1948 Three Musketeers , sword play, how were the blades made?

F

From Tennessee

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I watched the movie this evening and am curious about the swords of that era, they seemed very light and very flexible ( something like you see the fencers do when they do that thing over their head when they bend the blade) how were these light blades made? If forged and they must have been how do they achieve that level of flex and still be hard enough to maintain and edge?
 
A long piece of steel that cross section has a fair bit of flex. Heck, take a 4 foot length of 3/16 1.5" wide and you can easily flex it. It's got a visible deflection just under its own weight.
Hardening it doesn't change the flex, it simply changes the point where that flex changes things permanently. I can't remember whether it was Kevin or Stacy who posted it, but there's a long post regarding this subject and the facts and misconceptions regarding flexing in steel.
 
tempering martensite at certain temperature can cause better flexablity of the steel. for simple carbon steel, the spring structure can be form by tempering martensite between 350~450°C. this structure used to be called tempered troostite, but this term is used anymore.

5160 temper around 440~500°C can result tempered troostite.

1086 temper arround 450~480°C.

i see people using this two type of steel most of time.

the best springness and strenghth is caused by cold deformation sorbite(a type of pearlite). usually high carbon steel lead bath to get sorbite, then cold pull it by over 90% reduction into wires. piano wires and some high strength cable are made this way.
 
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Springiness and flexibility are two different descriptions of the same event.

Springiness is the ability if something to bend and return without distortion. Flexibility is the amount of bending needed before permanent distortion or breaking.

The flexibility of steel is a fixed factor, determined by Young's Modulus of Elasticity. How much force will bend a certain thickness of steel.

What you can can control is how easily the bending leaves a permanent bend ( plastic distortion) or breaks ( failure). The hardness of the steel , and the method of tempering will control these things. The type of structure in the steel ( austenite, martensite, pearlite, bainite) ,or the mix of them, will be how we do the controlling.

The main way for knife/sword people to increase or decrease flex is to increase or decrease thickness. The other geometry features, like distal taper and bevels, confine the flex to certain areas.
Kevin regularly demonstrates how to do a 90° bend test on a blade and have it return to dead straight. He even does it twenty times in a row, and the blade is dead straight.....
The blade is a double edged razor blade, and he holds it in his fingertips, pinching it to bend it 90 degrees.

I have a 16th century sword blade I take to knife events. I hold it over my head by the ends, and bend it in a "U". It springs back.....Not because ancient smiths had superior powers in forging, but because they made thin sword blades.

Sunshaddow (Page), makes live fencing blades and theatrical props, and will probably chime in soon.
Movie swords are made different. The theatrical blade should bend, but taking a set is preferred over breaking. They are softer and usually thinner.
 
When I started out in the sport of fencing the blades were Eurpean and made of 9260 a commonspring steel .The movie swords could be the same . Most of the actors had training as fencers but elaborated for movies !! One of the old movies had a lesson by an actual fencing coach ,it was great !
 
I have to find a copy of that movie, it has been a long time since I saw that particular one. Most of the swashbuckler movies of that era if you look at how they do them closely, the beauty shots of the actor with the sword (pulling it from a scabbard, challenging a fight, etc) they use a prop rapier, the fight scenes where they are actively fighting are usually done with an epee blade mounted (in the Errol Flynn movie "The Sea Hawk" they did not even maintain continuity between the two swords, the beauty shots he is wearing and carrying a swept hilt, the fight scenes he is using a shallow cup hilt with an epee blade in it, which is the sword that was painted in the movie poster. I just looked at the trailer on amazon, and the sword in the scene where there is a kiss and Milady reaches for a rapier on the table, that weapon definitely had an epee blade in it. An epee is a V cross section blade where the outside profile of the V gives it some rigidity but the channel (fuller) allows it to be lightweight and (when bent in the proper direction) to deflect in the extreme without breaking. Most of the fencing and prop weapons I make I use blades from approved manufacturers (most organizations that allow full contact weapons play or fencing have very strict safety regulations limiting the blades used to approved manufacturers for safety and liability reasons, broken blades can kill) Flexibility is a matter of geometry, any time a blunt weapon is used on another human in a staged fight you want enough give on a thrust that misdelivery will not generate trauma, and a wide enough edge section that it will not exceed the tensile strength of skin. You want it hard enough that it will not nick (which generates little saw teeth) and tempered back enough that it will not crack on a blade to blade strike (or a theatrical "miss" that clips the stone architecure, statuary etc.)

