Hi it'sTod of Tod's Workshop and Matt Easton, Schola Gladiatoria. Back for another edition
of weird medieval weapons. The last one may or may not have been medieval
this one is actually not - sorry. Matt are you ready for it? Yeah I've got no, I literally,
no idea at all what's underneath there. Oh sword breaker, look at that.
So that is a lovely thing, but there are so many questions about these aren't there?
there really are, so we'll give you a close-up here because look at the blade on that, right.
If you could design a blade that was more likely to break in combat, I don't know what it would be,
it's made of stress raisers it is, with a bit of steel in between. So basically what Matt's saying
here is all these little dips and and cuts into the steel here, they concentrate the stress so
when you take a blow on this sword literally the the stress just runs along goes "oh that looks
like a weak spot I'm going to exploit it" blade breaks. And in fact you see a lot of these in
the museums, well there are some in museums, not that many, but enough that they're obviously not a
freak show, they were around, but they are almost always broken and sometimes the blade,
but mainly it's just one or two teeth missing. So we'll talk about the steel but essentially
because of that I actually temper it on the softer side because otherwise these are just going to
break off, but hard enough that it still binds the blade. So I mean that I'm, I'm familiar with the
one in the Wallace Collection because I've been going there since I was a teenager and and I think
for a long time I didn't realise there were others around yeah? So I thought that was a bit of a kind
of you know someone having a bit of fun, it was a wind up, but like you say there are other examples
around and they do vary a bit don't they? They're not all the same. They do, I mean quite often
these little teeth here are actually articulating, so the teeth move out of the way when the blade
comes in and then if you try to withdraw it they catch it again yeah so uh that's the theory of the
barb really isn't it? Yeah letting something in that then can't get out, so it's trapping.
Nothing like a demonstration Matt; hang on a second. Yeah not the right sword but I've now
been locked now so basically if it goes in there, now if Matt pulls his wrist to one side and trying
so if we go in there and now Matt can control my blade well actually interestingly because
you haven't used one before no don't. How about this, I'm going to teach the teacher. So
it goes in and actually what you don't do is you don't twist throughout that,
all you do is pull that's all you do, so again yeah. So I've literally, I've never even held one
of these before, I've only seen them in books but they do seem so fragile and when I was you know
when I put the blade in the teeth I felt very reluctant to start yanking and twisting with
this because I was worried it was gonna snap. Well it's the same deal Matt, I'm gonna give it to you,
if it breaks, it breaks. But you will find that there'll be a little bit of burring on
the teeth here because as I said, I temper them soft because of that. Okay um so it's not soft,
ductile, but it's a spring temper yeah because otherwise I just, I can't see them surviving.
There's, there's a question of which way round to hold it as well, so so I guess for those of
you who maybe don't know, this is primarily we think used with the rapier in the right hand,
so this is a left-hand dagger and these side rings that you've got on here
are usually to protect the back of the hand if it was a sword, but with left hand daggers that's not
always the case and for example there are certain types of sail guarded left hand daggers where the
thumb actually goes on that side and up against the blade and you actually have a sail guard over
on the front here so the side ring can sometimes be what we call on the inside or the outside but
we don't know what the inside and the outside in the front or the back of this is. I have made the
assumption that this has to be used blade upwards and it's it's not a unique thing, I mean I know
Bowie knives sometimes they they did that, I don't know if that was a fashion for a little while or
it ran for a long time, but Bowie knives sometimes they have the handle hilted with the blade upwards
it's really weird to see, so I don't know, so the thing is, I'm going to give it to you, you take it
away, you play with it. Usual story we'll come and find you and and watch some guys sparring with it.
Yeah I mean it's a fantastic thing. So I'll have to consult some rapier experts because I'm you
know, I'm not a rapier expert by any means. That's it because I did a video on them a few years ago
with myself and a friend, but neither of us are swordsmen, so you know I can see how it works and
I can see how it operates, but I really want to see it in the hands of somebody who can fight.
Yeah and fight with the right kind of weapons for that and I've got you know there's at least
a couple of people in my club who are fairly experienced with rapiers and um I'll get them,
I'll get them in on this as well. Yeah absolutely because that is so valuable to get people sparring
with it and and then we can see we're not just talking about it. Fantastic, so great. Okay so
Matt thank you very much again. "Weird Renaissance weapons" and thank you very much, we'll
see you soon