The Realm of the Dark Blade

I’ve seen my fare share of funky and freakish swords, so nothing surprises me any more, but I still have to ask myself how people come up with some of the designs I see. Like this one, for instance:

Dark Dragon Blade

The loop, pommel, and black cylindrical grip is normal enough. Not great, but OK. As is the guard. Simple but effective. But then it all goes down hill from there.

I like black blades more than most, but this one looks like someone was sitting there, looking at the thorny stem of a rose, and thought to themselves… “Hey, this might make a good sword design…!” I mean seriously. Look at the point on it. Doesn’t exactly look like it was designed to be a thrusting weapon, that’s for sure. the reverse points kinda give that away.

And sure, this thing will cut, as the outer edge of each one of those “thorns” have been sharpened, but it won’t exactly allow you any long continuous cuts. just a series of short ones. Not exactly what you want out of a combat blade. Of course it may not be a combat blade. Who knows. But i’m pretty much positive this is from an anime, though I have no clue which.

If any of you do, please feel free to let me know. I’m curious to see where this came from.

Dark Dragon Blade – [True Swords]

Ok… so up until this point I’ve posted a lot of gun blades, blade guns, gun like blades, etc… Today I ran across something a little new. A rifle blade.

CSA Rifle Sword

Now before you ask, no, it is not actually a working firearm. though it does look a whole lot like one. So this cannot technically be called a gunblade. Or a rifleblade, as it were. This is more like… a rifle-like sword. Or a sword cane. Or actually a sword rifle. Or whatever. Take your pick.

The important thing is that there’s a cool, almost 28″ blade, in what looks like an equally cool civil war rifle, when sheathed. Coolness all around. The grip of the sword is made to look like a working trigger group, firing mechanism and butt stock of a civil war rifle, while the sheath replicates the barrel of the rifle, complete with plunger.

A cool idea. Except for one thing. From a tactical standpoint, it kinda seems self defeating to disguise a sword as a rifle. Think about it. Disguising a sword as a cane gives you an advantage because you can hide the true power of your weapon. But this… Well, it’s like bringing a sword to a rifle fight. It may look cool, but you probably wouldn’t fare very well if push came to shove.

But I might just be over analyzing it a bit.

Either way it’s an absolutely beautiful piece of work. So just ignore me.

CSA Rifle Sword – [True Swords]

Today, per popular request, I thought I’d treat you to one of the sweetest gun blades I’ve ever come across. A very unique gun blade that is so cool in so many ways, I hardly know where to begin. So I guess I’ll start with a pic:

The High Roller - By Bruce Bump

Now *that* is a cool gunblade. Exactly *how* cool? Let me count the ways…

First off, this piece of art is a study in beautiful black damascus steel. And my regulars will all know that black is a BIG plus in my book. This little knife is a beauty. A 5″ black damascus blade, that folds into a beautifully contoured black damascus grip, adorned with a set of sweet sambar stag horn scales. Just amazing.

The High Roller - Sans Pistol

And then we have the fully functional black powder muzzle loader pistol in .22. All in black, with beautifully done scrollwork along the length of the barrel and backstrap/grip.

The High Roller - Top

Seriously, a black damascus folder, especially one like this, is a thing of beauty all by itself. But a black damascus folder attached to a black steel gun? That’s just too darn cool for school.

The High Roller - Grip

And as if that weren’t enough, the knife was made to stow in a beautiful book set, complete with black powder kit and a pair of elephant ivory dice to boot.

The High Roller - Book Safe

This, ladies and germs, is functional art. None of that “fantasy” garbage here, the knife is fully functional, the pistol is fully functional, and the whole thing is just an amazing amalgamation of art, sinister lines and beautiful darkness all put together to make a single, awesome kit of uncompromising WIN.

The High Roller - Pistol Barrel

What more can I say? I’m not the gambling sort, but I’d certainly take it up if it gave me an excuse to carry something like this around…

The High Roller by Bruce Bump – [Blade Gallery]

I recently came across an unusual blade design. Actually the design itself wasn’t so much unusual, as much as the way in which it was used.

SOG Fusion - Spirit Knife

The SOG spirit knife is essentially a small spear point blade, attached to a short handle. The handle is detachable, and the blade itself can then can be attached to a shaft, in order to make a spear. Or you can leave the handle on and use it as a small knife. They even suggest that it could be used as a throwing knife.

