And the exact shape of the groove has a huge influence on the pitch and volume of the whoosh. Some swords are more talkative than others.
Well, damn, I spent years fighting with silent swords. Now I feel cheated!
You think that’s bad? One of my buddies had a levitating sword!
It was nearly pure aluminum, made as light as possible so people with injuries could still do light training. The first time someone used to normal sword weights would pick it up, their hand would leap upwards, because they unconsciously used too much muscle to lift it.
Any discussion of katanas isn’t complete without reference to this masterpiece…
Perhaps you’d prefer one that sings?
No discussion of the sounds TV and movie swords make is complete without mentioning the metal-on-metal SHINGG! sound heard-- when pulled from a leather scabbard 
I could have sworn I had posted it about that before on this very thread. It is especially egregious with katana, which actually have a wood sheath and if you can hear it coming out of it, then you are quite the novice, not to mention that it damages the sword.
//i\\
Why yes, that’s exactly what all my classes look like /s
Ha! We always had dachshunds who are heavy for their size. A dachshund who’s the equivalent size of a small poodle can weigh 12 or 13 lbs, and the poodle may only weigh 5 or 6 lbs. My sister, used to picking up dachshunds, once picked up a small poodle and almost threw it into the adjoining room it weighed so much less than she was expecting.
A friend of mine was helping unload a semi full of restaurant supplies. Got to a huge cardboard box on the floor of the trailer (it was unmarked on the side facing him), gathered up his strength, hoisted it and almost did a back flip - it was full of styrofoam cups.
LOL. I’d have liked to have seen that.
My father was the opposite. He was comfortable with his body all his life. The nursing care shoo’d my mother out when my father wanted to use the bedpan, and I’m still offended: she’d lived with that man for 50 years, and they thought they knew better than her how much privacy he wanted? She acquiesced gracefully, but that was only because she didn’t want to make their job more difficult: he’d never needed privacy when shitting before and he didn’t suddenly want it then.
Pin-point accuracy with a regular gun. You see this in westers, etc. A colt .45 has an accuracy withing 2-3 inches or so at range. No matter how good of a shot you are with one of those, you can drive tacks etc.
Mind you, yes, some rifles were pretty damn accurate.
I think you meant “No matter how good of a shot you are with one of those, you can’t drive tacks etc.”
Yet that’s exactly what Leatherstocking/Deerstalker/Nathaniel Bumppo does in James Fenimore Cooper’s books. In fact, he not only drives in a tack, he sends a second shot down the hole so perfectly that people didn’t realize there were two bullets in there until they pried them out.
Mark Twain pretty famously called BS on this.
Here’s the section in Twain:
The reader will find some examples of Cooper’s high talent for inaccurate observation in the account of the shooting-match in “The Pathfinder.”
A common wrought nail was driven lightly into the target, its head having been first touched with paint.
The color of the paint is not stated – an important omission, but Cooper deals freely in important omissions. No, after all, it was not an important omission; for this nail-head isa hundred yards fromthe marksmen, and could not be seen at that distance, no matter what its color might be. How far can the best eyes see a common housefly? A hundred yards? It is quite impossible. Very well; eyes that cannot see a house-fly that is a hundred yards away cannot see an ordinary nail-head at that distance, for the size of the two objects is the same. It takes a keen eye to see a fly or a nail-head at fifty yards – one hundred and fifty-feet. Can the reader do it?
The nail was lightly driven, its head painted, and game called. Then the Cooper miracles began. The bullet of the first marksman chipped an edge of the nail-head; the next man’s bullet drove the nail a little way into the target – and removed all the paint. Haven’t the miracles gone far enough now? Not to suit Cooper; for the purpose of this whole scheme is to show off his prodigy, Deerslayer-Hawkeye-Long-Rifle-Leatherstocking-Pathfinder-Bumppo before the ladies.
“Be all ready to clench it, boys!” cried out Pathfinder, stepping into his friend’s tracks the instant they were vacant. “Never mind a new nail; I can see that, though the paint is gone, and what I can see I can hit at a hundred yards, though it were only a mosquito’s eye. Be ready to clench!”
The rifle cracked, the bullet sped its way, and the head of the nail was buried in the wood, covered by the piece of flattened lead.There, you see, is a man who could hunt flies with a rifle, and command a ducal salary in a Wild West show to-day if we had him back with us.
The recorded feat is certainly surprising just as it stands; but it is not surprising enough for Cooper. Cooper adds a touch. He has made Pathfinder do this miracle with another man’s rife; and not only that, but Pathfinder did not have even the advantage of loading it himself. He had everything against him, and yet he made that impossible shot; and not only made it, but did it with absolute confidence, saying, “Be ready to clench.” Now a person like that would have undertaken that same feat with a brickbat, and with Cooper to help he would have achieved it, too.
