Can a RAPIER or SWORD be TOO LIGHT to CUT?

Can you tell whether a sword, or specifically in this case a rapier, will be able to cut from the weight alone? Hi folks, Matt Easton here, ScholarGuide.org, so just let me explain why I'm asking this question at all. So in the world of rapiers, whether we're talking about the antiques here, whether we're talking about fencing with them in the HEMA context, or whether you're perhaps looking at writing novels or role-playing games or video games, then often the question comes up about whether rapiers can cut. And it's actually a really complicated question. I have often asserted that certain rapiers can't cut. Certain other people have retorted saying, well, rapiers can cut. Well, as I've mentioned numerous times on this channel, what we describe as a rapier is an incredibly vague and broad term. So we have to look at the individual weapon being analyzed. So the question comes up, could we look at the weight of a rapier and analyze whether it has any cutting capacity from that? I think this stems from the idea that people look at something like a small sword, which generally speaking has practically no cutting capacity, and they are often very light in the region of 400 grams, something like that, so incredibly light, about the same as a modern fencing foil or epee. So they look at that and go, well, that's very light, that can't cut, but a rapier, well, we know that they're over a kilogram in weight, aren't they? Or are they? We'll get to that in a second. And so therefore, we know that rapiers can cut because we look at the rapier and they've got big cuts in them. So clearly if we go, oh, well, if you have a rapier that's over a kilogram, then it can cut. If it's under a kilogram, then it's, well, it must be like a small sword, so it can't cut. Wrong. So here's the elephant in the room, and in fact, it's several elephants. The problem is whether a sword can cut or not and how well it can cut and what it can cut is really a function of about a dozen different factors. Can weight play a part? Sometimes weight can play a part, but it's not a particularly big part, and I'll get to that in a second. In fact, there are many other factors. For example, the cross-section of the blade, the breadth of the blade. And when I say cross-section, incidentally, I mean the shape of the cross-section, the edge geometry. Even little factors about stiffness are connected to this, and I'll come back to that in a second. Point of balance can play a factor, although it's not as much as you would think. You can take a cutting sword like a saber, and you can play around with the point of balance, and you might find some small difference in cutting capacity, but it's not as much as you would think. So there's a whole bunch of different factors to take into consideration, not to forget, of course, what are you talking about cutting and to what degree do you say it will cut? Are you talking about lopping off a part of someone's body, or are you simply talking about a superficial slash to the face or the thigh or the hand that might change the nature of the fight thereafter, but it's not going to perhaps cut through clothing? So are we talking about a cut which will cut through clothing and into someone's arm, or are we talking about a cut that laid across someone's hand will still do a nasty, or neck, do a nasty grievous injury because there was no clothing there to impede it? So there's a huge bunch of variables. Personally, with thinner bladed swords, like most rapiers, I tend to personally, in my own mind when I'm fencing, if I do get a cut on someone, I personally tend to only really acknowledge it to myself or count it if it's to someone's head, hand, or thigh, leg, if it's done with enough rotation and enough movement. I personally consider that the majority of rapiers, not all of them, and I'm going to look at some exceptions here in a second, the majority of rapiers I look at would not cut convincingly through clothing. In fact, it might surprise you, most knives won't cut convincingly through clothing. Right, so what I'm going to be showing here are, for the most part, original 17th century rapiers. I've got four original 17th century rapiers here. So I'm going to put this one down for a second and I'm just going to go right to a sword, a rapier if you want to call it that, that I 100% would say yes this can cut really well. And this is one of my latest acquisitions and this dates to about 1600. It is a German rapier, we'll perhaps look more specifically at this, and you might notice it has some similarities with the so-called Munich town guard swords. In fact, it's not one of those and it's not that similar, but it does have some design characteristics which are similar to those swords. And therefore, you might not be that surprised, and if I just pick up the LK Chen replica of the Munich town guard sword, you will not be surprised that I have previously found that these are good cutters and I do regard these as good cutters. But in all honesty, can we call this a rapier? Well that's a very subjective thing isn't it? Yes it has a swept hilt, but if you look at the blade it's pretty much like a medieval arming sword. And in fact, I've