It is indeed a terrible danger, however the thread length is long and it would take quite a while to unscrew it to end a man rightly.

That's one theory. I think Matt Easton has spoken about it in a video.

It's much like the cinquedea. That design has a lot of space for decoration, but the broad blade isn't designed for that specific purpose

IPostSwords I believe Lindybeige spoke about that type of dagger. I think his point was that the dagger was largely useless as a weapon and more of a decorative piece

I'd argue that the design makes sense given the context - the Cinquedea is a renaissance civilian weapon. In a time where wearing a sword was becoming less common, and where civilians wore no armor, a Cinquedea has the maximum cutting capacity and causes large, wide wounds whilst also being able to be highly decorated.

IPostSwords Without ever being able to hold one or try it out,I'm not in a great position to make comments. However, there does seem to be some variance to these weapons with some very definitely looking like daggers and others definitely more like a short sword. For cuts,it seems very hilt heavy to cut very effectively. The thrusting potential though, seems rather high.

When it comes to thrusting, I think of this like the very wide bladed spears we see in africa. They werent wearing chainmail, so they didn't need to pierce armor. So they made the blade very wide so the wound would cause maximum bleedout. Good for hunting, for example. The same can be applied to renaissance gentlefolk in their silk clothing.

It appears my previous reply was too long and youtube chose not to publish it. Let me try again in segments: I have spoken at length with James Elmslie, a research on falchions. In a moment, I will discuss what he has to say about the thorpe. First I must address the stats:The were posted to MyArmoury in order to review the windlass replica. The man who made that post later commented this: "Actually I just heard back from Alan, after i requested confirmation of the thickness measurements....and it turns out it starts out about 5 mm by the cross and tapers to about 2.25 mm near the tip.....so 2.5 mm is about the minimum thickness...not the maximum" My next comment ill be part of a thread of about 4 or 5 comments quoting James Elmslie.

Simply put, there is a consistent inverse relationship between width of blade, and thickness. It applies to almost all swords, from Type X's, to falchions in the various groups: the wider the blade in profile, the thinner it is in cross-section. Material volume remains relatively similar, its simply where the material is placed by the maker. There's outliers, of course, but its a good general rule. I've been fortunate enough to study a good percentage of the single-edged arms out there, and data on many more, and found this to be pretty consistent. Overall weight of falchions is rarely much different to that of the average contemporary two-edged sword, and if anything the extant examples indicate an average mass which is lower than that of many two-edged swords of equivalent dimensions is commonplace. Their mass distribution does tend to be slightly more forward-balanced, but this is a difference of perhaps 20-30mm or so on average - I have handled plenty of two-edged swords with similar handling characteristics - and notably those that have similar balance points tend to be cut-oriented weapons - so its certainly not like falchions are balanced unusually.

Falchions excelled in cutting, that much is not really debated. As such, I have previously noted that they are designed with an emphasis on performance that confers advantages to the cutting of textiles and flesh, rather than performance in the thrust - though plenty of the type 3 and type 5 group examples are more than capable of delivering lethal thrusts, its only the really extreme ones like the type 1a-c that really abandon the thrust entirely, and it is significant that they are the widest types of all. They excel in that area simply through their design philosophy - emphasising the efficiency of the cut entirely over the thrust. Of course such details as subtle curvatures contribute by imparting push or draw-cutting into the mix, we cannot consider one element of the cut without the other - and even in the thrust the cutting performance of the blade is of some concern in a broad blade making an incision. In all those elements, the falchions do hold some advantages over conventional straight swords for the cutting against heavier, protective textile. The point of my comments about the ability to make effective blows against textile are, in many ways, not an observation of performance, but an observation of the likely purpose of the weapon first put forward by Peter Johnsson; The falchion arises during the flowering of chivalry in the 13th century, and grows in popularity during the 14th century. If we look at the ideals of the age, it is not to kill those of knightly rank, they are instead ransomed from captivity. It could well be the case that the falchion is advantageous against the lightly-armoured: the lower classes - those who are not well-armoured, who lack wealth and power. Against the knightly classes, its of limited use. Its a weapon for a culture where the loss of a knight on one side or the other is a tragedy, yet the deaths of 5,000 lower-class rank and file barely warrants a footnote. It is tempting to look on the falchion, therefore, not as many people have wrongly claimed, as an anti-armour weapon, but as an anti lower-class weapon. As a weapon to confer an advantage against a particular type of target, the falchion may well be considered a discriminate weapon, perhaps.

Now, to look more at cutting dynamics in general. there's a recurring fact in practical use which has been known for centuries, if not millennia: a heavy blade does not "chop" significantly better than a lighter blade, and in fact has a number of disadvantages. Falcata, Falchions, sabres. All have shown that light and fast is better than slow and heavy. With the decline of swords as genuine weapons, this has rather been forgotten - we now fetishise the absurdly oversized and heavy weapons as the best, in entertainment and pop culture. its not exclusive to swords, just look at every hollywood film exec's love of "desert eagle" pistols in 80's action films... There's a fairly simple reason for that - physics: firstly, the mass of extra thick, heavy objects doesnt work in the user's favour. lighter weapons can be moved faster - a heavy blow is of no use if its intended target has already hit you in the face. More importantly, a heavy weapon slows the user's ability to respond to threats by displacing and parrying - so the weapon becomes a liability which opens up the user to greater threat. Further, in practical use the faster motion confers more kinetic energy than a slower and heavier strike. More energy = more force.

So, using a lightweight blade it is always going to be easier to move, to attack and defend, than with the heavy one. As such, the lighter the object, the better it will perform in the reality of a battlefield, where its role is not simply that of hitting hard, but also hitting first, and being able to stop an attack to make a counter, or similar actions. None of those are considerations when you're simply chopping a tree with an axe, or brush with a machete - trees aren't trying to kill you. the second part of that is that there are physics behind the cut itself - a chopping, or cleaving cut is the process of cutting by pressure alone, displacing the material from either side of the blade. that pressure is heavily determined by one of two elements: momentum and kinetic energy in the blade, and cross-sectional thickness. we've already touched on momentum and energy and why that's advantageous to be lighter. A thicker blade has to displace material more than a thinner one, pushing it aside to go deeper. now, that's not much of a problem with a heavy meat cleaver, with the object being cut being braced against a solid chopping board, but unsupported, with textile in the way, all those previous issues make it a liability. In contrast a lighter blade moving fast, will do a better job of going through an unsupported medium, without having to push aside so much material, allowing it to cut deeply. - but it does so at expense of edge durability, compared to a thicker, heavier item like a machete. However, again, in the equation of compromises, that fragility of edge, just like on two-edged XII's or XIII's with slender distal tapers is considered an acceptable compromise on a weapon, whereas it is not ideal for a work tool, where a more durable edge is needed for the cutting of harder, more damaging material.