The pommel sits at the near end of the sword, at the top of the handle. It acts as a counterweight to the blade so the sword doesn’t feel heavy in the hand. In general, heavy blades are matched with heavy pommels, and light blades with light pommels—or sometimes none at all. This isn’t a strict rule, however. For instance, many military sabres have no counterweight at all, so that cutting motions are harder to stop. The “heaviness” of a sword isn’t all about its weight. Even the biggest broadswords, those over five feet in length, weigh only about seven pounds. But if the weight distribution places the center of balance close to the hand, the sword feels lighter and is easier to manoeuvre. It still takes some arm strength to hold seven pounds, but if the weight is resting over the palm, it is manageable.
Compare that with a cavalry sabre weighing only two pounds. At first it seems light, but it may have almost no counterweight, merely a cap nut projecting just beyond the fist. Since most of the weight is forward of the hand, the forearm, wrist, and fingers must work constantly to control the weapon. Cutting with the sword—and especially stopping it once it is moving—places still more strain on the arm. In a short time, the sabre may feel heavier than the much larger broadsword.
Whatever its weight, the inside of a removable pommel is usually threaded to match the tang. For a stage-combat sword, the threaded portion should be made of steel. Threads cut into brass will strip much sooner, and aluminum threads are even less durable.
Pommels can loosen with use. A lock washer can help hold the pommel in place, as can a small amount of thread-locking compound. Once thread-locking compound has hardened, however, the pommel becomes more difficult to adjust or remove.
Some pommels are drilled completely through and held in place by a cap nut. Cap nuts generally loosen less frequently than pommels threaded directly onto the tang, although their threads can still be damaged by overtightening. They are often preferable for heavier broadswords.
When a heavy pommel is used, the place where it meets the handle places considerable lateral stress upon the tang. Extending the tang completely through the pommel and securing it with a cap nut gives the pommel support at both ends rather than concentrating all of the strain at its base.
Lastly, some decorative swords have completely hollow pommels intended primarily for appearance. These may collapse when tightened repeatedly and should not be relied upon for a fight-worthy sword.
The Handle
This is the part you hold. It is sometimes called the grip, but technically the grip refers only to the leather or wire wrapping found on some handles. So … every sword has a handle, but not all handles have grips.
The handle is hollow so that the tang can run through it. It may be made from almost any material, although wood, plastic, and metal are the most common. Never drill sideways through the handle and into the flat of the tang in an attempt to hold a fight-quality sword together. Many a good blade has been ruined that way. Some historical swords, particularly Japanese swords and certain military sabres, use pins or rivets through the handle, but that construction must be designed into the weapon from the beginning.
Wood was the standard handle material throughout much of history and remains common in historical replicas. It looks and feels appropriate, but it can split, compress, or rot. Moisture retained inside a deteriorating wooden handle may also cause concealed corrosion of the tang.
Some woods are better suited to handles than others. Pine is generally too soft and splits too readily along the grain. Maple, mahogany, and walnut have a more even grain and work reasonably well. Hickory, cherry, and ironwood are exceptionally durable but considerably more difficult to shape. Rattan resists rot, although it can split if its ends are not seated evenly.
Over time, pressure from a tightly seated pommel can compress a wooden handle. The problem becomes worse when the ends of the handle do not meet the guard and pommel squarely. An uneven fitting acts like a wedge, allowing the fittings to press into the wood and eventually split it.
Metal shims or washers placed at the ends of the handle can distribute that pressure across a wider area. They also help compensate for variations in the hardness of the wood and prevent split-ring lock washers from digging directly into the handle.
Shims add another joint at which the sword might loosen, and they may slightly interrupt the clean appearance of the weapon. They can also change the way vibration travels from the blade into the hilt, sometimes making the sword ring more clearly. Nevertheless, when properly used, they can substantially extend the life of a wooden handle.
