hi it's Tod of Tod's Workshop and Tod Cutler here and today we're going to
talk about the "Sword Breaker". Curious shape blade.
So we've got these tines on the back here which are designed for another blade a
swordsman's blade to land between them and for you then to be able to control
them and I'll demonstrate that in a bit, but coming back to the name "Sword
Breaker" now I'm not exactly certain where the name came from but I think it
has to be one of these stupid Victorian reinventions where they didn't fully
understand the purpose of something but they felt they had to catalogue it and
give it a use and sound all knowledgeable so they called it sword
breaker. Now that's not its true purpose, its true purpose is to block and bind
blades so it's used as a left-hand dagger and main gauche and it has some features
to it that are slightly unusual the first thing that you would think is a
main gauche well it's used in the left hand and you use the rapier in the right
the thumb ring here which is the hand protection is on the wrong side of
the blade so any other main gauche this ring would be on
the other side but what that tells you in fact is that the way you hold this
blade is not with edge downward as you would expect it's with edge upward so
actually the edge is now upward and these teeth are downward that's one
thing which is slightly unusual about it another thing which is worth noting is
medieval daggers and Renaissance daggers, very often you put them in a leather
scabbard. This one has to have a wood lined scabbard just like a sword does.
The reason for that is if you put it in a leather scabbard the tines actually just
bind on it and you can't draw the thing out so it needs to have a wood core
scabbard. Now the other thing about a main gauche is it is a left hand weapon so
your rapier is here on your left hip and you can draw that but that means that
it's your right hand which is having to draw the dagger itself the main gauche
and so crossing over to do that while you're trying to do that is always quite
complicated so the main gauche is very often worn at the back here and so that
way what you're able to do is just grasp it with your left hand draw it and
you're ready then the other thing is is the teeth
that is quite frankly a hell of a thing to make it's they're really quite
difficult and there's ways that you can make it easier or different ways that
you can approach it and so all of these things you see in museums. There's not that
many of of this type of dagger but there certainly enough out there to see
that there are different ways of making them, sometimes the teeth are actually
filed or punched, from the main body of the blade itself,
other times these teeth are in fact braised on and again you might think the
braising is a weak process but if the joint is tight and good fitting a braised
joint can be very strong so actually the flanges on gothic medieval 15th century
mace for instance, you know the really spiky evil-looking maces, those those are
often braised on as well, so these teeth can be braised on, they could be forged
welded or they could be cut from the single blade itself it all depends how
they maker a wanted to do it. These teeth as well sometimes they're fixed,
sometimes are actually articulated so they they move, they have a little axle
in there, a little pivot, and the teeth just fold down out of the way so that it
makes it easier for the blade to enter so there's a wider gap but then it
closes up as you try to pull the blade from it so those are really the features
of this kind of knife, absolutely fascinating thing, and I've
pondered about how they be used for a long time so that's why we're here now.
So I have my assistant Hob here who's going to help with the swordplay. In the
interest of full disclosure here neither Hob nor I is a sword fighter so
sorry about all the bumbling idiocy that is about to occur but you're going
to understand how the weapon works from this. So Hob's coming in for a thrust
I've now been able to block it between the tines of the blade and I've bound it
so now I've bound the blade and simply by pulling there's nothing Hob can do
about it so I can I can twist it I can pull it I can even push it to an extent
so I've got complete control, or reasonably good control, over his blade
so it's these tines are just a really clever little thing. This type of main
gauche is called a sword breaker now I don't think that there's enough meat in
here to break that blade, the blade it self at this point on a rapier might be
four millimeters thick so somewhat over eighths of an inch I can't see that and
simply if you're trying to break that you're having to apply force and that
amount of force is just gonna pull it straight out of a guy's hand
what is interesting as well is and this is what I don't quite understand if
something works you see lots of it and you don't see that many of these so
clearly although as far as I can tell it works fantastically there must have been
something that wasn't quite right about it in a day to day fighting in the
street kind of context because you don't see thousands of these things and you
would expect to see that so what is notable about these is something that
I'm gonna do now I didn't allow the blade to enter between the times because
the angle between the sword and the dagger was not enough and there it pops
in and so basically if you miss your your parry that is where it may be a
disadvantage to you because you were expecting that bind but actually you now
don't get it a new pull so if the thing fails it leaves you wide open if you are not
allowing for it. That leads me to suggest that they had some benefit and they had
a reason and they were a very interesting route to look at, but ultimately they
must have been a failure because there aren't that many of them and perhaps
it's simply this... this failure, this occasional failure when you are relying
on it to do something and it doesn't, that was enough to sink it as an object
thank you
so I've now bound his blade I can pull it I can twist it straight