Star Wars Lightsaber Katana - MAN AT ARMS: REFORGED
39 replies, posted
[QUOTE=BANNED USER;45665844]One of the most disappointing things I've seen as far as what my expectations were as far as these kinds of videos go.
It was normal for most to be folded twice to be good. However, an amazing or even legendary blade would have six or even seven folds using 3 different types of steel. Hard, medium, and soft. The hard steel makes the core where then you would fold over medium steel, and finally you fold in the soft steel to create the cutting blade and the beautiful, polished finish. If any of you have ever played Chrono Trigger, you'll remember the name Masamune really well, it was the frogs sword. Masamune was actually one of the most legendary traditional swords smiths of all time in Japan. In fact, there's is a sword known as the Honjo Masamune that was passed down from each Shogun for hundreds of years. After World War II a general took it and then it went missing. Nobody knows where the hell it went, but it's basically the holy grail of Katanas at this point.[/QUOTE]
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ySQratOnwk[/media]
???
[QUOTE=Pandamox;45661498]aren't you supposed to fold the blade over a shit ton of times and smelt it together?[/QUOTE]
No, the process of folding and forge welding the steel has nothing to do with forging the sword, all it does is removes impurities in the steel before forging the blade. If you already have homogenous steel from a foundry, you're wasting time and fuel folding the blade unless you're doing some pattern welding, which is an entirely different thing anyway.
[QUOTE=DeVotchKa;45664165]Exactly, it was insanely low quality steel and even after folding it so many times, it was still weak and wasn't ever used in direct combat except in an emergency, especially against armored foes. It's also the reason why, if i remember right, so correct me if i don't, that Samurai technique uses more quick wrist motions for a quick slash rather than a solid chop, so they wouldn't break the blade.
I think.[/QUOTE]
Tamahagane isn't low quality steel, it's just that freshly smelted and unworked Tamahagane is full of junk and slag that makes it very brittle, the traditional way to remove the impurities is to repeatedly draw out and forge weld the billet, usually the swordsmith directs a team of assistants to do this as it is extremely hard work. The final product was and still is almost as good as modern alloy steel production, there's a reason why sword making is highly ritualized and it is so the same result could be achieved again and again.
The sword blade itself was laminated, made out of 2-3 different types of steel, pretty much every culture that produced steel swords made laminated blades at some point until alloy steel came along and made monosteel blades practical. In laminated blades, a failure typically means just the edge cracks while the spine of the blade bends. A laminated blade also allows you to harden the edge beyond what would normally be possible in a monosteel blade.
As for the actual use of the sword, doesn't matter if it's a Katana, a Longsword or a Gladius, you use your whole body and the goal is to cut and stab not chop. Cutting makes for particularly nasty looking wounds, but the overall damage can be pretty superficial, getting stabbed on the other hand can produce a wound that is fatal within seconds to minutes but doesn't look nearly as bad.
I wish he would've made Guts' Dragon Slayer before they moved onto this combo weapon thing.
[img]http://img1.ak.crunchyroll.com/i/spire2/e77d943f79b419f19c4747eb0017d8a71231260414_full.jpg[/img]
[QUOTE=milkandcooki;45669668]I wish he would've made Guts' Dragon Slayer before they moved onto this combo weapon thing.
[IMG]http://img1.ak.crunchyroll.com/i/spire2/e77d943f79b419f19c4747eb0017d8a71231260414_full.jpg[/IMG][/QUOTE]
I don't think they're going to waste that much steel on another greatsword. They already did Cloud Strife's sword and they could barely lift the damn thing.
Hell they made Ichigo's Zangetsu as well.
[QUOTE=DeVotchKa;45661543]They could have at least tempered the blade blue or even black to fit with the whole lightsaber thing.[/QUOTE]
If they'd made the blade matte black with some sort of red lighting element it would've made it 100x cooler.