Shims should not be used merely to fill a large gap between the handle and pommel. A stack of washers usually indicates that the handle is too short or that the pommel has reached the end of the available threading before tightening against the handle. The proper repair is to replace or correctly resize the handle, extend the usable threading, or alter the depth of the threaded pommel as appropriate.
Metal handles last well and do not compress, but that lack of compression can make pommel-loosening more common. A metal handle may require washers and a lock washer to maintain tension.
Plastic handles have some of the compressibility of wood without its grain, so they are less likely to split and do not retain moisture against the tang in the same way. Their principal disadvantages are appearance and their tendency to soften or distort under a combination of heat and sustained pommel pressure.
A handle may be left bare or covered with a grip of leather, wire, or a combination of the two. Leather grips occasionally need regluing and may deteriorate after repeatedly absorbing perspiration. Wire grips can last for many years, but once a strand breaks, the entire wrapping may begin to unravel.
Whenever appropriate to the production, actors should wear gloves while fighting with swords. A bare hand may be pinched by the grip or fittings, and repeated vibration can encourage the actor to loosen the hand precisely when control is most necessary.
The Guard
The guard is the metal part that protects the hand, and is sometimes wrongly called the hilt. The guard is merely whatever is between the handle and the blade, and can be as simple as a flat cross piece or as complex and ornate as the 17th century cage hilt rapiers.
With very few exceptions, guards are made of metal, usually brass or steel.
Parts of the Guard
Not every guard contains all of the following parts. Each developed to provide a particular kind of protection or control.
1. Knucklebow — The curved bar that protects the knuckles. On rapiers and smallswords, the knucklebow may be a relatively slender strand of metal. On military and sport sabres, it may be broad enough to form most of the guard.
2. Backguard — On some rapiers, additional bars support the knucklebow and sweep along the “back” of the hilt. Here, back means the side resting toward the wearer’s body when the sword is carried. When the sword is held, the backguard protects the fingers and fingernails.
3. Forward Quillon — Quillons are the crosspieces extending from either side of the guard. The forward quillon is on the leading or knuckle side of the sword. Its principal function is to prevent an opposing blade from sliding down the defender’s blade and into the hand or arm.
4. Rear Quillon — The quillon on the trailing side of the sword. On a symmetrical, double-edged sword, there may be no permanent forward or rear quillon; their designation changes with the orientation of the weapon.
5. Cup or Disc — A solid plate protecting the hand, particularly from thrusts. The largest cup guards, found on some seventeenth-century rapiers, form partial hemispheres around the fist. Smaller disc guards may barely extend beyond the hand.
6. Loop Guard — One or more curved bars protecting the outside or back of the hand from cuts. Loop guards are relatively light and strong but provide less protection against a direct thrust than a solid cup or disc.
7. Ring Guard — A loop projecting from the center of the quillons at approximately a right angle to the blade. A dagger may have one ring, while a sword may have two.
8. Forward Pas d’Âne — A small loop below the forward quillon. Passing the index finger over the quillon improves point control but exposes the finger. The pas d’âne provides some protection for that finger. These loops appeared on some late-medieval swords and became important features of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century rapier hilts.
9. Rear Pas d’Âne — The corresponding loop beneath the rear quillon. As rapier hilts became more elaborate, the two pas d’âne also provided attachment points for additional protective bars. In the later Italian fencing grip, the index and middle fingers pass through the forward and rear loops, bringing the thrusting blade more closely into line with the hand and forearm.
The Hilt
Everything that isn’t the blade. Therefore the hilt is the combination of pommel, handle, and guard. When you see a sword in a scabbard, the blade is hidden, and everything else that is visible is the hilt.
The Blade
The essential part of a sword, as opposed to the hilt. The blade is the length of steel that actually does the cutting.
The blade of a sword has two parts. The blade proper is the part that is visible. But what you can’t see is the rest of the steel which continues through the handle and then into the pommel. That part is called the tang. For most blades, the tang is much narrower than the exposed blade, and the site of the abrupt narrowing is called the shoulder. The hilt rests on the shoulder of the blade.