The short spear point design is unusual, but I can see the usefulness of the design. It would be work well as a small knife for fine detail work, such as carving whittling, and such. However as a survival tool, I think the design is too limiting. For instance, I can say, with a pretty high level of certainty, that I would not be throwing *any* of my valuable knives at anything, if I were in a self reliance scenario.

The same for using it as a spear. You can make 100 disposable spears and/or throwing implements with a single good knife. A good knife, on the other hand, is hard to make out in the field. The thing is, if you lose your knives, and you’re much more liable to  find yourself  in great big world o’ hurt. So that kind of rules out half of the proposed use cases for this design.

The other thing, as I’ve mentioned in past survival knife posts, is that I consider both detachable and folding blades a liability. Detachable/Folding = weak = easily broken or lost. I would much rather have a small, full tang knife for fine work, than something like this, that is liable to work loose, or break off even, and get lost somewhere.

So ultimately, at the end of the day this may be a good knife for casual outdoorsman stuff, but for a good self reliance/survival tool, I’d probably look elsewhere…

SOG Fusion Spirit knife – [True Swords]

A long while back I blogged about the continuing trend in the collectible blade industry of forging creatures of nature, both mythical and real, of steel. And of course, one of the more common forms of this form of art, for lack of a better word, is that of insects. Mean little critters too. Like black widow spiders. And wasps. and, of course, scorpions:

The Death Stalker

Yes. This, my friends. is a death stalker. Whatever that is. I really don’t know. But I can tell you what it looks like. A giant metal scorpion, designed to be worn on the arm, and intended to intimidate all but the most stalwart of heart.Or a suicidal underground, to-the-death cage fighter. Your choice.

It is actually quite an interesting design really. A new species. A metal plated hybrid scorpion. And I say a hybrid scorpion, because it looks like it has a cross between a vampire, a human and a violator (from Spawn, if you are curious)  for a head. This attached to a set of what looks like evil black steel claws that curve backwards into an evil forward pointing saw toothed edged back plate, sporting  an equally menacing, and deeply curving black stinger at the rear. All the better to spike you with.

And all of this appears to be riveted to what looks like a cast metal base to which a simple handle has been attached, so as to fool a prospective wearer that they might actually have control of this thing by grabbing the handle. The poor unsuspecting sap. I pity the fool who would dare try to wield this monstrosity. There will only be stings to be had. I can almost gaaa-ruun-teee it.

But at least you’d look good what getting clawed to death by your own arm weapon. Just don’t say nobody told you so…

Death Stalker – [True Swords]

A long while back, Sinza, a friend of mine who I admin the Exotic Automatic Forums with, suggested I look at on one of the weapons used in the movie Blade Trinity. Specifically Blades Chain Saber. At the time I wasn’t too keen on posting about it because, from my perspective, it was an Epic Phail of a weapon.

However in retrospect, I probably should have done it, because I do just as much griping about flawed weapons on this blog as I slobber over the cool ones. (My bad, man, my bad… ) So when I happened to run across it again, I thought it would be a good time to rectify my mistake. And also point out why I didn’t like it.

Blade Trinity: Chain Saber

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So what we have here is a knife on a rope. Kinda like a Soap on a Rope, but not quite as useful. Essentially what is a wide split blade with a rat tail tang, attached to a length of black elastic, that is connected to a black and chrome grip.

When retracted, the blade locks to the handle/grip. The grip has a set of buttons, one cosmetic, and the other functional which releases the blade.

Now this is certainly an interesting design, with lots of potential. I cannot argue that. A blade swinging around at the kind of velocities you could generate with something like this would be quite the formidable weapon. The only problem I have is that this replica gets all the important parts horribly, horribly, wrong.

Take the elastic band, for instance. Mating a piece of steel to some fabric covered rubber is never a good idea, expecially in a high stress environment. Mr. little rubber bungie cord is really is not a particularly tough fellow, and when made to rub elbows with Mr. Steel, a rather notoriously hardened chap, well… Bad things can happen.

Just picture a Wiimote going airborne and becoming embedded in wide screen TV. Except with a hunk of sharp steel instead of a small plastic brick. You get the idea. Not good. especially if you like wide screen TVs. Mr. Bungie was a good man. Pity he just snapped like that. Please do accept our condolences Mrs. Bungie… A moment of silence please… Ok… I’m rambling aren’t I… Right. Back on topic.

