(TFT) How often did ancient swords break.

[Rick Smith <rsmith@lightspeed.ca>]

Hi Everyone,
	Erol was saying that the chance of swords breaking 
was so far below 1/216 (~0.45% / blow) that having weapons
break on an 18 was grotesquely unrealistic.  In the literature
on swords I have read, people are always talking about 
this technique causes more breakage, this alloy breaks less,
this culture was at a disadvantage because their weapons 
broke more, etc.

	However, I don't recall ever reading that with
this blade, you could expect it to break once every X
blows.  

	Perhaps the huge interest in broken weapons 
derives from those darn archeologist's who find litter,
(broken swords presumably were more likely to be left
lying around after a battle than working weapons) spend
a lot of time thinking about and analyzing the garbage.

	I searched on google for historical broken 
swords and found hundreds of entries all of which said
this technique, alloy, culture broke less, bla bla, but
no hard numbers.  I did read that 4 historical Damascus
blades were tested to destruction and were found to be
quite brittle as the metallurgists suspected.  The site
said that some guy _DONATED_ these four blades to be 
used this way, WOW.

	Given that I have read historians saying that
such a culture had a significant tactical advantage 
because the quality of their weapons, it seems hard to
believe that the difference between (say) one break in
a thousand blows, compared to one break in 2000 blows
would be noticeable.

	Of course it would not be the first time that
a respected historian was cut down by one of King
Aurthur's Knights...  oops, wrong movie.

	Of course it would not be the first time that
a respected historian was totally off.

	I did read that some fine quality Roman short
swords were guaranteed against breakage for one year.
But short swords using the point have considerably 
less impact than a broadsword chopping down on some
one.  (And how many hours does a typical Roman use his
sword each year.)


	This is a long lead in to asking the list, is
there any hard data on how long various swords lasted.
Please list alloys, techniques cultures if you know
them.  The ideal information would be the % chance of 
breaking per blow, or even the expected # of blows 
before 50% of the swords would smash.

	Thanks, Rick
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