When does a bladed knife become a sword?
A tougher question is what makes a specific weapon a sword? It has a blade, a guard and a handle. Most have a blade more than sixteen inches long. But an eighteen-inch long pizza cutter has a long blade and a handle and a guard of sorts, yet it is definitely a knife. The term ‘sword’ has proven surprisingly difficult to pin down an exact meaning for- but we usually know one when we see it. Part of the problem is that swords come in a baffling variety of forms, sizes and shapes. We can start with what a sword is not. A medieval sword is not a big knife. It is not crude. It is not heavy. It is not clumsy or poorly balanced. OK, there were isolated examples that were some or all of these, but why talk about bad swords? Early on when custom knife makers started trying to make medieval swords, there was some tendency to make them like big knives. This resulted in swords that were far too heavy that didn’t work all that well. Some people didn’t care- some still don’t. Fortunately, most of us