got a medieval arming sword here, or at least a replica of one. This is the LK Chen that I did with them, based on one of the Alexandria swords. And this cuts phenomenally, but it's got essentially a broadsword blade on it. But is it really that different to this so-called rapier? Well actually no, they're remarkably similar. So in many ways this rapier in parentheses is actually extremely similar to this broadsword, it just has more hand protection. It's a little bit narrower in the foible, but not very much. So clearly there are rapiers. If you want to call them military rapiers, maybe some of you would call it a sidesword, maybe some of you would call it a broadsword, or a Felddegen field sword, you know. You might go by various names and say well that isn't a rapier. But here are three swords that I think we would all agree definitely are rapiers. First of all we have the Spanish shell hilt here, and that has a hexagonal cross-section blade that has some flex to it. It's an original antique so I'm not going to flex it that much, but does have notable edges on it. Then I have a English Civil War period English rapier, which has a lozenge shaped blade and does have fairly decent edge geometry to it, and is more flexible. So what they've done with this is they've sacrificed stiffness in the thrust to enable potentially better cutting capacity, and I would say that is the case. And then at the other end of the scale we have a southern Italian cup hilt, it might be Spanish but I think it's southern Italian, probably Sicilian, cup hilt here, which has an entirely square blade. Okay so that 100% will never cut anything. It is square, it doesn't have edges, it's essentially a blooming long and nimble knitting needle with really good hand protection. So in a nutshell that means that just from the 17th century at one end of the spectrum we've got something which is purely a needle for thrusting and will never cut anything at all. It will give you a nasty whip and that's about it. It's basically like a giant fencing foil blade with a sharp end. And at the other end of the scale we've got something which is akin to a broadsword or a medieval arming sword and that will lop body parts off. So these are theoretically both rapiers, a lot of people would call these both rapiers, but they are utterly un-alike, is that a word? Unlike each other. So to come back to the original question, does weight give us any indication about which of these swords might be able to cut or might be able to cut better or worse? And do those things marry up between weight and cutting capacity? Well using these two swords, basically no, not very much. Okay so these swords by coincidence weigh within 10 grams of each other. This one here, this cut pelt with no cutting capacity weighs 960 grams. This sword here with some cutting capacity, I wouldn't want to receive a cut to my head or my hand or perhaps my inner thigh with that sword. It has the geometry for some level of sort of slashing or cutting like cuts. That weighs 970 grams. So these are swords which weigh the same, they're about the same length. The non-cutting one is very slightly longer, only like an inch. But fundamentally what you've got to remember about these swords is that the blades are, relatively to the total mass, light. A lot of the mass of a rapier is in the hilt. We'll come back to the arming sword in a second. So remember that when you're just looking at the overall weight of a weapon, when it's this type of complex hilted weapon, a lot of that weight is the hilt, not the blade. So what the blade can do is very often not married to the total weight. Now what's interesting is perhaps of these three, one of the best cutting swords is this English Civil War period rapier and that has a better cutting capacity than the Spanish rapier. It's got a less stiff blade but it's got a broader blade with a better, finer edge geometry for cutting. Now what's really interesting is this one is actually really light. It only weighs 790 grams. It's under 800 grams. That's really super light for a weapon of this length and yet it has some cutting capacity. So the irony here is that out of these three swords, the two that are about the same weight have less cutting capacity than the one which is actually lighter, even though this also has a form of cup hilt. Now one thing I have to mention about that, one of the reasons that this sword is lighter than the other two is not because it has a particularly lighter blade but because it has a lighter hilt. The English hilt is smaller in both directions, it's a shorter hilt, it's got just less metal in it and it's quite thin. So what they've done is they've done weight saving in this sword by reducing the mass in the hilt but the actual blade is about the same mass I would estimate, I would guess, and it has slightly better cutting capacity. Now we come here to the big, let's call it, battle sword, the guards sword. This is something you could use on a horseback. It's a big old choppy sword that has a good amount of length and a good amount of hand protection. Yes this is heavier, okay, so this is 1275 grams. Now I'm not going to say that's very heavy for rapiers, in fact we do find a lot of