/cgl/ - Cosplay & EGL

>>9403538
>Because they are. The blade widens for the majority of blade mass at the end.

If a falchion (or a sword) was made from a flat sheet, the exact same thickness all the way? yes, you would be right.

in that situation, the sword would be much lighter.

but that sword would handle like a brick too.

real swords have what is known as "distal taper". that's the thickness of the blade. as a good average, a 13th C sword of war might be 5mm thick down at the cross. but 10cm from the tip, its just 2.5mm thick. that removes a huge amount of mass from the blade, and makes it lighter. the falchion is the same. only they have even more extreme distal tapers - that same 5mm is thinned off to 1.5mm or so - meaning there's no extra material

this is the difference between mass distribution in a 3d object, and a 2d depiction of it. that's what this research has shown. previously, no-one had catalogued them in detail and recorded how thin they are, or compared it to normal swords.

generally speaking, if your blade is very broad, its also very thin. if your blade is very narrow, its also very thick. here's a simplified diagram to show what I mean.