/diy/ - Do It Yourself

>>564905
actually, I take that last line back -
> For a decent mass-produced job though, expect to pay twice that price

that's inaccurate. for a really good, top-end massproduced sword, expect to pay twice the price.
For the £250 mark, you're getting decent stuff. An armourclass sword at £250-280 is decent - it'll last you a lifetime, it wont rattle, the tang is peined over, rather than a screw like the horribly flimsy £100 wallhangers.

My apologies, the previous comment was a little bit over-critical.


but really, there's a reason that the good stuff is way over that price. Stuff in the £250-ish bracket is good, Armourclass are decent, but just that. if you're an actual craftsman, you see the shortcuts in their work - hilt grips are bound witha cheaper leather, the fuller in a medieval blade is short because its been milled, instead of hand-ground, and so they stop short to avoid risking structural weakening at the tang junction. Makes for a tougher blade, but its not historically accurate. Same goes for the polish, you can see its done on a machine, where a hand-made one will be polished along the axis of the blade, by hand, up to the finest finish. Its those bits that make it great, and its those that make it so much more expensive to do.

once you dip below £200, though, you start really cutting corners badly - cheap castings that are brittle, instead of forged parts, or high-end castings. (I do cast hilts for multiple-run parts. The foundry I use also do castings for the Williams F1 team. that should indicate the quality.). Steels are often cheaper alloys, or worse, Stainless steels that are easier to machine, but useless as real blade steels. Pommels are screwed on, instead of riveted, as its cheaper. its stuff like that which drastically harms the quality, and makes them dangerous to try to use as anything but a decoration hanging on a wall.