The blade proper is the visible cutting portion, loosely divided into three sections:
Forte (near the hilt)
Middle
Foible (near the tip)
Generally, a fighter must use the foible to attack and the forte to block. Some blades have grooves running lengthwise which are called fullers. Fullers allow the blade to be both lighter and stronger (and has nothing to do with the wound created. There is no such thing as a “blood groove” for swords or knives. That is pure folk etymology—also known as hokum.
Some of the thinner sporting blades may have a tip that has been blunted with a wider flat “nailhead”, referred to as the button, which may or may not be covered in rubber or leather for additional safety. Stage swords never use a covered button.
Note: The terms blade and sword are often used interchangeably, which causes confusion when ordering equipment. If you ask for a “blade,” you may receive only the bare length of steel—with no way to hold it.
• Ricasso – on those swords in which the index finger loops over the guard [rapiers, for example], that part of the blade the finger will touch. It is the final part of the blade before the shoulder and is always left unsharpened.
• Forte – the strongest part of the blade, considered approximately the first third of the blade beginning at the shoulder. This is the defensive part of the sword, the part on which one can absorb an incoming cut.
• The middle of the sword is simply that – the mid third of blade between the forte and foible. Ineffective for an attack and too weak for strong defense, it should rarely show signs of wear except when used by an inexperienced fighter.
• Foible – The furthest third of the blade, and generally the weakest. The blade usually becomes much thinner the closer it gets to the tip so as to reduce weight and therefore fatigue. It is also the striking portion of the sword edge, the impact point for a cut. With very thin blades, foibles are inherently weak. When striking another sword in an attempted cut, the forward momentum causes the foible to bend around the blocking blade, so naturally this is the most common fracture point for lighter blades.
• Edge – Simple, right? The part that you cut with, also called the leading edge or true edge. On two-edged straight blades, either side can be the cutting edge. On single edged swords, sabres for instance, the opposite of the leading edge is called the back edge, and is always unsharpened.
• False edge – on single edged sabre blades, the last few inches of the back edge has been filed down to a sharp edge, not with the idea of attempting a backhand cut but in order to reduce resistance in the event of a thrust. Part of but not the same as the back edge.
• Spine – The part of the length of the blade that has the greatest strength. On single edged blades, the back edge is thickened to become the spine, while on narrow double-edged blades the center has been similarly designed. On heavy broadswords that have a groove (fuller) down the center, the two ridges on either side of the groove could be considered to form a double spine.
• Fuller – How do you make a blade that is both as light as possible but still retain its strength? One way is to build in one or more groves into the length of the blade. Called fullers, the dome shape that they create makes the blade much stiffer than it would be without having the metal removed. Sometimes gruesomely referred to as a “blood groove”, there is a myth that they are added to the blade to keep the sword from getting stuck in the victim, or to make the wound impossible to close. Not true.
• Tip – the point of the blade. If the sword is meant as a practice weapon, the tip of a very thin blade will have a thickened button welded on as a safety aid. In modern sport fencing, this steel button is covered with a rubber button for additional safety. The rubber button is always removed for stage combat, for it gives the actors a false sense of safety. [I have noticed that actors trained with full mask and rubber tipped swords tend to develop poor and unsafe technique, putting their partners in danger.]
The Sheath/Scabbard
A sheath or scabbard serves two purposes:
To cover the blade, protecting it from moisture and preventing accidental injury.
To allow the sword to be worn.
A sheath is made of soft material (leather, cloth, etc.) and is flexible. Most knives are kept in sheaths. A scabbard is rigid—made of steel, wood, or plastic—and may be covered with a softer material. Most swords are housed in scabbards, which remain firm even when empty.
This article is part of the Textbook of Stage Combat by Richard Pallaziol, founder of Weapons of Choice and a stage combat instructor with decades of experience working with theatrical weapons.
