Fight Medieval: The Boarstooth Fight School

We are very pleased that Magnus Sigurdson the armourer and swordsmith for films, such as The Lord of the Rings, Kill Bill and Prince Caspian, has kindly agreed to write a few articles for us. The first of which you can read below. Magnus’s body of work is extensive and his impressive biog will follow soon, welcome to the page Magnus…

The medieval sword

People often try to compare new production swords to original medieval pieces. Without understanding, that the original process of forging a sword blade, was a lot more complicated than you would think, these processes lead to some unique characteristics that are incredibly hard to reproduce, unless you are using the same techniques as the original master craftsman.

Very few original high-quality swords were actually forced from a single piece of steel during the medieval time period. This early medieval period (or dark ages), was the time of the pattern welded blade. a blade who’s manufacture, involved a process, where:

• Numerous iron and steel bars, are twisted together and forged solid.
• Several of these are placed together side by side, and again forge welded together.
• A straight laminate of high carbon steel strips is again forge welded along the outer edge (this forms the cutting part of the blade).
  
• Traditionally, the blade is then given a groove on either side called a fuller* and heat-treated to harden the steel parts of the blade**

The iron and steel twisted core gives the swords their resilience to the shock and stress of combat, while the high carbon steel, hardened cutting portion of the blade, takes and hold a good cutting edge .

Later medieval swords

As steel production was refined, larger amounts of high-quality steel became available, this made the pattern welded blade almost redundant (there are 16century examples of pattern welded swords).However many quality blades still consisted of a laminate construction of iron and steel, with soft iron core shrouded in a steel envelope (the Mary Rose sword for example, has a soft iron/ low carbon steel core, with two hard steel cutting edges).

The ancient armourer tried many variations on the laminar constructions, some good and some not so good! And in fact, the whole process of forging a blade during the medieval period could be a little hit and miss, this was mainly due to the inconsistencies in the steel the armourer the had to work with.

Unlike today’s homogeneous product, medieval steel’s composition was not uniform, It was down to the armourer’s ability to and gauge the quality of the steel, and adjust the carbon content as he felt necessary in the forge, and sometimes to disperse that carbon content more evenly along the blade.

The medieval sword has a varying carbon content along its entire blade, along with a varying edge profile. A skilled armourer would adjust this so that the sword is hard in areas it needs needs to be hard, and soft in areas that need to take more bangs and crashes.

The blade profile

This could be be altered to suit different areas of the sword, and their differing functions. The tempering process at the time, was called slacked tempering, and was done entirely eye and experience, it composed of one or more” dunks” in to the quenching medium. This, with the varying carbon content in the blade, made a harder and soft areas along the swords entire length. and is where the expression “make or break” comes from (The sword, when given its final quench will either hold together and be a success or break depending upon the armourer’s skill in its forging).

modern machine made blades

Machined as they are from a single piece of homogeneous steel, tempered using highly specialized controlled ovens and quenched in substances that are well below 0°C, have very little in common with the medieval blade. That said, most correctly made modern blades are more than a match for the medieval one in toughness and homogeneous integrity, they are just not the same as one, or made in the original fashion.

How Sharp?

People often ask, how sharp was a medieval sword? Again, there is no simple answer to this, as swords were given different profiles along their edge, to suit the job they were intended to do. Some swords were primarily for cutting, some for thrusting, and some a little of both. Cutting swords were obviously sharper than thrusting swords. The type of target, they were meant to be used against would determined the edge profile. Swords that were civilian dress could have a finer taper to their edge than swords that were likely to encounter armour of some kind, these needed a lot more steel supporting the cutting edge, so it did not chip or fold up on hitting a target, with some resistance.

So how sharp was a medieval sword? As sharp as it needed to be, for the job in hand!

Magnus Sigurdson

*the fuller, is actually there to lighten the blade but still keep its rigidity, not to act as a blood gutter!

Magnus Sigurdson