Have you seen those warriors from Hammerfell? They’ve got curved swords.
Curved! Swords!
BIG. Curved penises.
While you were out there whacking your straight stick, I spent years studying the blade…
Katana snaps in half after first swing
The whole “Japanese steel was really weak” thing is as much of a myth as the whole “katanas are super powerful superior weapons” thing.
They’re all just swords, and don’t make that much of a difference either way.
According to whom?
The reason why Japanese iron is inferior is because of the source of the iron itself, they utilized iron sand instead of rock ore. Rock ore can be made up to 90% ferrous material while the iron sand contains as little as 2%.
This means when you smelt your source material into blooms of iron and slag, the blooms made from sand iron were much smaller. Instead of utilizing a single bloom to make a sword, the Japanese had to work several blooms together. Which is much more labour intensive, and can lead to a lot of imperfections in the final product.
This is why katanas were made out of so little material, and had to be handled with care. They were much more fragile pieces than similar swords made in Korea and China at the time.
Plus, the Japanese developed their iron working much later than their mainland contemporaries, as they never independently invented furnace technology. The technology for furnaces was imported, most likely from the Korean peninsula.
What century of katana are you speaking about? Many katana were used with modern metallurgy technology and imported steel. Do you think modern Japanese created cars are also made from steel refined from sand? Do you think the guns Japanese Samurai used were made from steel refined from sand?
Lol, my dude. No one is claiming that modern japanese steel is of poor quality.
Im speaking of the time period contemporary with the accusation. You know, how arguments typically work…
Do you think the guns Japanese Samurai used were made from steel refined from sand?
Just pointing out this one because it’s funny. Yes, a lot of the early firearms made in Japan were still made from iron sand (Satetsu). Which was the main source of iron in Japan until the 16th century.
There was nothing inherently low quality about using iron sand anyway. Impurities were carried away by slag and the iron in the sand was easily recovered using washing and later electromagnetism. Imports were used as demand increased.
You are conflating the elemental molecule of iron with the finished product of an alloy of carbonized iron aka as steel.
Yes, there isn’t a molecular difference between the iron found in sand vs the iron found in rock ore. However, the medium in which you harvest your iron and how you’re able to heat that iron, dictates the quality not your final product.
The truth is that the steel made from Iron Sand was not lower quality than the Steel made from other sources of Iron.
Yeah, Japanese steel wasn’t great, but they were working with what they had available at the time. Katanas were basically made out of iron dust, which had been melted into slag by filtering through charcoal. The resulting chunks of steel were basically straight up slag, not nice even ingots. So the steel they got was actually extremely high carbon in places, but that also meant it was brittle as hell, because those carbon pockets were prone to shattering.
So the folding was invented, to even out the steel’s carbon content (just like how a Damascus steel blade has visible stripes, Japanese steel had invisible stripes of high and low carbon steel) and to lower the carbon content overall; Every time you heat for another fold, you’re evaporating some carbon. So the folding process took the steel from extremely high carbon pockets to a more evenly distributed carbon content.
Now that modern steel processing exists, the only real reason to stick to the folding method is tradition. There’s no need to fold modern steel ingots because they’re already homogenous and can be produced at whatever carbon level you want.
Impurities are melted into slag. Not the iron. That’s what slag is.
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Yeah they’re a bit better at slashing whilst a straight sword is slightly better at thrusting. Typically a curved sword is a bit better whilst on horseback or whilst fighting unarmoured or lightly armoured opponents and straight blades are a bit better whilst fighting one-on-one and against somewhat more armoured opponents.
But these are slight differences and sword styles are also varied in each region, so the Japanese did develop swords which were more adapted to thrusting with reinforced tips and Europeans did develop swords which were more effective at slashing.
I think some people obsess over what swords are the best and the worst. In reality the style of sword was unlikely to be the major deciding factor in a one on one fight. The amount and quality of armour and the skill and capacity (Size and strength) of the fighters themselves are much bigger factors.
Sword but very curved and yet not very famous
(Ethiopian shotel)Pretty famous among FromSoft fans.
Well i’m not one of them.
This looks more like a scythe that doubles as a weapon to me
It was probably inspired by Egyptian khopesh since it was used in Ethiopia even before the kingdom of Axum. Thing is, the blade is sharp on both sides. So you could either use its inner side as big sickle to reach around enemy shield and try for the weak spots like neck, face or armpits, or if the enemy didn’t had a shield you could turn it to outer side and in this case it was similar to Persian shamshir in being excellent weapon against unarmored opponents.
Two more interesting thing about it was 1: the designs varies greatly, most were shorter and wider, the curvature also varied; and 2: it apparently worked quite well considering it has been in use for possibly over 2500 years and some Ethiopian emperors even organised special elite units wielding it.
Just how long is that? I struggle to calculate it from what I see.
Blade is around 1 meter long.
That looks way longer
It do looks longer than it is because of proportions. It’s very thin and the handle is pretty short compared to European blades because the blade is also very light so it don’t need much counterweight.
Probably the round thing (a shield?) fooled us both. For me it looked like a two-hander.
Hey, have you seen those Japanese? They have curved swords. Curved… Swords…!
Persians absolutely malding right now.
Psst… hail Sithis.
Real swords have curves 😤
The same guy would write a five-page essay about how much similar curved swords like scimitars and sabres suck, and might actually die if he is shown a khopesh or a shotel.
Well it’s no 1896 pattern light cavalry saber…
InFeRiOr ErOpEaN WeApOnS!1
As far as swords go, the gladius is still the goat.
To be fair it is sharp enough to cut through atoms and space time destroying the fabric of reality allowing you to turn back time to the Big Bang and reshape the universe in your image.
are you trying to imply something about my boy shashka?
How about make it straight for a bit, then it do a little back curve near the end?
any kriegsmesser homies out there?
Althoigh this sword\katana discourse is all known at that point, I can’t help myself but adding rapier at the western side to spice things up.
Would rapier\katana comparison work better?
Why not both.