In fact, the weapon used in the movie employed a chain with a retraction mechanism in the handle. A much more sensible implementation. But it too, suffers from a rather insidious design flaw. Have you ever tried to swing a blade on the end of a chain? I have. Really fun. Except for one thing.

Unless you are using a quad edged blade, your chances of hitting anything with the *edge* of your blade are about 50/50. If you are good, you can get the point to bear fairly reliably, but edgewise strikes… Meh. So the way it is used in the movie is… You guessed it! Magic!

If I were designing such a blade, I would do one of two things. Either use a chain that is rotationally stable about the lengthwise axis of it’s links (like a bicycle chain), or use a bade that will cut no matter what  side it hits. IE use a quadruple, quintuple or sextuple edged blade.

Personally I think a fine, highly flexible, high tensile cable attached via a freely articulating joint to a quadruple edged blade would be the best design solution for a weapon of this nature. Especially given the design challenge of fitting a retraction mechanism into the handle. But that’s just the design nerd in my head talking.

What’s funny is the site I found this on touts the replica as an “exact” replica of the original. huh? *Exact*? Are you saying a fixed bungie cord is *exactly* the same as a chain attached to a button activated retraction mechanism?!? I think not.

Either way, great concept, not so good implementation, and total humiliation on the replica. Certainly cool to look at, but I really wouldn’t try to swing it any harder than you would an ostrich feather…

“Exact” replica… Pfft.

<Inigo Montoya>This word. I do not think it means what you think it means…</Inigo Montoya>

Blade Chain Saber – [SouthWest Blades]

You’ll remember a while back I did a couple of posts about the proliferation of Vamp on Vamp crime in the media and such, and on the unique weapons they used. Well, I found yet another vampire-terminating sliver of soulless steel:

The Vampire Vanquisher

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Now I am not a professional vampire slayer by any means. They don’t come round these here parts. So I never had to learn. But if I were, this would be the sword I’d use. Why? Because it’s cool. Obviously the first thing you notice is it’s basic cruciform shape. Built-in Vampire repellent right thar. Until you meet one ‘o them super master vamps, at which point that keen edge would come in mighty handy for some quick decapitation work. Or you die. Depending on how much you suck. Or how experienced the vamp is at sucking the life out of hapless humans. But I digress.

What I really like about this sword is it’s aesthetics. As I mentioned before, It has a really neat cruciform shape built into the ricasso/guard, but even cooler is that there are some wicked looking curved blades at the ends of the guards. A rather practical design, I reckon, that also enhances the aesthetics of the weapon. The guard and substantial ricasso are also etched with a cool looking set of runes, which add to the overall appeal of the weapon. Though I’m betting they’d be a pain to clean, should you happen to get vamp juice all over them.

Now maybe I’m nitpicking a bit, but the grip and pommel don’t quite cut muster in my oh, so humble opinion. It’s not that they’re bad, they’re just, umm…, meh. I’m not a big fan of colored grips. Unless it’s black. Then I’m all about it. The red grip? It’s just not me. And I’d actually be fine with the pommel, IF it didn’t have those funky, dangly hook things on them. Looks like a prime way to get the sword hooked on your clothing or something. Definitely wouldn’t be a good position to be in while battling a really hungry blood sucker.

But those are the only areas I have any complaints. The blade itself is simple, bearing the slender, fairly straight lines that I find quite appealing for this kind of sword. This, in combination with the other aesthetic features of the guard and ricasso, make up for it’s other shortcomings. Which might just be me being nitpicky. Hey! No comments from the peanut gallery! Ya can’t can’t blame me for wanting perfection out of my vamp slaying weapons. Even if I might never use them…

the Vampire Vanquisher – [Collectors Edge]

Over the past year or so, during my frequent intarweb sojourn for interesting weapons, I’ve come across an inordinate number of wooden replicas of otherwise lethal weapons. Now I have to admit that the first time I saw them, I was a bit puzzled. I thought maybe they were safety weapons for the accident prone. Or ultra cheap knock offs. Or something similar.

