Yay, now please close this thread. It has gone on way too long.

maybe you should. I already have, I just got rid of two swords. one manufactored, one hand crafted. don't base information about any replica you've held and say, jeez this isn't heavy. thats because it isn't a sword that would have been available in the medival ages. they used iron. unless your talking about short swords, which would be about 4-5 then yeah, but long swords were typically 10-14lbs. they did not have aluminum and modern steel working. they had forge hammared sharp rods of iron on a stick, to put it bluntly, and they don't compare to the typical sword available to the common sword collecter. oh by the way, the hand crafted sword I had, was made for my by my grandpa on my 15th birthday. (it wasn't free but I got a killer discount) hold a real sword made in the processes that was available in the 13 hundreds. its heavy.

I would like to remind people of the medieval period in Europe. Plate armor wasn't practical anymore, chain mail and leather were the driving force. Weapons didn't need to be heavy.

When your dealing with mediterranean weapon, they get heavy.
Chinese weapons are ridiculously light.
Japanese weapons are remarkable heavy.

Gual and Celtic weapons were heavy, because they were facing the heavily armored Romans. The Romans wield light weapons, because the were going against fur and leather.

It all depends on armor and the scarcity of material.

Wrong chainmail was early medieval times, sword and shield was common. Later plate become more common going from plate over chain to full plate suits, weapon changed to twohand sword and warhammers, even later most of the plate was dropped because you needed heavier amour to protect you from guns leaving only the cuirass, long thins swords like rapiers become common as you could hit outside the cuirass.
I'm talkng about rich people and knights here, early medival times swords was very expensive so most used axes and spears and no armor.

Doesn't change the fact some weapons are heavy others are light. At the end of the day that's all I'm saying.

so every one used the same exact weapons against each other and the only variations happened as the time periods changed? and swords were not so expensive that only rich knights had them. true they had better quality weapons and armot but that doesn't apply to the whole conversation.

Check the sources, your wrong. There many links in this thread, they counter what you claim. I don't know what swords you have or had, its does not matter. There are numerous sources to counter your claim, real swords for example.

I took 14th century german long sword fighting for a bit, so beside all the source, my personal experience counters yours.

Zaria, plate mail fell out of fashion because of technology advances like CANNONS. Plate mail was never used for hundreds of years like people seem to think.

I get the feeling this thread won't be around for much longer...

Well it's past the post limit so probably not.

sigh, why do people argue about this for over 200 posts, like the first five use examples to show they are right isn't that enough? swords and weapons in general were made to be usable, they wouldn't make a weapon that would get people killed using them

200+ posts; time to close this one