How practical can an old-school over-the-top ultra-heavy fantasy longsword be! Enter the Harvester, a new Conan-ish sword designed by my bro Nate Sil that weighs 7 pounds, with a blade hand-forged, and all the fittings (including the lady's hands holding a rose on the ricasso and the unique wine cup symbol at the termination of the fuller) hand-sculpted, by Purna Darnal. In this full review we will explore its theme, the build quality, fit and finish and above all the handling and cutting/thrusting performance and see whether it attests to the theory that good mass distribution is the most important factor of maneuverability of a sword, instead of the sheer mass.
The pommel is of a "scent-stopper" type but depicting a skull with copper inlaid into the frontal bone. It is surprisingly comfortable to hold onto, despite all the carved eye-socket and the teeth and the geometry of the jawbone. The crossguard has a sculpted skull at the termination of each quillon, with copper inlaid glowing eyes. On the eight-faceted quillon, there's copper inlay depicting a heart on a string over the blued steel. The center of the crossguard, the bolster below it and the central riser on the grip all have intricate carvings portraying a number of skulls trapped within rose vines--again with copper glowing eyes, of course.
A 12.6mm thick (you did NOT read that wrong) ricasso forms the base of the blade, which has hand-sculpted lady's hands holding a rose, while blood dripping down from a wine cup through the narrow central fuller! Blood groove, indeed! The base of the blade is rather broad at 61.8mm, it has a gentle narrowing waist, and flares up again near the midpoint of the blade, reaching 62mm, which is much wider than 99% of the swords ever made in this portion of the blade. It then gently tapers down to the somewhat acute point, like many Oakeshott type XVIIIc blades, although not terminating to a needle point.
The edge bevel has a LOT of muscle behind the edge with a strong convex geometry. The edge is well apexed.
So the elephant in the room is how much it weighs. A whopping 3177 grams, which translates to 7 pounds even. How weighty a sword is really ties to your expectation of it relevant to the size. 7 lbs for a 6-foot-long Renaissance zweihander might feel relatively light given its impressive size. The size of this sword can be severely underestimated if you look at its length solely. 35.6" blade, and 47.2" overall. It's so gratuitously and crushingly heavy if you see it that way. But if you take the width, the colossal thickness into consideration (it does feature a lot of distal taper, at midpoint it has lost half of its thickness at 6.3mm, and near the tip it's down to 4mm), you probably wouldn't be caught off-guard by its monumental weightiness.
It is almost exactly twice the weight of a medieval sword of the same reach, and many of Brother Nate Sil's previous longsword designs are in the ballpark of 3-4 lbs. This is squarely in the Conan and Warhammer territory.
Soundtrack used:
Conan Exiles Main Theme - Knut Avenstroup Haugen
The Killing Sands Conan Exiles OST
Anvil of Crom (Piano Version) - KM Ramirez
Anvil of Crom SYNTHWAVE COVER - Mega Reacts
The designer The Levin Lance/Brother Nathaniel:
brothernathaniel666 (at) gmail (dot) com
/ natesil
Master smith Purna Darnal (Great Gurkha Khukuri shop owner):
/ purnadarnal2015
www.greatgurkh...
20 окт 2024