These days many fight swords have aluminum blades which get changed out as soon as they bend or nick (multiple camera shots are a propmaster's dream) since modern audiences will catch the continuity error if a different blade profile get subbed in

-Page
 
sunshadow said:
These days many fight swords have aluminum blades which get changed out as soon as they bend or nick (multiple camera shots are a propmaster's dream) since modern audiences will catch the continuity error if a different blade profile get subbed in

-Page
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I was going to mention the aluminum blades but I doubt they were in use in 1948. The trend now is to use disposeable aluminum blades, heavily choreographed sequences, and multiple camera angles to make fights look "realistic" and insure the safety of the participants.
 
I'll never watch a swashbuckler flick in the same eye again. I wish now I had recorded the movie last night so I could take a much closer look at what might have been taking place. Real interesting.
 
When I was a kid, those type of flicks ( we called them flicks , because they flickered when the projector ran) were current runs at the movies, and on TV. I used to love to watch the spring loaded and rubber knives used in the stabbing scenes of a fight. In the early Tarzan films, Tarzan regularly had a fight with a horrible fake rubber alligator. They used a rubber bladed knife in those fights. He would stab and stab the beast ( all the time rolling over and over in the water) and you could clearly see the blade bend. The final stab was a closeup, and the blade would go in and there would be blood.The water would then turn dark red, Tarzan would crawl out of the river, and the dead gator would float away, sinking slowly. Never mind that there were crocodiles, not alligators, in africa....that was a fun scene to watch. The same went for the fights with the tame lion, and the guy in a cheap gorilla suit.

I recall seeing a piece on a collectibles show (Antiques Road Show?) where the person had a set of the prop knives from the old Tarzan TV show. There were about five different knives, depending on what the scene was to depict. None had any edge on them. There was one dress knife that was worn for closeups, a couple rubber bladed knives, one in plain aluminum, and one with a spring loaded retractable blade. The spring loaded stabbing knife only had about a 4" long blade, to allow the impression of a full, "to the Hilt" stab.
 
bladsmth said:
When I was a kid, those type of flicks ( we called them flicks , because they flickered when the projector ran) were current runs at the movies, and on TV.
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Uphill five miles both ways through the snow? Thankfully global warming will keep that from ever happening again, hehe.

We just finished watching "The Legend of Drunken Master" 1994, and were commenting on the springiness of the blades used. They were little more sheet metal, not even bevels on them. You could see 30° bends in them when they hit each other and would spring back.
 
No, it was flat both ways, and the theater was only a mile or two away. Even we three boys were 4,5,and 9, my mother and us did walk there. The Saturday matinée movies were $0.25 for two movies and a cartoon. A soda and a box of popcorn each, plus the movies for all four of us cost $3.00 - a lot back then. I went to the movies with my daughter last week, and the tickets were $15, including my senior discount. A tub of corn and two bottles of WATER cost $18. Yikes, $33 for two people to see a two hour movie ! In 1955, that was a weeks groceries for our family of five.
 
It was a feature film, a second short film [travelog maybe] cartoon, coming events .
My father in his early years worked for a company that made air conditioners for theaters. This was a big deal then ,about 1930 ,when you could take your date out for an evening see a movie and escape the heat. If you see photos of theater marquees of those days look for a sign that advertised , such as "air conditioned , enjoy the film in cool comfort".
 
I am guilty of not heeding my own advice and wandering a bit off topic.
If you guys want to continue this roam down memory lane and such, I think we should move to ARG.

It would be Tennessee's call, since it is his thread.
 
bladsmth said:
I am guilty of not heeding my own advice and wandering a bit off topic.
If you guys want to continue this roam down memory lane and such, I think we should move to ARG.

It would be Tennessee's call, since it is his thread.
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It was fun. Feedback was really top notch as usual but there is no way Tarzan could have killed the croc with a dang rubber knife! I guess we can give it a rest.
 
Sorry to necro the thread - ah yes, those old swashbuckler movies. Erroll Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. As much as I love those films, it's interesting to contrast the choreography of those movies with something a little more...historically accurate:

Techniques from Salvatore Fabris
[video=youtube;KKA-FRuDuLQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKA-FRuDuLQ[/video]

And Capo Ferro
[video=youtube;oktpWiXYpdo]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oktpWiXYpdo[/video]
 
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