Sword-like object

Sword-like object (SLO) is a term originally coined by the Historical Armed Combat Association, and used by sword enthusiasts to mockingly describe cheap, non-functional, or inaccurate sword replicas, typically built as purely decorative pieces. In short, this term came about as people attempted to refine the definition of the word "sword" into meaning a useful weapon of war. The term is one of subjective stance and not objectively definable; many historical swords, especially those of the lower classes, were of inferior quality and did break or deform.

It is also used to refer to weapons that resemble swords in some aspects of form and/or function, but are clearly not.

Sword replicas

Many cheap modern sword replicas are built for decorative purposes, and are either too brittle or too fragile for any practical use. Simply swinging around these "wallhangers" can cause some of these to break, usually at the welded-on tang (the blade and tang are a single piece of metal in most real swords). In some the broken tang may result in an uncontrollable flying blade, much to the dismay of the owner and any bystanders. The construction shortcuts are intentional so as to save money, while low grade stainless steel is the usual material for substandard knives.

The danger of stainless steel

Another shortfall of most SLO is that they are made of industrial stainless steel, which cannot take very much stress compared to carbon steels. When a stainless steel blade with even a small flaw in the steel is struck, it has a tendency to break or even worse, to shatter. The resulting shards are razor sharp and tend to fly in all directions, including towards the eyes, often resulting in injury and sometimes blindness. One graphic example of this is an infamous video circulating the internet in which a salesman bangs a "practice katana" on a table, supposedly to demonstrate its durability. On the third hit the blade breaks in two and the loose piece bounces up and stabs him.

The ten-pound sword

At the other end of the scale, sword replicas touted as "battle ready" are often unrealistically robust and heavy, so that while they will not break even under more stress than a historical sword could have endured, they are too heavy and unwieldy for effective use, and would qualify as a mace or club rather than a sword. Historical swords made for battlefield use varied between two and eight pounds, even for the largest two handed weapons. However, many peoples' expections have been skewed by the manuals of RPGs, which tend to list ten and twenty pound blades as normal.

Non-derogatory uses

In a broader, analogical sense, the term "sword" is also used for weapons and instruments that resemble swords in shape and/or function, but are not as effective in combat. They may also utilize different construction, such as lacking the sharp blade and/or tip which could deliver wounding blows. These are also considered sword-like objects, but the term is not considered insulting since they are designed for these other purposes.

Practice weapons

In both Europe and Asia, wooden "swords" were created to practice fencing without the physical danger of a real sword. These were known as wasters in Europe and bokken in Japan. Special sparring weapons, such as the bamboo shinai and the steel federschwerter, were also devised and used.

Certain martial arts styles, such as kendo, use shinai as their primary weapons, both in training and in competition. Fencing uses steel weapons of extremely low carbon or nickel based maraging steel in its competition, but these are unsharpened and of the wrong metalurgy to truly call "swords".

Punishment device

The same shinai is also used in Japan as a spanking implement, more common in prized private extracurricular schools (illustrated in these 1975 and 1977 articles [1] & [2]) than the US school paddling; in fact hundreds of cases of illegal corporal punishment were reported from public schools as well.
Similarly paddle-like devices for physical punishment are used elsewhere in Asia, in western terms for paddling or caning, depending whether the implement is flat or round. For example, the Chinese movie Farewell to my concubine (1993 - see IMDb [3]) shows how a flat, not even very hard type of paddle, called the master's sword, is used intensively to discipline young opera trainees both on the (usually bared) buttocks and on the hand (even drawing blood).

Stick fighting

Many martial arts disciplines, including escrima, jojutsu, and la canne, focus on the use of sticks as blunt weapons. In many cases, these styles were based on actual schools of fencing, and their techniques strongly resemble those of true sword fighting.

Sources and references

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