rapiers, if we look at the weights of them in museums, we find a lot of rapiers are in fact about 1300 grams, even very occasionally 1400, 1500 grams. They are sometimes heavy swords but the majority of rapiers in museums tend to be more like between about 800 grams and 1100 grams in that kind of range, either side of a kilogram essentially. So this is heavier and this is a more battlefield-like choppy sword, okay, 1275 grams. So you might say, well that proves it then, if a sword is 1275 grams then that's why it's got great cutting capacity, that's why that's the best cutting of those four rapiers. Not necessarily, remember what I said about hilts, okay, so I just want to remind you that this sword here, which has a whopping great cutting blade and cuts phenomenally, it's 37 inches long so it is almost as long, in fact yeah, it's almost as long as some of the so-called rapiers. This sword here definitely unquestionably cuts well, by any standards it cuts as well as many long swords, it cuts as well as many many different, you know, Indian, Chinese swords and it is a very good cutting medieval arming sword. You could mount this blade on a later swept hilt for example, in fact many of these blades were these type 19s. So this is a good cutting blade, no question. How much does this weigh? 970 grams, it's under a kilogram and by pure coincidence that means it weighs exactly the same amount as this Spanish shell hilted rapier here. Now I suspect that a lot of you watching this channel would not have guessed that this sword weighs the same as this sword, but it comes down to the hilt, it's because the hilt is such a big amount of the mass. So despite the fact that this will undoubtedly be a far more effective cutter, at least against larger targets and do more damage than this will, they weigh the same. Ergo, just weighing a sword doesn't tell us anything about whether it's a good cutter or not and in fact if we look at a lot of military sabers, a lot of them are 750, 800, 850 grams, they're lighter than both these swords but they cut really really well. So you can have a really light sword that does cut really well. Obviously there's a certain limitation to that but if you get below a certain amount of weight it becomes a bit ridiculous because you have to make the blade either too thin or too narrow and therefore it doesn't cut very well. But at this range, at the sort of 900 grams to 1000 grams, you can have a really good cutting sword or you can have a really good thrusting sword that doesn't cut very well but they weigh the same. So in fact when we look at these two blades, these two blades are quite similar and yet this weighs 1275 grams, this weighs 970 grams. So where are those extra grams, those couple of hundred grams coming from? Fundamentally they're coming from the hilt. It's because there is a lot more mass and metal in a swept hilt and a developed hilt than a simple hilt. So therefore I understand some of you might go but therefore doesn't that undermine your argument because you're going to say to me if we're just talking about rapiers, we're not looking at arming swords, we're not looking at sabers, if we're just looking at rapiers then can't we limit the mass to say whether they would be able to cut or not? That's a difficult one. Perhaps it can be an indicator but not the only indicator and I think you'd have to have other indicators in there because as I demonstrated with this English rapier here, both of these swords are able to cut but that weighs 1275 grams and that weighs under 800 grams, 790 grams. This is a light sword but still has spadroon-like cutting ability and one of the reasons is because this is a much lighter hilt. It's also a hollow pommel incidentally which I forgot to mention. So it's a hollow pommel and very thin metal guard. This is a solid pommel and very thick heavy bars. So unfortunately the problem with rapiers and analyzing the weight versus the cutting capacity is actually ironically the hilts not the blades. The problem is that one hilt can be 200-300 grams heavier than another hilt and so you could have a very light blade with a very heavy hilt or you could have a heavy blade with a light hilt and they can be utterly different swords in the hand and act and function in very very different ways or they might function in the same way. So to conclude, analyzing rapiers by any one factor alone is useless, doesn't work, you have to throw in a bunch of factors, cross-sectional shape, width, length, mass, point of balance, mass of the hilt. It's really really complicated and the only way of really knowing whether a rapier can cut or not if it's a real sharp rapier is by trying it and you might find it can cut some targets but not others but then you pick up a rapier like this, this can lop all sorts of targets whereas you pick up a rapier like this and it's good against some targets in certain ways. So can rapiers cut or not? Well there we go, that's the full complicated unsatisfactory answer. Anyway I hope that's been useful to some of you out there. I have been Matt Easton, I will of course continue to be and I'm sure that I'll see you back on the channel really soon. 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!