Hi Jens,
While I like the topic of sliding weights, I can think of a couple of really good reasons why someone would "have a weight" on the back of a claymore. If the weight were _fixed in place_, it could be extremely useful either to tune the center of gravity and center of percussion, or alternately, perhaps to dampen shocks from the blade hitting a target.
While I've never seen such a weight on a sword, I wouldn't be surprised if some enterprising soul didn't try it at some point. Fixing a lead slug (or similar) to a blade would certainly be simpler than remanufacturing the blade to have better performance characteristics.
Anyway, back onto the topic: one suggestion I would make is that a shorter slide would be more useful than a longer one, because the weight could move more quickly. Imagine, for instance, a weight that was on the hilt side of the center of gravity when the sword was upright, but which could be propelled across the center by some wrist action to make the sword tip heavy. Such a sword would be easy to accelerate and would hit hard, although it would be hard to recover after a blow.
Fearn
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