Curved Dueling saber advice please?

[Dogo]

Building a curved saber for dueling, figuring out where to put the curve in regards to grip.

If I put it under the grip point, it'll look cool but not impact the saber use. If I put it a bit over it'll change the style of fighting a bit... and I'm super unsure of what to do...

The one thing I'm thinking of is making sure my saber is wired with quick connects so I can swap out the curved section whenever I want to change the style of dueling...


Anyone dueled with a curved saber before? How'd it work out?

[Sevinzol]

I may be wrong, but Christopher Lee who played Count Duku was trained in fencing and asked to have a curved hilt. In high school I trained in fencing under an Olympic coach. There are 4 hilt styles in fencing: Italian, French, pistol-grip and Gardere. French and Italian are basic, straight, sword hilts, gardere is a cross between French and pistol-grip (and banned from sanctioned competitions from what I hear, which is a shame because I love that grip style).

A pistol-grip has the blade mounted at a 90 degree angle from the handle. This is similar to a katar (punch dagger) and facilitates thrusting easier. This is why it is the most common hilt in fencing and why Mr. Lee asked for one. Light sabers are more slashing weapons. If you hold a lightsaber like a pistol-grip foil, you will have no counter balance for swinging the blade. This would work with Count Duku's Light saber (since his blade has no weight) but a poly carbonate blade adds a bit of weight and changes the center of balance on lightsaber quite a lot. No one uses a curved hilt as it is intended (stabbing with a lightsaber is not flashy/theatrical enough). Instead they choke up on it, like any other hilt, so they can spin the blade fast and the curve is mearly there for asthetics (like longhorns on a Texas Cadilac)

[Onli-Won Kanomi]

I may be wrong, but Christopher Lee who played Count Duku was trained in fencing and asked to have a curved hilt...

...a poly carbonate blade adds a bit of weight and changes the center of balance on lightsaber quite a lot. No one uses a curved hilt as it is intended (stabbing with a lightsaber is not flashy/theatrical enough). Instead they choke up on it, like any other hilt, so they can spin the blade fast and the curve is mearly there for asthetics (like longhorns on a Texas Cadilac)

You are correct and Lee's fencing skills can be seen in the '70s Salkind Bros "Musketeer" films.

Many 'curved' custom saber hilts that have been built in this hobby have the 'curve' at the pommel end where it does NOTHING to change the angle of the blade relative to the axis of the hand in one-handed Form II Makashi dueling; contrast that with the 'curved' Dooku AOTC/ROTS hilt - the handle is actually straight but it has an angle not curve at the pommel end which wouldn't change the handling - why it does handle differently is there is also a real curve at the EMITTER end that significantly changes the angle of blade to hand.

As to where to hold a curved saber for dueling there is an answer but the best illustration of the point might be to consider an angled saber instead. if you had a single angle on the hilt then one could hold it ahead of the angle point - which would be no different than a regular saber in handling, much like rear-curved custom sabers, OR alternatively one could hold it behind the angle point which would change the blade to hand axis relationship, but with a large amount of the weight up front thus unbalanced 'front heavy' especially with polycarbonate blades which our saber replicas have to have unlike weightless lightsaber blades in SW 'canon', OR alternatively with some of the fingers ahead and some behind the angle point.

In that latter case handling balance would change depending on how many fingers were ahead and how many behind the angle point unless the angle point were directly in the middle - two fingers ahead, and two fingers behind. In THAT situation it becomes possible for a Makashi duelist to change their blade axis orientation simply by relaxing their last two fingers while tightening their first two fingers, or vice versa - the blade moves through a significant art WITHOUT breaking ones wrist or any major hand movement. Or a greater arc if one does [think of casting a fishing line].

The thing is that this is easy to do with a ANGLED saber because there is a SINGLE obvious angle point; with a continuous-curve to the hilt there is not always such an obvious MIDPOINT for consistently placing evenly between ones first two and last two fingers especially in a defensive speed-draw where one is looking at the attacker not their weapon - the risk of 'fumbling' the draw and ending up with three fingers ahead of the midpoint-of-curve and one behind, or vice versa, is the problem with a simple 'smooth' curve even IF the hilt is WEIGHT-balanced with equal weight ahead and behind the midpoint-of-curve [which all 'curved' sabers should be but aren't always in this hobby].

The solution requires TACTILE cues [grooves, O-rings, checkering etc] to help 'guide' ones fingers properly to the midpoint of the curve but many 'curved sabers' we see in this hobby do not accommodate that need because afterall most sabers in this hobby are meant to 'look good' since they don't need to actually function efficiently as an actual weapon would.

When designing a curved saber one should consider the need for the blade orientation at the EMITTER end to be at a different angle relative to the axis of the hand than it would be on a straight saber, the need to distribute weight evenly ahead and behind the midpoint WITH BLADE INCLUDED and also the need for tangible tactile cues to 'instinctively' guide the hand so that there will 'automatically' be two fingers ahead and two fingers behind the midpoint of the curve in a speed draw.

Do that and it becomes DYNAMIC to handle a curved saber, easily 'flicking' the blade with finger tension in ways that are difficult for an opponent to see and counter, because one can use less visible fine-motor-skill small-muscle finger movements instead of more visible gross-motor-skill hand/arm movements to change one's blade orientation - SURPRISE! [even more surprise when combined - an opponent sees the arm moving from the shoulder in one arc, the forearm moving in another arc from the elbow, maybe the hand moving in another arc from the wrist - this is all usual BUT THEN the blade 'flicks' in another arc entirely because of nearly visually untrackable finger tension...whaaaaaaaat? ]

[Dogo]

Thanks for the advice, that's a lot more than I hoped to get.

