Fencing and Honorverse do they go together?

Just out of curiosity, did RFC ever actually state what the swords were made from?

We know they are steel and that part of how they were made included folding, but do we know what sort of steel it is?

After all, the Japanese had to compensate for the fact that they were using pig iron, so how awesome could the swords be if they were made from high-quality steel?

Oh, and welcome back, Temmy!

SharkHunter wrote:Temmy's my honorable expert on the subject so I want to toss in a question. I was watching an interview with the swordmaster who choreographed both Princess Bride and Pirates of the Caribbean, and he made a statement that with bladed weapons, the parry is with the spine of the sword, not the cutting edge.

He's wrong. The cover be done with the edge, the flat, or even the quillon depending on the style and the technique.

So in reading all the various posts about katana(s) not being that all that sharp because the blade would have nicked/chipped and been worn down too quickly seem invalid. Plus we know that in formation, it wasn't the swords that did the damage, it was archery and other weapons.

What chips the blade is the bone, steel, leather and other stuff the blade can contact. There are many accounts of blades looking like saw teeth at the end of a battle from all the dings and damage. Take a fine butcher knife, hone it razor sharp then start hacking a beef bone. You'll find out why swordsmen didn't oversharpen thier blades. Cutting depends more on blade geometry and technique than raw sharpness. A wood chisel isn't razor sharp, but it carves wood just fine. A sword was about a sharp as a wood chisel.

Given that RFC's choice is what we live with in this fictional universe, our theorizing doesn't matter as much but my question is "real world for a bladed weapon", effective sword or not?"

Not quite sure what you mean here, but assuming that you are asking if the Grayson sword would be good, I would say, with the description given it would work just fine.

Michael Everett wrote:Just out of curiosity, did RFC ever actually state what the swords were made from?

We know they are steel and that part of how they were made included folding, but do we know what sort of steel it is?

After all, the Japanese had to compensate for the fact that they were using pig iron, so how awesome could the swords be if they were made from high-quality steel?

Oh, and welcome back, Temmy!

Thanks

If they were folded, then the raw steel would have to be fairly low quality in terms of carbon content. Folding is done to even out the carbon content in the steel. It was common and well known technique. Folding steel with proper carbon content will make it worse and soften it too much. With good quality steel folding is unnecessary.


So why make a blade in this way if the graysons don't need too? IMHO the Graysons continued to make laminated blades for the same reason the Japanese still make them:

1) Tradition
2) Prestige
3) Aesthetics


I would bet that most swords in modern Grayson are cheap mass produced monosteel blades..perfectly good high quality weapons. Companies like Albion swords can produce exceptional quality blades by taking high quality steel billets, machining them into shape and heat treating them. No forging needed. You can see the process here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTg0Oc0mQy4


But the laminated hand forged blades would be rare prestige items custom made and prized for their beauty and craftsmanship.

A modern Japanese Nihonto made the traditional way and certified by the authorities is going to cost you well into 5 digits in cash. Is is better than a mass produced Albion Swords blade? Not in performance. But the aesthetics and tradition are what people prize and that is what people pay for.

Its not surprising that Burdette would choose to use a classic and traditional Grayson blade in a duel.

Temmy wrote:I would bet that most swords in modern Grayson are cheap mass produced monosteel blades..perfectly good high quality weapons. Companies like Albion swords can produce exceptional quality blades by taking high quality steel billets, machining them into shape and heat treating them. No forging needed. You can see the process here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTg0Oc0mQy4


But the laminated hand forged blades would be rare prestige items custom made and prized for their beauty and craftsmanship.

A modern Japanese Nihonto made the traditional way and certified by the authorities is going to cost you well into 5 digits in cash. Is is better than a mass produced Albion Swords blade? Not in performance. But the aesthetics and tradition are what people prize and that is what people pay for.

Its not surprising that Burdette would choose to use a classic and traditional Grayson blade in a duel.