It wasn’t until I happened to come across a couple of pics of Cosplayers (CosPlay or Costume Play – folks who dress up as anime or movie characters and gather are conventions of the same) wielding some pretty authentic looking weapons, (in wood) that I finally understood. BTW, if you are an anime fan, you might very well be impressed by how realistic these cosplayers look:

Here’s one of Naruto (one of my favorites):

[click to view The Endless Waltz's flickr gallery]

Here’s a couple of the bad guys, Itachi (Mr. Red eyes on the right) and Kisame (Mr. Blue face on the left) (and yes, that is how they are supposed to look):

[click to view The Endless Waltz's flickr gallery]

How about an Afro Samurai? (The hair isn’t quite big enough, but oh well… ):

[click to view jpassionpats flickr gallery]

I was particularly impressed by this Blade cosplayer:

[click to view MorpheusBlades flickr gallery]

And, of course, Morpheus and Neo…

[click to view MorpheusBlades flickr gallery]

I’ve linked the pictures above the to the flickr pages I found them on. Very cool. But more importantly, I realized that all of these folks had to use wooden weapons, since none are allowed to bring real weapons into a crowded cosplay convention hall. Mystery solved!

Also, since it is about Halloween, I thought I’d round up a few of the wooden movie, video game and anime weapons I’ve come across recently for your viewing pleasure. There are actually quite a few out there, but I thought these ones looked the best:

300 – Spartan Sword – Wood

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Naruto – Ninja Kunai – Wood

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Legend of Zelda – Links Sword – Wood

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Inuyasha – Bankotsu’s Banryu – Wood

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Inuyasha – Inuyasha’s Tetsusaiga – Wood

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Bleach – Renji Abarai’s Zabimaru – Wood

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Bleach – Ichigo’s Tensa Zangetsu Bankai – Wood

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God of War – Kratos’ Blades of Chaos – Wood

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I guess it’s cutting it close for Halloween, but if you plan on being one of these characters, or plan to cosplay any of these characters in the near future, these weapons actually do look good enough to perfect your look. And could save you from inadvertently relieving yourself or a friend, of a limb. Or of sight in one eye…

• Naruto – Kunai – Wood Replica – [True Swords]
• 300 – Spartan Sword – Wood Replica – [True Swords]
• Inuyasha – Bankotsu’s Banryu – Wood Replica – [True Swords]
• Inuyasha – Inuyasha’s Tetsusaiga – Wood Replica – [True Swords]
• Bleach – Renji Abarai’s Zabimaru – Wood Replica – [True Swords]
• Bleach – Ichigo’s Tensa Zangetsu Bankai – Wood Replica – [True Swords]
• God of War – Kratos’ Blades of Chaos – Wood Replica – [True Swords]
• Legend of Zelda – Links Sword – Wood Replica – [Edgework Imports]

It’s time for me to introduce you to one of my favorite swords. The sword of Blade, The Daywalker:

Blade the Daywalker – Vampire Slayer Sword

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Now If you don’t recognize this, it is the sword used by the sunlight-immune vampire comic-book-turned-movie hero Blade. Now Blade is actually a Dhampir. Basically the product of a human mother and a vampire father. Or of a vampire bitten mother. Or some variation thereof. A dhampir generally possesses some combination of both vampire and human traits.

In this case, Blade manages to obtain their strength, speed, enhanced senses, slow aging and healing ability, at the hefty cost of a rather debilitating thirst for blood. But though he still thirsts for blood, he can stand the light of day, unlike his full blood cousins (thrice removed).

Don’t worry, I won’t recap his entire story, suffice to say he harbors what I’ll simply refer to as “a little animosity” to his full-blood relatives for his mothers suffering and his blood thirst. As a result, has dedicated himself to the full time task of hunting them all to extinction. With this very sword. Is that cool or what. I rest my case.

OK, I’ll admit that maybe the fact that Blade is one of my favorite movie characters might make my admiration of this sword just a tad bit biased. But I don’t think so. In fact there a couple of his weapons that I dislike. Such as his cyclone glaive and his sword whip thingy. The point is, this sword is cool whether I say so or not. (I insist.)

Anyhoo, I think the beauty of this sword lies in the simplicity of the blade. Very reminiscent of Anathros, or the Punisher sword, in it’s simplicity. Except this blade is a lot more substantial. Even the handle, which is a little more ornate than the rest of the sword, is simpler than most, and I like that about this weapon. This one even has a hidden blade in the handle. Cool stuff. Nothing compared to what the movie version of the sword could do, but good enough.

