Great sword centers of Europe shipped stock blades all over, and although trade with Islamic countries was forbidden, demand kept a steady flow of contraband shipments moving eastward, where western sword blades were highly prized for their variety and size. (It was never some sort of gutter to let the blood flow more freely off the sword, as some have claimed.) The smith punched one or several maker marks onto the blade and sent it along for market distribution. The characteristic groove, impressed down the middle of the flat of most blade surfaces in the late stage of tempering, was a clever stylistic means of decreasing weight at the center so that structural strength would not be sacrificed. The bladesmith made the blade by repeatedly tempering and hammering into shape an iron blank in a bellows-driven fire. Evolution of the Swordīeginning with the learning curve of making soft-metal swords-bronze was the only practical success-that preceded the Iron Age in about 1000 bc, swordsmithing grew into an assembly line process by around the 14th century. ![]() At no time was the functional variety of the sword more apparent than during Europe’s Middle Ages and in the early 17th century. From its first modest appearance 5,000 years ago, the “white arm” has remained the military’s Queen of Weapons. ![]() Perhaps no other weapon in human history has lent itself so well to so many combat adaptations as the sword.
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