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Originally Posted by ariel
Well, the "finger-over-quillon" idea always struck me as strange: blades slide down toward the guard and, when they meet a finger, the blade always wins. The entire idea of the guard is to separate the incoming blade from the hand.
The obvious reason for a ricasso is to strenghten the blade: the more massive it is at the base, the better. Actually, slashing swords require only the distant third of the sharpened blade or thereabouts to be fully functional. The rest is for the show.
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Thank you Ariel,
At a final stage, it is undeniable that the finger over the quillon in tulwars can only reach disaster, rather than comon sense. The point i have initialy raised was more like a trip wondering to what extent exterior influences and mutations can be seen in weapons, as in other things, that are just remnants of what didn't meet actual funcionality, but nevertheless prevail on the object, raising either all kinds of speculations or the nostalgy of a well identified but unnefective device.
I quote again the kastane, the nimcha and probably many others.
As i said when i posted the pictures, the hilt was too small for both mine and my wife's hands and curiously the quillon reentrance and the ricasso existance were just an invitation to extend the forefinger over and through it.
As for the ricasso being uniquely for reinforcing the blade base, the so called forte, i thaught a certain double atribution would take place here, like the egg and the hen. My question is that if ricassos were only for strenghtening the blades, they didn't necessarily have to be enbeveled or at least unedged. Whereas if the blade base is for wraping the finger, it doesn't have to be thicker but surely has to be blunt.
I have read that the ricasso functional idea seems to be very old. In the British Museum there is a Sassanid silver cup of the VI century, depicting a warrior holding a sword with his finger in front of the guard. It would be nice to check in detail, if possible, the whole atitude.
BTW Ariel, i still hope you can tell us more about the slanted quillons being relative to age, in tulwars.
Thanks again
fernando