One last note. The site I found this sword on makes reference to this being a “ninja” sword. Again. What’s with the stupid “ninja” references. Hello!! You can’t just slap “ninja” in a weapons title willy nilly like that. It actually has to be a Ninja weapon in order to be able to do so validly.

Even if Blade was a ninja (which he’s not, even though he uses bo-shuriken like a pro), that is not a ninja sword. Nowadays It seems like whenever the marketing department of these sword manufacturers want to get more life or better sales out of a product, they slap on the trusty old “ninja” moniker. Idiots. Always tryin’ to ice skate up hill…

The Sword of Blade the Daywalker – [True Swords]

Since I’m on a roll with the glaives, I thought I’d blog about a few more glaive designs. Today we will be looking at not one, but TWO of the more contemporary incarnations of the infamous glaive. Thats right ladies and jerks, today we will look at two modern and well publicized glaive designs, made famous by the comic vampire hunter Blade, and the resulting movies. I bring you none other than Blades Shredder and Cyclone Glaives.

Blade's Shredder Glaive

I won’t bother to recap my previous comments about the weaknesses of a folding blade, ’cause (assuming you have been following along) you now know them all. Right? Right? Oh Come ON!!. OK. You fail. Start this class again from the beginning. The rest of us are going to continue on. Those still with us are in for a treat, because the design of Blades Glaives present a unique set of potential problems, which we will cover today in class, one by one. Woot!

Blades Cyclone Glaive

First off, you can’t see it from the pics, but Blades glaives are centrally spring loaded. The mechanism that keeps the blades secure in both the open and closed position requires a hub mounted spring in order to keep the blades in whatever position they are locked in. Personally I think this is a risky design move, especially for a weapon that experiences high impact or G forces, because the same forces could “pop” the mechanism on impact, causing the mechanism to fail. See if you can find an abused novelty store display model of one of these and you will see what I’m talking about. Just pray that after repeated use it doesn’t decide to fold up on you while still in your hand. Strike 1.

Blade's Bloodbath Shredder Glaive

The second point to note on both blades, is the exaggerated size of the central hub around which the blades rotate to close. No doubt this is a direct result of the requirements of the centralized blade locking mechanism and the spring thereof. The resulting hub is large, unwieldy and eats up a huge section of the real estate that might otherwise have been used to hold it. Wheeee! Strike 2.

Blade's Bloodbath Shredder Glaive - Closed

Which brings us to yet the third problem. That huge hub means that these glaives have no real handle. The Shredder glaive design does allow for a bit more hand room in the middle, but between the huge hub and the short blades, you would be hard pressed to throw this cleanly while still imparting enough rotation to make it stick in anything more solid than the seat of yer pappy’s overstuffed wing-backed chair. And it’d probably still bounce off that.

Blades Shredder Glaive

And just forget about trying the palm grip throw with one of these puppies, like Blade does in the movies. Much like the Beastmaster Glaive, it would very likely hang up in your hand or on your fingers on departure. Though unlike the Beastmasters Glaive, (if it’s any consolation), it probably remain open while it does so. Probably perform a 180° in your hand too, resulting in an “incident” that your idiotic friends may think hilarious at the time, but you might not find too humorous. Steeeeeerike 3! Yer Out!

All of this leads me to one undeniable conclusion. For any and all practical intents and purposes, the average hollywood glaive stinks! These particular designs, especially the Cyclone, are possibly some of the most impractical designs ever in the history of glaivedom. (Yes, I said “Glaivedom”. This is my glaivesphere, and I can use whatever glaivey word I want. Glaiveify at will, if you will. Now back to the Glaivespiel at hand. Glaiveisms Rule!! Ha!)

But practical considerations aside, these glaives (heh, heh, heh, I said “Glaives”…) do appear quite menacing, and that is a quality that can stand on it’s own merits. They look… mean. Especially the Shredder. Just don’t go confusing them for athletes when they are really just runway models… Doing so could literally come back to bite you in the proverbial ol’ hiney…

Blades Shredder Glaive – [The Armory]
Blades Bloodbath Shredder Glaive – [Blade Hut]
Blades Cyclone Glaive – [Awesome Anime Action Figures]