I have decided that I am in dire need of a good functional sword.
A big one, at that. No rapiers or foils for me. Maybe not quite a claymore, but something with a 30" blade or so. Also, appearance means little to me. I’m looking for a sword that will hold up to actual use, and I care little for how it looks while hanging on the wall.
Who would be a reputable online source for such a sword? And does anyone have any pointers for sword shopping? (Should I be looking for a particular type of steel or something along those lines?)
And don’t throw a lot of crap at me like “Do you know how to actually use a sword?”. This is a results-oriented thread, people!
A lot of it depends on what you’re looking to cut with the darn thing. Flesh? Wood? Will you be fighting against other people with swords, so as to have a lot of blade-on-blade contact?
all of these things will change what it is you’re looking for.
For a good quality steel blade that won’t shatter if you hit a tree branch and will hold a decent edge, you’re going to pay a lot of money. Like $300+ dollars.
Ask for a catalog because their website sucks. Almost all of their stuff is made by real armor and weaponsmiths (the show pieces tend to be stuff like Aragorn’s sword).
I know nothing about swords so I can’t vouch for their quality, but this site seems to have a decent selection and reasonable prices (links at the bottom of the page for other classes of items).
Do not, if you value your life, make a purchase from Museum Replicas.
I am a fencer, and we train regularly with heavy steel weapons. For my money, there is no better vendor for longswords, claymores, etc. than Del Tin Armi Antiche. My school and associated schools do a lot of business with the proprietor, Fulvio. While his style of business is, well, very Italian, the quality of his products are undeniable.
Good luck, and please email if you would like further suggestions or advice.
Museum Replicas no longer uses Del Tin blades for its weapons, since it was acquired by Windlass Steelcraft, an Indian steel manufacturer. Their quality control is terrible, and their blades are made of recycled springs from old tanks and trucks. New Windlass blades will often stress in an effort to revert back to their original grain directions, and even more often Windlass blades suffer from microcrystalline cracks that can cause larger scale cracking throughout the blade. Recycled steel is fine and well, but it must be treated properly in order to endure the shock and stress of use. Third world manufacturers are able to cut corners in order to decrease the prices of their merchandise, and Windlass is no exception.
Furthermore, Windless Japanese style pattern-welded blades often suffer from carbon migration, in which carbon from the high-carbon layers leeches out into the low-carbon layers, leaving the blade carbon-poor and thus too soft to endure combat.
Needless to say, if a heavy blade breaks in the middle of fencing, the odds of injury are extremely high, both from the unpredictable flying shard and from the stump of the blade still in a fighter’s hand.
I also confess a serious bias against Museum Replicas due to Hank Reinhardt and his affiliation with HACA, which I consider to be the root of all evil in the world of historical swordplay. But maybe that’s just me.
Quick question Maeglin. The page you linked to is not English, do you have a english site you and your school buy through or do you have someone there who can read the language? I saw numbers which look like prices on each blade, but I wasn’t able to puzzle out which currency they were listed in. Peso Gr 950 was the price on one sword(if I’m right about that being a price listing). I did some research through online currency converters and I couldn’t find this abbreviation. The closest I found was Greek Drachma, but it is an obsolete currency, no longer supported by the government(plus the conversion worked out to something like five bucks US and I just can’t imagine a sword for that price).
Any ideas on how I can get either an english language version of the page(Google translation doesn’t work for me at work, I may try at home if I remember) or at least the prices?
