everyone it's Greg from Edinburgh Renaissance Fencing Academy here. Today's video is the first one that I've recorded since I moved house so if you're a regular viewer and you notice some different stuff in the background behind me that's why. Today's video is about sword handling and specifically what different factors can affect how a sword handles when you actually use it for fencing. Now my motivation for doing this is that I'm in the middle of trying to commission a new training sword for myself right now and it's going to be specifically for fencing in the style of Giacomo di Granati, my usual style, and it's not so easy to find a good training weapon for a particular style. There are lots of generic training weapons out there but when you want something that feels just right for one particular period in history that's another matter. It's a lot of work to find something suitable. So I want to explore that a little bit today as I go through this process of trying to find myself a nice new sword. Let's get into it. Alright so when you pick up a sword and start moving around and trying to perform fencing actions it will either feel nice or not and what factors can influence how well the sword handles in use. Let's go through them one by one. So firstly the overall weight or mass obviously has an influence. The heavier a sword the more powerfully it can strike but the more tiring it is on the muscles the more effort it takes to use so that's definitely part of the equation. However you can't just look at the static weight of a weapon to understand its handling. Other factors are at least as important as the overall mass of the weapon. So the second factor I think most fencers at least will be familiar with is the point of balance. So in other words the point at which the weapon will stay more or less stable if you balance it on your finger. So that's the point of balance for this rapier which is quite far forwards. Now the point of balance varies greatly in historical weapons. Some of them balance near the hand some of them balance further forwards in the direction of the tip and there is no one correct answer to that particular problem. Some weapons want the point of balance to be further forwards to give more presence to the tip of the sword and others want it to be nearer the hand to make it more movable when the blade is rotating through the air. So point of balance is definitely important and the point of balance itself will be affected by of course the mass of the blade but also what's at the other end of the weapon the pommel. Now as well as the size and mass of the pommel we should also consider the hilt in general and particularly handle or grip of the sword. This is another factor which many people might overlook in the handling of the sword. The size and length of the handle in combination with the pommel and the type of guard you've got will greatly influence how the weapon sits in your hand. So for example a longer handle will allow you to take a longer grip with your hand and while a shorter more compact handle will mean that your hand sits much more snugly against the guard of the sword. We should also consider that the longer the grip the further back the pommel is located and that's going to have some kind of complex influence on the handling of the weapon as well because this is effectively a kind of counterweight to everything that's up here. The next factor we should consider is the shape of the blade. So for example a long narrow blade like this rapier one will move in a directly forwards thrusting action a lot more readily and a lot more comfortably than it will move in an arcing cutting motion like this. While a blade which is wider in this plane and flatter in this plane will move much better in these kind of arcing cut motions. So you generally find that cutting swords tend to have wider flatter blades for that particular reason. But then you do have let's say compromised weapons cut and thrust weapons which have a broad lower section in the forte but tapering to a very narrow tip up here in the debile in the weak. So that's another level of complexity in blade design. Finally another factor which is probably the most complex of all is the distribution of mass of the weapon. And what I mean by that is how is the metal from which the weapon is constructed and distributed along the length of the blade. So for example does the blade have a really thick forte section and then a lot of distal taper going to a very thin tip end or is the mass a little bit more evenly distributed along the blade and is there a fuller so that's the groove in the bottom of the blade and removing some of the weight down here and does the weapon have a pronounced central reach or not. All these kind of things can have and small but significant influences on how that weapon moves and handles and when you are wielding it and they interact with each other in a really complex way so it can be quite hard to judge simply from the specifications of a weapon on paper how it's going to feel when you actually pick it up and try it. Okay so to conclude today's video it's not enough to just look at the weight or even just look at the weight and point of balance of the sword on paper to understand its handling in practice. There are a lot of other factors that can lead to a weapon feeling really nice in the hand or feeling really clunky and clumsy and not nice in the hand and I should point out this is not just a problem with modern reproductions. I've been lucky enough to handle a reasonable number of antique originals and some of them handle really badly quite frankly and others of course handle very well but it's not always obvious simply from the appearance or size of a weapon which is which. So yeah I don't really have any answers to these problems and I'm just putting forward my ideas about the factors which are involved to illustrate the complexity of the situation. I'm going to come back with another video shortly where I look at a couple of swords in a bit more detail and to kind of illustrate this whole topic through example and so watch out for another video coming soon with that theme. Just to finish up today though a quick reminder that my book The Renaissance Fencing of Giacomo di Grassi a modern training manual is available now through Lulu Books and you can also buy it I believe through Amazon. It's on softback print on demand format and so if you are interested in my theories my style of fencing and my general approach to swordsmanship then please go and check out the book and the price is I think quite reasonable and there is a link in the description below if you are interested. But that's it for today take care everyone I'll be back with that other video soon bye for now