A Bref Discussion upon Rapiers;
Their Properties

So you want to get a real reproduction rapier made. What do you tell the metal worker? How can you get hard information on period weapon specifications unless you work for a museum (or break into one)? Do you buy one from a commercial company and take their word that it is made from measurements?

At last here is some data on the subject. I have been able to get in contact with a Professor James Jackson, who was Dean of the English Department at George Mason University (now retired) and wrote the book "Three Elizabethan Fencing Manuals" in 1972. This book is still in print by Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints, Inc., P.O. Box 344, Delmar, New York 12054, (518) 439-5978, for $75 plus $4 shipping and handling (hard cover, acid-free paper), and contains Elizabethan English translations of Saviolo and Di Grassi, as well as both of Silver's works (Paradoxes of Defence and Bref Instructions). In the 1950s Dr. Jackson taught fencing at the Air Force Academy, and he has combined his interest in rapier work (he had reproduction rapiers made and tried them in practices) with his interest in Shakespeare to publish an article in Shakespeare Quarterly about the sword exchange in Hamlet and its relation to an exchanging move shown in Sainct Didier (contact me if you would like more information about this).

In 1979, he traveled to England, and was able to take measurements of a number of rapier blades made between 1590 and 1616 (the Shakespearean period he was interested in, and around the height of the rapier era). These rapiers are normally displayed in the White Tower Museum in London. In addition to length and weight, he measured balance points on the edge of a ruler, which is information almost never found in other sources. He was able to handle the weapons, and found that they were much lighter feeling and easier to use than his reproductions made earlier even though most were actually longer and heavier, because the period ones were better balanced (see table and explanation). For anyone who may want to use this data, I have summarized his measurements below and discussed some of the conclusions I could make.

The first column, ID number, is the number assigned to the weapon by the White Tower museum. The next column has the total blade length from pommel end to tip, in inches (all lengths were measured to an accuracy of 1/16"). Next is hilt length measured from the pommel end to the end of the swept hilt where the free rapier blade starts. Balance point is as a percent of total weapon length, measured from the hilt end (so 20% means 1/5 of the way out from the pommel towards the tip). Weight is total, in pounds (measured to the nearest 1/2 ounce). Linear blade density is the last column, and this is a rough calculation of the weight of the blade per inch (method is discussed at the end). This is mainly useful if you decide you want a 45 inch rapier vs. a 39 inch one, and want to know how much it will add to the weight of the weapon. Remember that if you add to the blade weight, you also have to add some weight (more than the extra blade weight, remember leverage) to the pommel to keep the balance point the same.

As rapier background and description, the first 12 of these weapons were just rapiers in a rack, with no specific history other than being of English make between about 1590 and 1610. Number ix-878 was German, with a heavy acorn-shaped pommel, a highly decorated blade, a simple swept hilt and a ricasso (section between the handle and the end of the swept hilt where you can put your fingers for control) but no clam shells. He made the comment "excellent balance" on his original record. Number ix-870 was Italian, with a long, narrow, lozenge shaped blade and a ricasso, also with "excellent balance". The final rapier with no ID number had just been found a few months earlier in the Thames, with a date of 1594 on the hilt, a long pommel (1 3/4"), two small clamshells, and a lozenge-shaped blade with the lowest 8 1/4" fluted, and was in near perfect condition.

Professor Jackson also collected some information on daggers. Two were made as matched sets to two of the weapons above, ID number x-255 (matched to ix-870 above), total length 18.06", hilt length 4.88", weight 0.78 lb, and ID number x-254 (matched to ix-878 above), total length 16.44", hilt length 5.38", weight slightly over 1 lb. Another dagger, x-254 (German), had a simple design, with a highly decorated blade and a side ring shaped like a raised bar. A final dagger had been pulled from the Thames with the unnumbered rapier, but may not have gone with it. It was dated to about 1590, and had a long, stiff tapering blade with a raised rib on each side. A side ring appeared on one side, and on the other the rib was flattened as though for ones thumb. It was a very stiff, strong dagger. He did not get balance points on any of these, so they are not in the table (if you have used daggers much, you will realize that balance point is not as important with these, since they are so short and light).

