Slashdot Mirror
Terry Pratchett's Self-Made Meteorite Sword
jamie writes "Fantasy author Sir Terry Pratchett says he was so excited after being knighted by the Queen that he decided to make his own sword to equip himself for his new status... the author dug up 81kg of ore and smelted it in the grounds of his house, using a makeshift kiln built from clay and hay and fueled with damp sheep manure."
The article on which this news story seems to be based, complete with picture of Sir pTerry and his sword is at
http://www.paulkidby.com/news/apr2010.html
For the benefit of the rest of the world, Wiltshire is East of Redmond and West of Moscow...rant over.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Actually, the man himself told us during the recent Discworld convention that he did this. As for the alzheimer: he seemed remarkably strong and clear, and fortunately in much better (mental) shape than i expected him to be.
Pratchett has stored the sword in a secret location, apparently concerned about the authorities taking an interest in it.
Owning a sword isn't illegal, though carrying one in public usually is.
in much better (mental) shape than i expected him to be.
Alzheimer's is degenerative & he's only been relatively recently diagnosed; he's had Unseen Academicals and I shall wear midnight both published this year - if you can have two books published you're bound to still be in good mental shape - it's when he stops publishing that we'll know his Alzheimer's has got his mind.
If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me
Coal is a convenience. Long before coal was widely available, they used to use wood, charcoal, and peat. In a pinch you could use anything that will burn. The trick is to add oxygen (air) with a bellows, without which it's hard to melt iron even with anthracite coal.
With a sword you need to be able to chop
Wrong
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Owning a sword isn't illegal, though carrying one in public usually is.
In Spain, carrying a sword in public is legal if it's not concealed. But you've got to have a reason to be carrying it, like "I just bought it and I'm taking it home", "I'm going to my bastard sword class" or "I'm going to the woods to take pictures of my sword collection".
You can also carry a non concealed hunting knife of any size or form, including two bladed.
What you can't carry is any pocket/concealed weapon over 11cm, two bladed or with an automatic aperture system based on internally stored force (mass, for gravity or inertial automatics is ok).
Alzheimer's is degenerative & he's only been relatively recently diagnosed; he's had Unseen Academicals and I shall wear midnight both published this year - if you can have two books published you're bound to still be in good mental shape - it's when he stops publishing that we'll know his Alzheimer's has got his mind.
Not just that, but it seems to be mainly progressing in parts of his brain that aren't needed for producing stories. (Before watching a TV programme about TP's Alzheimers, I didn't know that it could differentially affect different areas of the brain. Just goes to show that TV can be educational after all.)
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
It looks like a gladius to me http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladius
So by your way of thinking, the rapier and foil aren't swords either.
"Lame" - Galaxar
Not familiar with the terminology, are you referring to something like a switchblade?
Yes.
It's a shame that a lot of places have banned those, because I find that they are VERY useful. I have one and it became my favorite knife to use while working in places where my hands are occupied. I can get it in my hand, disengage the safety and open it with my thumb, do the work, and then close it again easier than a typical lockback knife.
There are other kinds of folding knives that can be opened with one hand, the only difference is whether they'll stab something on the opening movement, which is not justifiable for a tool, thus the internally stored force limit that includes springs and even bullet cartidges (without the bullet).
A typical folding knife can be nice, but I hate how loose the ones with blades you can open with one hand are.
A good knive can have a perfectly firm and locked blade that you can open with one hand. They may be expensive, though.
The awesome thing about a spring loaded knife is that the spring keeps positive pressure on the blade (even after you release the lock to close it) This positive pressure, combined with a dull 'back' to the blade (not double sided) lets you do the following:
To close the knife:
1. Hold the release to unlock the blade
2. push the back of the blade against a convenient surface
3. It locks in place, re-engage the safety.
With a typical folding knife, once you release the lock on the open blade, the sharp side is free to move and, in my opinion, is slightly harder to manipulate in a safe way, especially with one hand. If you have ever had the chance to use a quality switch blade (Not double edged), they are damned useful tools.
I own several Benchmades, Spidercos, etc and I've never had a problem handling them with one hand but I think what you want is a fireman's folding knife, made to be opened with one heavy gloved hand. You may want to lock into CRKT's kind of assisted opening.
Having said that, I'd use a fixed blade if at all possible.
Some rapiers were *very* stylized (the ridiculous blade lengths that became popular among courtiers, for example). But "deep bellied" or "broad bladed tip" designs are not the only form for effectual swords and chopping is not very efficient for defeating armor, thrusting is. And for thrusting a triangular blade is desired.
One place to start educating yourself about swords and the various types is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakeshott_typology
You will notice that Type X "taper toward the tip" rather than becoming broader. Or the Type XII which is improved for thrusting. Or the Type XIII which, while not especially adapted for thrusting, fails to have the "broad toward the tip" design you aver is the only functional sword type. Note when and how common this sword type was.
In fact, you won't find much in the way of sword blade types meeting those limited criteria.