Pathfinder showed off handsomely that day before the ladies. His very first feat a thing which no Wild West show can touch. He was standing with the group of marksmen, observing – a hundred yards from the target, mind; one Jasper rasper raised his rifle and drove the center of the bull’s-eye. Then the Quartermaster fired. The target exhibited no result this time. There was a laugh. “It’s a dead miss,” said Major Lundie. Pathfinder waited an impressive moment or two; then said, in that calm, indifferent, know-it-all way of his, “No, Major, he has covered Jasper’s bullet, as will be seen if any one will take the trouble to examine the target.”
Wasn’t it remarkable! How could he see that little pellet fly through the air and enter that distant bullet-hole? Yet that is what he did; for nothing is impossible to a Cooper person. Did any of those people have any deep-seated doubts about this thing? No; for that would imply sanity, and these were all Cooper people.
The respect for Pathfinder’s skill and for his quickness and accuracy of sight [the italics are mine] was so profound and general, that the instant he made this declaration the spectators began to distrust their own opinions, and a dozen rushed to the target in order to ascertain the fact. There, sure enough, it was found that the Quartermaster’s bullet had gone through the hole made by Jasper’s, and that, too, so accurately as to require a minute examination to be certain of the circumstance, which, however, was soon clearly established by discovering one bullet over the other in the stump against which the target was placed.
They made a “minute” examination; but never mind, how could they know that there were two bullets in that hole without digging the latest one out? for neither probe nor eyesight could prove the presence of any more than one bullet. Did they dig? No; as we shall see. It is the Pathfinder’s turn now; he steps out before the ladies, takes aim, and fires.
But, alas! here is a disappointment; in incredible, an unimaginable disappointment – for the target’s aspect is unchanged; there is nothing there but that same old bullet hole!
�If one dared to hint at such a thing," cried Major Duncan, “I should say that the Pathfinder has also missed the target.”
As nobody had missed it yet, the “also” was not necessary; but never mind about that, for the Pathfinder is going to speak.
“No, no, Major,” said he, confidently, “that would be a risky declaration. I didn’t load the piece, and can’t say what was in it; but if it was lead, you will find the bullet driving down those of the Quartermaster and Jasper, else is not my name Pathfinder.”
A shout from the target announced the truth of this assertion.Is the miracle sufficient as it stands? Not for Cooper. The Pathfinder speaks again, as he “now slowly advances toward the stage occupied by the females”:
“That’s not all, boys, that’s not all; if you find the target touched at all, I’ll own to a miss. The Quartermaster cut the wood, but you’ll find no wood cut by that last messenger.”
The miracle is at last complete. He knew – doubtlesssaw– at the distance of a hundred yards – this his bullet had passed into the hole*without fraying the edges.*There were now three bullets in that one hole – three bullets embedded processionally in the body of the stump back of the target. Everybody knew this – somehow or other – and yet nobody had dug any of them out to make sure. Cooper is not a close observer, but he is interesting. He is certainly always that, no matter what happens. And he is more interesting when he is not noticing what he is about than when he is. This is a considerable merit.
From Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses
Thanks for the link. I haven’t read this in ages, looking forward to it.
Right, thanks.
He does use a rifle, but still. However, it isnt HIS rifle. And the range is incredible
.Great quote.
Twain ran so CinemaSins could walk.
It wasn’t so much as wanting privacy when shitting, it was about needing someone else to wipe his ass and in the very end, change his diaper. He needed to depersonalize the people doing that, and couldn’t if it were my mother. It was easier if they were strangers doing their job.
What was Cooper’s background? maybe it was a question of “Didn’t do the homework.” I realize that people in Cooper’s time were a lot more likely to have handled firearms than people today, but possibly someone who was a poor shot and had poor vision indulged in some fantasy.
After, there are rarely limits to how bad something can get (other than fatal ailments), but there usually is a limit to how good. But people who are fantasizing want to be better than best.
And then there is generally the didn’t do the homework. Maybe Cooper genuinely didn’t know how difficult it would be to perform shooting stunts with someone else’s rifle?
There’s an episode of My Life is Murder, which is generally well-written-- snappy dialogue, good characters-- where there is a large mistake by someone attempting to be clever with a gun. The person drills two holes in a wall in order to shoot someone in the next room-- one hole to shoot through, and one to aim through-- one is several inches above the other.
That’s less an example of bad writing as of someone just having no idea how guns work. The show is made in NZ for an NZ/Aus audience, though, so a gun may be purple phlebotinum as far as the audience is concerned.