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Old 30th May 2019, 09:31 PM   #4
fernando
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Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Portugal
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Lightbulb On the blades for patas

Have you a rapier, or ever had one, Jim ?
This is not the game game; skip over the etymology of the term and just ponder on what a rapier is. Not easy though but then, nothing is exact, and each one is the judge on his own right.
Forget Capoferro, Pallavicini, John Clements and all mediatic Gurus. Paraphrasing Judge Potter Stewart; i don’t know what a rapier is, but i know it when i see it.
Actually as the term rapier became a idolized at its, resistant countries (like Portugal) preferred to keep calling espadas (swords).
The rapier was a civilian sword, although apparently it is recorded that military regiments also used it.
Its blade could (should) be rather thin, even at times extremely thin, some with blunt edges. Some say they should be 2,5 cms. wide, although that is already within the range of a narrow sword blade; 2 cms. maximum being more within typology. But in the opposite, their narrowest section could reach 1 cm. thus touching the estoc range. My school fencing example measures 13 m/m in its widest square cross section. Only two of my eight cup & swept hilt swords are rapiers, for what i consider. Only three or four out of Eduardo Nobre’s collection he considers rapiers, those with blades width + or – 1 cms.
One thing is a narrow blade, another is an extremely narrow one. Same goes for flexibility; true rapiers, to my understanding, could not be extremely flexible, with risk not to do the job, which is perforating; notwithstanding some authors would admit they could also be used in the cutting but then, you are allowed to do what you feel like, and don’t go to jail for that. Same as with the pata; some say it could be used as a lance, but i don’t buy that, thinking is only authors imagination. Pata blades were bought (imported) with an intended flexibility, in order to slash as much as possible in combat; what Caravana calls arm abduction movement and Mundy’s considers them to be able to severe a bull’s neck. Furthermore, while katars could be mounted with European blade fragments (not my term) entire blades for patas were made to perform the intended purpose. But let me not talk about katars in this thread, with risk to be reprimanded for posting off topic material .
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