Update: as of late 2023, the 1st gen of the Balaur Arms swords made by OTC have been rebranded as Honshu Historic(al) Forge swords, sold by United Cutlery. The much improved 3rd gen sold by Kult of Athena is now made by LK Chen.
Balaur Arms is a fairly young player in the historical arms reproduction scene. Their models are designed by the people at Kult of Athena--a major historical weaponry distributor in North America, including its founder and ex-owner Ryan Whittlinger. The 15th century Italian Longsword is one of the first models released by the brand, in an attempt to incorporate unique hilt designs from actual surviving examples, along with good blade distal tapering to entry-level reproduction swords.
In that sense, this model achieved a lot, yet due to the price range, the end result is still in a relatively rough shape, and the Oakeshott type XVIIIb with hollow ground geometry not only has quite a bit of asymmetry (perhaps noticeably more so than swords by other players in this price range like Hanwei, Windlass and Ronin), but also suffers from rather over-the-top floppiness. The blade flexes left and right, back and forth even when one dry-handles the sword, which frequently throws the edge alignment off and destabilizes cuts other than the most static ones without complex maneuver and footwork.
The cause is probably its complex distal tapering (a valiant attempt nevertheless), which starts out at 5.6mm (too thin for a late medieval cut-and-thrust longsword with hollow ground diamond cross section) and then tapers down drastically to 4.4mm at 6" from the base and stays on that thickness until the point of percussion at 24" from the base. It tapers down to 3mm at 27" from the base and then back to 4mm to reinforced the tip. While the portion just below the tip isn't too flexible for stiff thrusting, the thinness of the majority of the blade results in the whipiness, which coupled with the very rough edge geometry (Kult of Athena's sharpening service left a 40 degree edge angle, therefore the 2 surfaces forming the apex are almost perpendicular to each other), makes this a below-average sword for cutting.
It's noteworthy that after I spent 2 hours reprofiling the edges to a proper convex geometry with apple seeding, it can still cut well enough, especially with static cuts, even against deflective hard targets.
The hilt, which is lifted wholesale from the Brescia Spadona is mostly well done in appearance, but it's filled with epoxy visibly everywhere. We see a large aperture on the crossguard to accommodate a hollow ground blade with diamond cross section, yet the opening is about 9mm in thickness and 52mm wide (indicating by design this was supposed to be a excellent blade with proper rigidity), meaning the maker could not fulfill KoA's design and had to fill the gaps with epoxy. Over time the hilt became very creakily even though no component has become loose. Very alarming!
The entire word weighs just over 3 lbs (1369g) with a 34.6" blade, and a lot of weight is from the pommel and crossguard. This coupled with the substantial profile taper and distal taper makes the handling of the sword very easy--almost unsettling so, and when the blade starts to flex on its own, and the main hand receives a lot of vibration--a sign of not-so-great blade harmonics and improper vibration nodes.
Overall even though the blade can be offered in a sharpened state, I would not recommend it. It's best left blunt as a handsome training tool. I used it a lot for the motion capture of longsword animations in the video game I'm developing--Fortune Favours the Bold ([ Ссылка ]), Facebook Page ([ Ссылка ])
The sword reviewed is no longer available for ordering on Kult of Athena as of December 2021, as KoA has ended their previous collaboration with the contractor OTC. However you may still find this sword on the second-hand market. For its price it's not a bad offering, and overall the design is in the right direction but needs lots of modifications, or a more competent maker. Kult of Athena has announced that they will collaborate with Windlass for future models of Balaur Arms. There's some indication that a prominent voice in the Historical European Martial Arts community has been attached to the project. If it is indeed true, this person as an authority in this field can definitely provide more than competent consultation to the brand and push the future maker of to better implement designs that incorporate measurements from actual museum examples, and scientific sword harmonics.
Background music:
Battle Theme // FFVII (1950s Jazz Remix) by LjB0
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J-E-N-O-V-A (Final Fantasy VII) Latin Jazz Cover - The Consouls by The Consouls
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Balaur Arms 15th Century Italian Longsword review referenced:
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