WHAT SWORDS CAN AND CANNOT DO

Movies and television shows often depict swords being used inaccurately. Some of this myth is promoted at Renaissance Faires. Often we find that these misconceptions are peddled as truth, and when people realize swords are not like anything that they've seen or have been told, it comes across as a rude awakening. Perhaps the following information will help soften the blow.

First, a sword is nothing more than steel, which is a product of iron, carbon, and trace elements (and, of course, engineering and ingenuity). While it is one of man's truest symbols and finest achievements, it is still subject to the laws of physics.

Entertainment media show swords being able to cut incredibly hard objects like concrete, marble, doorknobs, bars, etc. and emerge without a scratch. They show one warrior smashing the edge of his sword into the edge of the blade of his enemy, and either his sword is unscathed, cuts his foe's sword in two, or shatters his opponent's weapon into thousands of steel shards.

This is all pure fiction. Swords cannot cut objects that are harder than themselves. Moreover, swords cannot cut semi-hard materials without some degree of surface scuffing, and swords cannot cut hard or metallic materials without being scratched. Historically people restoratively polished their swords on a succession of increasingly finer grit water stones - not on Arkansas stones like on the movie Highlander (never ever do that to a sword - it is a crime!)

Steel swords are not made by casting them, by pouring molten, liquid steel into a depressed mould and allowing it to cool to hardness, like in the movie Conan. This might have been done during the Bronze Age with bronze, but afterwards the bronze weapon was work-hardened by hammers to make the material harder, stronger and more-wear resistant.

Swords should never be sharpened on an electric knife sharpener because knives have a different edge geometry than swords, and subjecting a sword to such a crude machine is a crime!

Many movie swords were in actuality made of soft aluminum, plastic, rubber, or wood with metal foil. When you see swords jabbed into pillars, it's little more than styrofoam or paper maché.

The swords of old and in museum pieces were much lighter than the 10 lb.-plus monstrosities that pass as swords today. Some people claim that swords of old were 20 - 50 even 100 lbs. Again, this is purely fiction. There are very scant few swords that reached the 20 lb. range and were only ceremonial. Battlefield weapons - single-handed knightly swords were often around 2.5 lbs, while two-handed longswords averaged around 4 to 4.5 lbs. Besides, if your sword weighed 100 lbs. and you got tired in your first 60 seconds of battle, you would be easily killed by people with 2.5 lbs. swords.

The proper intended targets of historical swords were flesh and bone. Swords have been depicted in some European Medieval art as having pierced armour. Some historians believe this to be true while some believe it to be romantic exaggeration. Regardless, the best tool for piercing armor is either a very high poundage bow, crossbow, or warhammer or mace.

Many believe swords were wielded edge-on-edge like in movies. Many movie prop swords aren't even made of steel, but lighter and softer aluminum with wide, rounded edges so that actors without sufficient training in theatrical combat do not need to train how to do historical fighting. Antique swords show that most battle scars on the flat of the blade, more so than the edge of the blade. Period swordsmanship manuals indicate that voiding attacks was promoted, and that instead of parrying one should counter-cut any cuts in order to retain the initiative of proactive (rather than defensive) fighting. Television shows like Highlander teach "You want to block with the edge [of the katana] because this is the hardest part of the sword." True, but the edge is also the thinnest part of the sword (but then again, shows like Highlander go through a dozen aluminum blade props each episode - each fight scene chews up the edge of the prop blades, thus requiring frequent replacement - a very expensive thing that cannot always be done with practical, historical swords.