I wanted to build this as a heavy dueling saber, but that's super impractical with the weight of a dueling blade coming off a curve after the grip. But I also wanted to try using it that way with a lighter blade, and as a member of a theatrical combat club that uses sabers it would be really cool to do that to show off another style in a fight routine.

So what I think I'll do is what I mentioned earlier, design the hilt with a quick-connect running through it so I can switch the pommel and emitter whenever I want to switch styles.

Thanks guys.

[WookieeGunner]

The other common problem you see with curved sabers is the activation button is put in such a way that you can't grip the saber behind the curve and still have access to it.

[Onli-Won Kanomi]

A curved saber can do just fine with a thinwall [in TCSS term "show"] blade; it is faster and more responsive than heavy [in TCSS term "battle"] blades and still plenty strong enough for full-on dueling [some martial arts Masters like Caine use them exclusively in ALL sabers AFAIK and Caine does some pretty vigourous dueling] and Makashi is more about making contact [touch?] by finesse than brute-force battering down an opponents defence anyway. Consider that due to the inherent lethality of a superhot plasma blade even a 'light' touch with a lightsaber could cut a body in half instantly so just about 100% deadly then a show blade contact should be scored just as highly as a battle blade contact imo. The only real-world practical disadvantage of using a show blade is if the opponent is using a heavy one then of course the thinner wall blade would break first in a 'gorilla' duel but its pretty rare to break blades unless one is really 'going crazy' which isn't what a precision form like Makashi uses curved sabers for anyway.

[Dogo]

Consider that due to the inherent lethality of a superhot plasma blade even a 'light' touch with a lightsaber could cut a body in half instantly so just about 100% deadly then a show blade contact should be scored just as highly as a battle blade contact imo.

Actually, that's not totally true. Lightsabers aren't shown to be as immediately lethal as a lot of people say. For instance, Dooku didn't manage to remove Obi-Wan's limbs with those two cuts in Ep. II, even though he clearly has no qualms with doing so. Qui-Gon isn't immediately able to cut through the blast doors, and the moves in the original Trilogy show a lot of force being put into the moves, just to cut through a limb or a of piece of a safety rail.

I think the idea behind that is that when the plasma of the saber hits a target it creates superheated gases that push back against the plasma...

[Onli-Won Kanomi]

You make fair points. But Dooku while Fallen to the Dark Side was trained many decades longer as a Jedi, who try to avoid doing unnecessary harm when possible so to say he didn't 'dis-arm'/limb Obi isn't quite the same as saying he couldn't have; maybe he was 'holding back' because, as Ki Adi Mundi said, he was still somewhat an "idealist" at that early point in the CW...or maybe it was unconsciously still-Jedi 'instinct' that restrained him. And you answer your own point about QGJ and the BLAST doors; not being able to instantly breach a solid metal door at least a foot thick designed specifically to resist catastrophic forces doesn't equate with sabers not being able to insta-kill a soft humanoid target with the general consistency of gelatin with a few calcium stick inside. The ability of lightsabers to instantly bisect metal battledroids with the slightest touch of a blade also seen in the same movie suggests that a saber would be spectacularly lethal against unarmoured flesh, bone and cloth - IF the user wanted it to be. Jedi of course largely tried NOT to be as lethal as they could be, but that was more about their restraint morally than any constraint technically on their signature weapon.

The original Trilogy is somewhat inconsistent about sabers but lets look at the 3 characters who use them. In ANH Obi dis-arms a space pirate easily and there is little doubt among the armed Cantina customers not to mess with him because they all know his saber is inherently the deadliest weapon in the room, as is the man wielding it, even after 20 years of the Jedi passing into 'legend' in the Galaxy [Han doubting the existence of the Force and Owens dismissing of old Ben as a crazy wizard] but then we see him on the death star and his saber is clearly MALFUNCTIONING. so he can't use his normally preferred defensive-oriented Form II Soresu which he was THE master of - he HAS to 'put a lot of force' [STRENGTH] into it to compensate for his saber blade being erratically failing. Vader and Luke on the other hand 'put a lot of force' [strength] into it because they were trained in a Lightsaber Combat Combat Form that emphasized strength; both originally Form V Djem-So users. So that they used a lot of heavy blows is unsurprising and doesn't mean that sabers are less than instantly lethal lethal only that Djem So 'peace through superior firepower' philosophy encourages beating down an opponents defence by brute strength rather than finessing around it like Makashi. In ROTJ we see Lukes saber fail to cut through railings etc but that is the Emperors throne room afterall so if he wanted to build the whole room out of phrik alloy [perhaps as barriers to duck behind if Vader betrayed him and attacked with his saber?] he could certainly afford it. I'll admit the similarly saber resistant surfaces on Bespin in ESB are unexplainable and illogical...I assume that was just early in the franchise lack of understanding yet of what sabers were and therefore were and werent capable of; at that point it may still have been though that they were "laser swords" rather than plasma arc wave blades they were later established to be.

While a superhot plasma blade would indeed create superheated gasses from the matter it vapourizes there isn't a rocket bell or anything to direct that into a 'push back' against the blade - afterall an acetylene torch doesn't stop cutting because the material it vapourizes as it cuts pushes back against the torch flame - what hot gas is produced on target disperses it isn't constrained directionally into a counter-pressure. so there should be little or no perceptible gas pressure pushback against a saber blade from the material it engages.