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Originally Posted by cornelistromp
yes I have done ,nothing of this size.
though the defenition of billhooks agrees not but fact seems to be that 99.9% has a hook or curve
also seems to handle of the different manuscript images of steel instead of a wooden stick like the billhooks.
we disagree, for me it is not a billhook, but of course you are free to your own opinion.
best,
jasper
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Hi Jasper,
Always a *really* good idea to check the color of the sword hilts appearing in the picture, before you assume it's metal. None of the swords in those illustrations have wood or even cloth handles, yet we know from historical evidence that none of them had solid steel handles.
There are a bunch of problems with a solid metal hilt, which is why they are very uncommon. They get very hot in the sun, and even colder in the winter (for example, Cold Steel's all-metal Bushman cannot be used barehanded in the snow, and is not fun to hold if left in a sunny car all day. Guess how I learned that?). Even worse, potentially, solid steel does a wonderful job transferring shocks from cutting edge to hand. While a lot of us like to whine about how "weak" rat-tail tangs in wooden handles are, compared with slab handles on solid tangs, the real problem is that solid tang transfer a lot more hand shock than the rat-tail does. Hand shock won't kill you, at least until your hands are so sore that you can no longer hold the blade. At that point, you're in serious trouble. If you're talking about a weapon that's theoretically hewing through armor, hand shock is going to be a huge issue every time the warrior connects. If you're fighting all day with a solid steel weapon, you're going to have trouble holding onto it long before the end of the day.
I'd be quite willing to bet that the weapons had wooden handles. They may have been wire-wrapped or clad in metal strips, but structurally, they had wood cores, and may well have had socketed heads.
Best,
F