Professor Jackson's comments about rapier cross sections were that some had diamond-shaped cross sections, and some had flattened triangular cross sections (half of a diamond). He did not record which weapons had which, but when plotting data I did not see two separate groupings, so I suspect that most weapon parameters were similar for the two. In phone discussions he said that all the weapons had very good balance, much better than his reproductions which had balance points near 31% (compare this to the 22% or so in the table). They were very well suited to thrusting techniques, but based on experimentation he felt that all of them would be too slow for cutting moves or parrying by moving the weapon tip; your opponent would skewer you while the tip was out of line.

I crunched some numbers and found out some interesting things about these rapiers. First, you can see in the table that there is very little difference in the balance point (in % blade length) among the weapons, even though lengths vary by a foot and a half, and weights vary by more than a pound. The biggest variations in this group are only +/-2.5% with a standard deviation of +/-1.4%. This very tight spread includes the two blades made in different countries (Germany and Italy). Calculations show that you will get a change of 2.5% in the balance point from an addition or subtraction of just 0.86 oz spread out along the entire outer blade. Adding less than 3" of blade length without reweighting the hilt will cause a 2.5% balance shift as well. All of these blade makers have converged on a very similar balance point for these weapons, which is not surprising given the decades of rapier development by 1590. Since peoples lives depended on these, I argue that this balance point is very well optimized for use in combat. Serious thought should be given to copying this balance point in rapiers we make with realistic weights, or even the heavier simulated weapons such as schlagers.

Several other points were interesting; weapons were longer, at an average of 48", than most of the ones I have seen in catalogues. Modern reproductions I have seen described average 37-39", almost 10" shorter than those discussed here, and shorter in fact than the smallest weapon in the table (41.8").

I looked for a number of trends in plotted data for these weapons, first of all total weapon weight vs. total length; surprisingly, there was no trend for this. The longest weapons had, on average, similar weights to the shortest ones. Of course, a longer one would be harder to swing saber-style in cutting moves because of a longer moment arm. Blade length vs. hilt length did not show a trend, so a longer weapon did not need a longer hilt to wield it. There was a slight trend towards balance points further out with denser (heavier per inch) blades, but it was small enough that it may be noise. It was interesting that the two "foreign" blades (German and Italian) fell right in with the groupings for all the other weapons, in no case were they at extremes.

In fact the only trend that definitely showed up was with Blade Density vs. Blade Length, plotted below. It does seem that the longer the blade (and total weapon), the lighter the blade per inch (this explains why weapons did not get heavier as they got longer). Professor Jackson supported this, saying that the longer blades got very thin. This certainly is good if you want to move it quickly; what we don't know is the effect it has on weapon strength and stiffness. What happens if you are fighting against a Scottish claymore (claidheamh mor, or great sword), such as in the recent movie Rob Roy? There we get into matters of metallurgy and skill in crafting the rapier.

To summarize the most interesting discoveries, longer rapiers were not heavier; rather, the blades got lighter per inch as they got longer to keep an roughly constant total weight. In addition, balance points were very consistent at around 22.7% from the pommel between different makers and three different countries. By this point in history (around 1600) rapier makers seem to have converged on this value as the best for survival of the wielder. Finally, these Elizabethan weapons are longer than most modern replica rapiers, by as much as a foot.

While shorter, less balanced weapons may be fine for the use most SCA folk put them to, as we are hopefully not using them on each other, I hope that the information here will help to move both buyers and makers of period reproduction rapiers towards an understanding of real blades, on which lives depended in many a duel.

Appendix

In service to The Society, East Kingdom, and Fencing,

Garrick Mapmaker
Marshal of Ravenhill

Gregory Stauf
17 Dorset Drive
New Milford, CT 06776
(203) 355-5204
email gstauf@atmi.com