Small-enough wood chippings and a decent pair of bellows can make a brilliant Iron-Age blast furnace. Indeed, this is how early metalwork and baked ceramic work was done. It is highly plausible that Sir Pratchett has refined the basic approach or obtained information from the excellent living history and archaeological communities that showed how to make such refinements. I am much impressed. Now, whether the iron was truly meteoric - that's a tougher question. Mind you, one could argue that it hardly matters. A home-made sword is a home-made sword. That is no mean feat in itself and would take a lot out of a healthy blacksmith in the olden days, if done right. (Even for Viking-era swords, when the skill was better-understood, there is a major variation between them and some have suggested that particularly good sword-makers would use brand-names.)
My guess on the manure is that it follows the same logic as the wood chippings - the greater the surface area of the burning material, the faster you can burn it and therefore the hotter the immediate temperature. The total quantity of heat produced doesn't change, but you squish the timeframe down to make the heat produced per unit time much greater. You could potentially use almost anything flammable as fuel with this approach, provided the granularity is fine enough, the oxygen flow is sufficient, and you can replace the used fuel fast enough. (NB: Whilst some Slashdot posts are indeed flammable, they are not useful as fuel.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
His website says ...
"made from iron ore he collected on Salisbury Plain (with the addition of a little bit of ‘thunderbolt iron’ from the Sikhote Alin meteorite to give it that special extra-terrestrial ‘something’),"
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
You do not know what you're talking about. A good sword balances an inch or so forward of the quillons. What you're referring to were early swords, based on the designs of Bronze Age swords, which had thickened blades to sustain damage, not for hacking needs. Furthermore, the favored tactic of Romans was to block upwards with the shield and jab into the enemies unprotected midsection. Even before Rome fell, those designs had disappeared.
How do you want the balance to be? For a well-balanced sword, the center of gravity is near the cross guard. It has to be, if you want to swing it around easily. And swords are just not intended for chopping through armour. When people started wearing more and more armour, knights started using axes, maces and warhammers, and foot soldiers started using halberds and various other polearms.
Personally I don't see what's wrong with the balance of Sir Terry's sword (as if you could tell what the balance is like just from looking at it). It's certainly a bit of an odd design, and probably not the most effective sword ever, but it definitely counts as sword. It even looks properly double edged (which is what used to distinguish swords from long knives and sabres in medieval Europe, though not in other parts of the world).
Yeah, in Seattle, if you're a homeless woodcarving man of the First Nations, hard of hearing, and you have a PERFECTLY LEGAL folding knife if your hand, some cop will shoot you to death within 40 SECONDS of stopping his car. Nevermind you weren't using the knife for anything other than carving and there were no citizens who were being threatened. You are sitting on the curb, some jackbooted thug with a badge pulls up, and you are dead and talking with your ancestors.
Knife Crime.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Actually, it varies.
Swords don't just "randomly look different ways to look cool"
The cross section and the shape of the blade reflect the intended usage.
Some swords are piercing, some are slashing, some are stabbing, some are chopping.
It depends on your size, what kind of armor you are going to be wearing (plate guy with a rapier won't be very effective) and the type of armor your opponent will be wearing, and your likely fighting environment (are you surrounded by trees and bushes or out in the grass or in tight streets? Look... I'm on a wall!
The cross section varies from a wedge + rectangle backing, to a football, to a rounded wedge, etc.
Terry's sword (wonder what he will name it?), looks like a foot soldier's sword and looks like a stabbing weapon tho I'm sure it has a cutting edge, it lacks weight along the entire back and/or near the tip to give the blade inertia to chop through something. It's not long enough to use from horseback effectively.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Careful reading of his more recent works, not just the two you mentioned but going back 5-10 years, you do notice some things in his works degrading; not enough to hurt the overall quality of the book, but enough that you can tell something is happening. The largest change is a reduction in vocabulary, but there is also the fact that tend to be more straightforward, with less metaphors and colorful language.
Like I said, the ideas are all still sound, the humor is fun and entertaining, there are no gaping plot holes left unfilled, but I suspect that you could make a pretty interesting study on the effects of Alzheimer's on language by studying his books. And you'd certainly have a good sample of his writing (what is he up to now, 30 books? 40?
38 Discworld Novels alone, multiple Discworld spin-offs (I can recommend the three "Science of Discworld" books as fun pop-sci books, they're hard science mixed with a story about the Wizards "roundworld" project in alternate chapters, they're not like the "Science of star-trek" type books), he's done quite a bit of non-Discworld stuff as well IMO the best being Good Omens with Neil Gaiman.
Has his work gone down hill? I'm not so sure, his style has defiantly changed, but I think a lot of it was him maturing as a writer. Both Thud! and Night Watch are far better pieces of writing than The colour of magic ever will be. having said that my favourite is actually one of the older books - Guards! Guards!
If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me
Most weapons are specialised for a certain way of fighting, or as a response to the fighting styles of others. Plate armour can be seen largely as a response to the greatswords used by the Celts, Picts and Saxons, which could cut right through a man from shoulder to opposite hip. When Knights began wearing plate, people didn't bother trying to hit them with swords; you used a crossbow to punch straight through or used a hooked polearm to get them on the ground and bash their head in with a hammer.
You could go on for hours about the tactics for use of different weapons in different situations, but all weapons still fit one or more of 5 descriptions; sharp things, pointy things, heavy things, fast things, or things that go boom.