[QUOTE=gbtygfvyg;45665504]When he stabbed the barrel, was he holding the fucking blade? Did he slice through his hand or something?[/QUOTE]
You can grip a blade quite comfortably, even a sharp one. It's the drawing motion that cuts you, so if you have a firm grip and the blade doesn't slip about, you're safe.
[t]http://www.thearma.org/essays/Talhoffer/HT-Web_files/image010.jpg[/t]
Granted, I wouldn't recommend it if you weren't wearing gloves of some kind, but as has been said, the blade wasn't sharp at that point (huehue) anyway.
They oughta make the Soul Reaver at some point
[img]http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120517134054/legacyofkain/images/thumb/9/99/SR1-Promotional-SoulReaver.jpg/500px-SR1-Promotional-SoulReaver.jpg[/img]
Claim the souls of melons and pots.
[QUOTE=dai;45664698]the swords were very much slashing weapons, though I couldn't tell you if that was a fighting preference or became a standard out of necessity. They were crazy sharp not because you needed to chop, but to run a clean cut as you run it along a surface, and they did that VERY well. If you were up against armor, you'd be better off piercing with a straight-on stab, ideally coming upward to slide under the plates when accessible
most chopping weapons you'd see more in medieval europe were very dull, because the raw weight and force was all you needed. Focus that on a thin line instead of a broad area and you've got a LOT of power coming down onto that spot, making it easier to break armor, bones, or otherwise tear something up hard[/QUOTE]
I can't speak about bladed weapons other than swords with too much authority, but I can tell you that any sword is a very sharp implement if it is historically accurate. Not all swords are sharpened uniformly down the length of their blade, and part of the reason for that is that only about the last third of the blade is ideally used for cutting. This is because that's where the centre of percussion is, which is essentially that part where it'll suffer the least vibration during an impact, and therefore cut most effectively. No sword is very dull except near the base of the blade. Some European blades had an unsharpened area between 2-6 inches called a ricasso, but this is not always true. Swords are weapons specialized for use against unarmoured opponents, but can be used against armoured ones. As armour developed through the ages, you'll see that blades began to narrow near the tip to create needle points or very narrow awl points that can more easily slip into armour gaps.
As for use, there is some minor difference between European swordsmanship and eastern styles of swordsmanship, but there is indeed a great deal of overlap as well. As a rule of thumb, eastern styles tend to utilize less of a chopping motion and place greater emphasis on drawing motions. To some extent this is informed by the shape of sword hilts. For example, the Indian tulwar has a very narrow handle that locks the hand into a 90 degree angle to the sword to limit wrist movement and encourage drawing motions while limiting chopping motions. There is some overlap however because viking and migration era swords have almost identical types of hilts that would encourage the same techniques.
With that said, the way you use a sword is basically the same for any kind of sword. Historic techniques and guard positions used by Japanese swordsmen with katanas and tachis are essentially identical to those used by Italian and German swordsmen. The only techniques I have seen that I have not seen used by the Japanese schools are half-swording (which involves gripping the blade with one hand) and the use of a thumb grip. I know that the thumb grip cannot be used with a japanese style sword because of the tsuba, but I see no reason why the Japanese wouldn't use half-swording for armoured combat. Even then, the thumb grip is only seen in German traditions of swordsmanship.
As a bonus, the reason katanas are such great cutting weapons is not because they are any sharper than other swords, but rather hit has to do with their centre of percussion and ideal cutting space. Most longswords have an ideal cutting area of about 6-8 inches in the last third of their blade, but do not include the tip (usually). Katanas have an ideal cutting area that covers the whole of the last third of their blade. This makes them extremely forgiving when cutting, however they are not actually the best cutting sword. So far as I know, that honour belongs to the Indian tulwar, which is both heavier bladed than a katana, but also has an ideal cutting area that stretches the last half of the blade. That does not mean the tulwar is better than the katana, but rather it is more specialized for cutting than the katana.
They should go balls to the wall and forge a gunblade if they're going to do this sort of stuff.
