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> Everyone is talking about the "blade breaking" as a dangerous thing. Can someone please explain? To add onto what other people are saying: When a blade brea
by nordsieck 4y ago
> Everyone is talking about the "blade breaking" as a dangerous thing. Can someone please explain?
To add onto what other people are saying:
When a blade breaks, not only is there a potentially sharp point on the new end of the blade, but the blade that's left attached to the handle is probably more stiff - possibly quite a bit more stiff - than the original sword. This is for a couple of reasons:
1. Leverage: short things are stiff, long things are floppy.
2. Profile: I honestly have no idea if this applies to olympic swords, but in historical swords used for combat, blades will often be quite wide at the base and taper towards the point.
- hacoo 4y agoYou are absolutely correct on both counts. Olympic fencing blades are wider at the base and taper down. They’re designed to flex mostly in farther half of the blade, the base needs to remain fairly stiff or the sword would be weak in parries (and would flop around excessively). Many historical swords taper in width, thickess, or both in order to improve handling. Distribution of mass matters quite a lot in how nimble a sword is, especially for historical swords which were heavier than modern fencing weapons.
- tsuujin 4y ago> short things are stiff, long things are floppy. Come on now, how can you say this and not expect me to make a wiener joke?
- not1ofU 4y agobecause of downvotes, HN has no sense of humour (which is not surprising, they say a good sense of humour is a good gauge for inteligence) :-D
- NowTestThis 4y agoI see what you did there! :)