Ken Cox: Sword of Ehud and the Fibonacci Sequence

J

Josh Feltman

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Feb 12, 2001
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Ken-- I thought the stuff you posted on your version of the sword of Ehud (hope that's correct) and the Fibonacci sequence was awesome-- really fascinating. I think it deserves its own thread, especially since battle blades seems to be gone (?) Unfortunately, I didn't get to read through the information as closely as I would have liked. Would you mind re-posting the info from the other thread? Also, if you have any pics, I would love to see them.

Thanks,
--Josh
 
Do you mean the sequence
1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,33,54,87...

Do you mean THAT sequence?
What the heck does that have to do with knives?
 
malazo-- that's the one. Ken Cox posted some interesting stuff about incorporating it into the design of a knife in a thread on Battle Blades. Hopefully he will repost it here.
--Josh
 
Hey, Satin-- thanks for posting the original thread-- I didn't think it existed anymore. I e-mailed Ken a link to this thread because I really wanted to hear some more about his sword, so hopefully he will post here.
--Josh
 
WOW! Great thread!

I have a very vague recollection of doing a Fibbonaci program in a programming assignment, I think in C language in an algorithms class.

As A Christian, I LOVE seeing when the Bible proves itself as accurate on something like this. I would dig seeing pics of tehse swords (and handling them!)
 
In the original thread, the question had to do with the size of a Bowie knife.
I redirected that to the proportions of a Bowie knife, and not only the internal proportions of a Bowie knife, but the proportions of the whole knife in relation to the owner of the knife.

I would not expect a knife proportioned to my 6'2" dimensions to also "fit" my daughter's 5'4" dimensions.

I believe that we can use the Golden Section or Golden Mean, also known as Phi or 1.618, to find the correct internal proportions of a knife.
Furthermore, the measurements of the inside of the forearm, the outside of the forearm and the length of the femur (thigh) have direct bearing on the proper proportion of a knife to the owner.

I used these principles to design a short fighting sword based on the biblical Sword of Ehud.
When poeple handle this sword, their eyes light up.

I plan to explore this further, with larger and smaller knives and swords.
 
I have a Maringer Vorpal 1-B. After I have read this post I have measured it. It is very close to these proportions, 13.5" overall with 8" blade and 5.5" handle. It is very comfortable in the hand. I have few questions though.Where do you count the guard or bolster in your proportion? Is it a part of a handle? The other thing is long bladed knives like machetes or khukuris. They will require unusually large handles. On the other hand small personal size fighters or boot knives with 4" blade will have nothing to grab on. I guess it will not work for every knife.
 
I too am curious about how guard, especially like the guard seen on a Hells Belle, fit into the equation.

And what about handle shape, have any effect on handle shape? or is there a similar equation relating to hand size?
 
That is fabulous.
The Golden ratio is pretty ubiquitous.

If I may add my $0.02 of criticism, Ken's significant figures are pretty out of wack. He has measured the inside of an arm with a ruler or tape measure, then from that determines the length of the clip down to the fifth decimal place.

Oh well...
 
Using the forearm measurement for a larger knife/small sword makes sense, but what would you use as the basis of proportion for a smaller knife, say a folder?
--Josh
 
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