Though it seems kind of odd that Japanese-style forged blades exist on Grayson at all. Grayson didn't lose enough technology for swords to become normal weapons of war. And, well, the original Graysons were not Japanese; they had no tradition of making swords that way, and it's neither the easiest nor most obvious way of making a sword.

drothgery wrote:Though it seems kind of odd that Japanese-style forged blades exist on Grayson at all. Grayson didn't lose enough technology for swords to become normal weapons of war. And, well, the original Graysons were not Japanese; they had no tradition of making swords that way, and it's neither the easiest nor most obvious way of making a sword.

Actually I bet I have a good explanation for that purely from religious demographics, based on the idea that they were out of the Idaho area, polygamy was OK if practiced correctly, they wanted to get away from other folks telling them what to do AND had a tradition for sending missionary types overseas, including Japan. And no, I'm not attacking that particular demographic; "I are one". (aka, previous in this thread, how, where, and when I was gifted my unsharp practice katana...)

Ya think?

drothgery wrote:

Temmy wrote:I would bet that most swords in modern Grayson are cheap mass produced monosteel blades..perfectly good high quality weapons. Companies like Albion swords can produce exceptional quality blades by taking high quality steel billets, machining them into shape and heat treating them. No forging needed. You can see the process here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTg0Oc0mQy4


But the laminated hand forged blades would be rare prestige items custom made and prized for their beauty and craftsmanship.

A modern Japanese Nihonto made the traditional way and certified by the authorities is going to cost you well into 5 digits in cash. Is is better than a mass produced Albion Swords blade? Not in performance. But the aesthetics and tradition are what people prize and that is what people pay for.

Its not surprising that Burdette would choose to use a classic and traditional Grayson blade in a duel.

Though it seems kind of odd that Japanese-style forged blades exist on Grayson at all. Grayson didn't lose enough technology for swords to become normal weapons of war. And, well, the original Graysons were not Japanese; they had no tradition of making swords that way, and it's neither the easiest nor most obvious way of making a sword.

That is explained in the text. The early Graysons liked movies. One of the few movies that survived was Seven Samurai. They liked it so much, people tried to recreate the swords and fighting style they saw depicted. They researched how the Japanese did it. It probably took decades for them to recreate the swords adequately.

SWM wrote:That is explained in the text. The early Graysons liked movies. One of the few movies that survived was Seven Samurai. They liked it so much, people tried to recreate the swords and fighting style they saw depicted. They researched how the Japanese did it. It probably took decades for them to recreate the swords adequately.

Granted, I've never seen the Seven Samurai or any other moves in the genre, but I doubt they cover swordmaking in any depth. And Grayson fencing was developed during the period where they had almost no contact with the outside galaxy, and the information on Japanese swordsmanship styles Honor managed to dig up was new to the Graysons. So I don't think that's sufficient.

drothgery wrote:Granted, I've never seen the Seven Samurai or any other moves in the genre, but I doubt they cover swordmaking in any depth. And Grayson fencing was developed during the period where they had almost no contact with the outside galaxy, and the information on Japanese swordsmanship styles Honor managed to dig up was new to the Graysons. So I don't think that's sufficient.

The idea of folding steel is something that occurs in most cultures that work iron. Its a fairly straight forward discovery. When you add in the fact that the basics behind the construction of Japanese swords are pretty well known in popular culture, it likely didn't take grayson blacksmiths long to figure the process out.

drothgery wrote:

SWM wrote:That is explained in the text. The early Graysons liked movies. One of the few movies that survived was Seven Samurai. They liked it so much, people tried to recreate the swords and fighting style they saw depicted. They researched how the Japanese did it. It probably took decades for them to recreate the swords adequately.

Granted, I've never seen the Seven Samurai or any other moves in the genre, but I doubt they cover swordmaking in any depth. And Grayson fencing was developed during the period where they had almost no contact with the outside galaxy, and the information on Japanese swordsmanship styles Honor managed to dig up was new to the Graysons. So I don't think that's sufficient.

I didn't say they learned how to make swords from the movie. I said they got the idea of using Japanese style swords and sword-fighting from the movie. They then researched sword-making in other sources as much as they could, and experimented where they couldn't. Their sources were not completely adequate for teaching the techniques, which is why there are differences between their swords and the original Japanese swords. They had hundreds of years to refine their techniques.