That may be so, but I was answering back to this claim:
A bolt cutter is the most obvious counterexample.
I don’t see where in the article it says that diamond will hold an edge better than anything else. Can you point it out for me?
But is it just mechanical advantage? A long-handled axe gives very little mechanical advantage (the opposite in fact) but is often very good at cutting through things.
I’d be very interested to see your calculations. As I recall, the guy’s sword was quite thin.
Well shoot, I don’t think they meant it was “impossible” to do so with any tool. I’ve got a wee Dremel that will cut through a sword in about 5 minutes, and an oxy-acetylene torch that will too. The context of the thread was clearly with respect to swordfights and sword-sword impacts. I mean, one can nitpick a statement that wasn’t clearly defined as one might want all day long.
One must look at what constitutes holding an edge. The most important factor to holding an edge for cutting is hardness, the resistance to elastic (and plastic) deformation under stress. And diamonds are certainly among the absolute hardest materials known. However, I’ll break from the crowd here and state that toughness (resistance to crack propagation and fracture) is the other key component in holding an edge. When a sword edge is being pounded on against other items, toughness is going to count for how the edge holds together, and I don’t know that diamonds are going to be the best thing for that. In fact, I’d say that depending upon the orientation, they could be fairly poor as an edge.
Forged titanium might be a contender.
I read where farmers in Russia are using forged titanium shovels, rakes, hoes.
** Titanium Pry Bars & Shovels ** are sold in US.
If titanium is good enough for a pocket knife it should be good for a sword.
While titanium is quite resilient, has a high tensile strength, and is corrosion resistant, it’s very soft. Even in alloyed and heat-treated condition it barely matches hardness with the softest of nickel steels, and doesn’t come anywhere close to a high vanadium stainless or a high carbon steel that is appropriate for a longblade or sword.
Stranger
Around here we usually refer to that as bullshit. Ancient eastern swordmaking techniques unknown to us mere westerners.
As far as your sword getting cut in two, there are people who can do alot of things with technique that you may or may not recognize unless you understand what he is doing and how he is doing it. Your sword might also have not been of quite the quality you thought.
I wonder if an amorphous metal alloy, such as those produced by Liquidmetal, would produce a superior sword.
There’s been an earlier thread on this subject (I’m too drunk and tired to search for it) where a titanium sword was discussed and the conclusion was that the lightness of the metal would wind up being a disadvantage in a combat situation.
I think that one could probably come up with a better material than steel for swords (sintered ceramics might be able to do the job), but the cost would be insanely absurd. What good does one sword that can cut through nearly anything do you, when for the same amount of money one can equip an entire army with cheap carbon steel swords?
Oh yeah, zombi thread!
I am courteous enough to consider that Iskinner accurately described his experience.
I see no reason why a bronze sword should not appear to be sliced in two by a steel sword.
Note the use of the word ‘slice’, and that one is combining three factors, weight (impetus is important), sharpness, wedge intrusion and slicing (oops four factors).
I am no expert in sword fighting, but I used to collect old weapons (flogged the lot of to a spiv a few months ago) and I know how to use a sledge hammer, machete or axe - basically it is a missile on a string.
One thing I noted is that curved edged blades combine impact (wedging) with slicing.
If you weight the blade at the far end you get momentum, impact and a slicing effect from centrifugal force (ok negative centripetal for purists).
As a novice, I would weight the end of the sword and taper the width of the blade from thinner at outer extremes to thicker as it gets closer to the hands - basically a saw.
Presumably you were both extremely drunk at the time? I’m just kidding, though only halfway. What happened to the piece of your sword which went winging off into space? I hope it didn’t cut through your hosts fusuma doors or land on his cat.
I make the drunk comment since your host acted highly irresponsibly if he knew your sword would “get cut into” as you say, and yet was wiling to demonstrate the superiority of his own “golden sword” in actual simulated combat (and not, say fixing your blade in a stationary place).
A shame about your expensive blade, by the way. I hope it was an antique/art object or it was illegal in Okinawa.
What on earth does being corteous have to do with it?
I’ll reiterate my point: At the forces and angles you are dealing with in an actual sword fight “cutting”, “slicing”, what have you, through another sword blade is NOT going to happen.
When dealing with an incoming blow there are many options available, of those that bring the sword into contact with the other a few should result in damage to the blade and none would actually result in sliced blade.
The swords will likely meet (in a bind) in one of four ways. Edge to flat, flat to flat, edge to edge (but only at the forte and not at a 90 degree angle but at a much gentler angle of attack and in a way so as to redirect the force rather than receive it full on -a solid block- as you see done in the movies).
Every bind has the potential to cause damage to the sword blade from a surface scratch to a deep nick. But I don’t care how strong you are you are not going to cut through your opponent’s blade. It won’t happen should the weapons meet flat to flat. If they should meet edge to flat the worse that will happen is a broken blade should it suffer a catastrophic failure. A bind that meets edge on edge might cause a nick depending on how it was carried out (properly or improperly), but again, the force required to SLICE through the other blade cannot be generated by a human being, just as important is the fact that the weapon receiving the blow will YIELD dissipating most of the energy anyway.
This is the same reason why we disregard such experiments as swords cutting into pieces of armor that have been bolted down to the ground. The test is unrealistic because the armor piece cannot yield to the blow as it would if it were on a person.
Hmmm. Would that look something like this? http://starwarsmaniatic.webcindario.com/Luke%20Skywalker.jpg
ArchitectChore, can I see if I’m understanding your übersword correctly?
The sword’s body would be epoxy resin with carbon fibers & carbon nanotubes going lengthwise through the sword. The epoxy resin provided the compressive strength, while the carbon fibers & tubes provide the tensile strength, so that we’ve got something like a beam. The epoxy resin will have to have certain properties, and the carbon fibers can’t be such that they’ll break in situ (if that’s the right term).
The blade is made of industrial diamonds; however, based on some other comments, diamonds may not actually be best.
Is my understanding of what you wrote in the ballpark?
Thanks!
IIRC, Aztec warriors were equipped with obsidian swords. I believe obsidian can be sharper than steel, so in that sense they may have been “superior”.
Wood edged with obsidian chips. Sharp and heavy, but too brittle.
They did pretty poorly against the conquistadores’ Toledo steel blades, too.
Plus the Spaniards had the advantage of swinging downwards from a ton of galloping horse against men wearing quilted armour, which added a good deal of juice against minimal protection: the conquistadors could probably have wielded cricket bats and still had the tactical advantage. Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs And Steel {or Gary Jennings’ Aztec, for a well-researched fictional account} provides an excellent summary of why the Aztecs lost.
There was another thread a while back where we talked about whether a samurai could kick a crusader’s ass. In that thread it was fairly well settled that katanas, being made of folded metal, were made for slicing and not striking, and would tend to break if used against the sturdier European weapons when used in the European fighting style (with a lot of parrying and blade-on-blade impact).
So it stands to reason that if you made a katana more solid than the norm, then it could break another katana on parrying. And then if you wanted to take a bit of artistic license you could say it “sliced it like a stick of butter”. And then if you wanted to be a bit of a wanker, you could act as if somebody were a liar because they said “sliced” instead of “broke.”
CMC fnord!