Cavalry sabre with a parabolic blade

[Jim McDougall]

Originally Posted by kronckew

my curviest sword

looks positively straight by comparison. if you cut at someone with one of those flankers the sweet spot wouldn't contact until the day after!

This is exactly the question that has been on my mind from the beginning on this dramatically curved blade topic......how effective, if at all, would these deep curved sabre blades be? As far as I have been able to see, this is more of a fashion oriented feature, as also thought by Fernando and Norman as well in our discussion.
The remarkable example shown by Glen, which is from discussion some time ago, and believed Russian, is certainly a quintessant example of the pragmatic folly of such extreme feature as a blade of such curve.

As noted by Fernando, it would be quite different if this were indeed a sickle blade, with the cutting edge inside, which as known are quite effective in their own respect, but would not be necessarily so on a moving horse. In that respect they would effectively 'hook' the target, so would eliminate the potential for the draw cut as normally favored in many sabre techniques.

Turning to the band sword idea, it should be noted of course that band members are typically non combatant and the sidearms worn by them were usually shorter and straight, more like pioneer and artillery swords. It does seem possible that the curved sabre might have been used with regard to the fashion element. I do have a brass hilt band sword, in a form known c.1840s which is a short curved sabre .

[graeme gt]

This 1796 of mine is a really well made example but is vergeing on the impractable in my opinion .