Dear Veeky Forums

It's pointy.

An axe might bash hard enough to hurt someone through mail and maybe break some rings, but it will never stab through it like a sword might.

>Much higher swing speed

There's so much wrong with what you said but that one stands out.

An axe has a lot of advantages even compared to a sword, but being fast is not one of them.

That's why people used maces and axes when fighting other people in armour, right?

Certainly.

Axe, meet face.

Any questions?

The one you got there can split firewood, cut sapplings, debranch medium-sized trees and whittle bowls.

I have also seen people make skis with one.

>That's why people used maces and axes when fighting other people in armor

Historically, they didn't. The sword, spear, bow and gun were the most common weapons in human history.

An axe that is a tool and an axe that is a weapon are not interchangeable.

An axe that is a tool will build you a house, make you a bed, a table and a chair and carve you a plate and spoon to eat borsch with, then it will cut down trees and chop them into pieces to feed your fire. If you try to fight with it you will be killed.

An axe that is a weapon will be light so you can swing it quickly and long, it will hook your enemy's shield or exposed leg. If you try to chop wood with it you will get a blunt axe stuck shallowly in a tree.

Hatchet is a great read.

You can chop trees with it
You can chop other people with it
You can chop trees in which other people are hiding
You can chop trees other people are standing under so they fall on those people
You can chop things that aren't trees
You can chop other people's things
You can chop other people's trees
With enough agility you can even chop yourslef

Or with not enough agility.

Read Hatchet

You forgot you can nail nails with it.
Hammer in pegs with it.
Climb fences with it (hook it over the top of the fence then pull yourself up).
Can throw it.
Can climb trees with multiple axes, or tall wooden fences.

That's not what the appeal of the sword was. It's more versatile, not better at getting through armor. What kind of armor do you imagine a sword stabbing through that an axe couldn't be effective against?

Early axes are mostly practical in the sense that they're tools, thick handles, heavy iron, stone or steel in the head and meant to beat on trees, timber and whatever else the owner decides needs to be chopped up.
Smaller 3/4 axes and hatchets are much the same, but can be used to whittle, carve and shave down timber to size. People literally made boats out of them and there's also quite a lot of different shaped axe/hatchet heads over the years which are meant for splitting wood, side-cutting and verging over into another important tool- the Adze which can carve channels. A few will even have a hammerhead on the back of them so you can bash in tent poles, pegs, nails, make things flat and so on.

When you get into martial axes- whole different aspect comes into play.
The design of the head itself is the most noticeable, often the cutting profile is narrower and they'll either have a very 'chisel shape' or a broader beard to the cutting face, depending on the era and evolution.
Narrower cutting faces will penetrate deeper, but run the risk of getting your axe stuck in someone, broader faces will make larger injuries at the expense of less cutting depth.

The big increase is in the swinging speed.
Small 1 handed axes are about as fast as a short sword or large dagger, but all their energy is tied up in that head and have a different balance to them compared to a slashing blade.
Larger axes used in 2 hands are also much faster than your wood axe, they're also not 'heavy' either and have their momentum and balance closer to the head.

So, when I make an axe its a case of offsetting some of the durability and mass of a work axe, with the speed, cutting face and manoeuvrability of a martial weapon.
They're also not nearly as much a 'dumb brute' weapon as many people think, strength comes into play for sure, but with a good axe you can land your blows exactly where you need them, pull down shields, pin limbs and trip people over.

(yes I am an anachronism)

People used maces and warhammers to fight people in plate. They weren't nearly as large in games these days but they definitely did use them for that. I won't argue that spears were far more common. I'm not sure what type of soldier exactly would be fitted with one, I'm not entirely sure if they even had "fitted" military standards, but maces and warhammers are good for knocking around people inside plate and they are practical enough, and theirs enough evidence, that I can only assume they weren't too rare on the battlefield.

That and polehammers of course.

I'm not him, but my money would be on armour that we're not going to cut through very easily with either, but which has gaps we could sneak in a point though. Though given the difference in energy needed to just make a small hole in a plate, opposed to cutting a large gash in it, perhaps I'm being rather generous to the axe here.

Then again, we could put a thrusting point on the axe. But the balance probably won't be ideal for such.

By the time pointy spikes and bashy bits got added to axes to open up plate armour it was pretty much turning into pole arms.
That's the evolution of weapons though, nothing gets added unless its really need to suit a niche in the combat environment.

>People used maces and warhammers to fight people in plate.

Biggest users of maces, warhammers and axes weren't even using plate armour though.

How do you "fight" fight with an axe, though? I was thinking about it the other day and I wondered if axes with longer cutting faces were used to draw cuts like you would with a sword or if they, too, were used in chopping/smashing motions like blunt weapons?

ITT people that have never seen one wielded by a master. With the mass centered in the head and your hand choked up near it you can block any slash or thrust with incredible speed and also snap punches out like a shillelagh. A 3/4 paired with a buckler is impressive for offense and defense That being said a spear can kill you if you don't get close fast. I only know this because I have trained four years with a 16' spear and eight with a 14 lb and smaller axes.

By and large you'll probably focus on simply hitting at all, while not getting hit in return. If you can manage that, severe injury will follow, even without any cutting technique to speak of. Same with swords and so on.

That said, cutting technique does matter. Some years back I helped turn assorted bits of cow into dog food, using amongst other things your basic camping axe, and found that a slight pull on the handle just as the head hit home made it bite a lot deeper with the same impact.

For a cut where you go in with a swing, this should be much the same as with swords. An edge is an edge after all, it's not going to magically know how the rest of the weapon is formed.

The purely slicing "schnitt" cut where we have the edge in contact with the target first, and then simply start slicing back and forth, would probably be relatively hard to pull off with the shorter edged axes, as the ends of it may catch on things. Still, if the edge gets a chance, it'll cut in that manner as well, and longer edge should make it easier to bring about.

Thanks famalamadingdong

>If you can manage that, severe injury will follow, even without any cutting technique to speak of.

Somebody ran a few comparisons a bunch of years back and in his relatively unscientific tests he found that attaining edge alignment with an axe is a bitch and a half and that that negatively affects how well these cut.

Depends on the kind of axe but you can use axes for splitting, carving, felling, pruning, construction of buildings and the fabrication of parts for things like boats and many more things beyond caving in zombie skulls.

An axe has a much large cutting face than the pointy end of a sword. Spreading out the force of a blow across the entire edge of an axe is going to make it much less effective than sliding in a relatively thin sword where all the pressure is concentrated into a much smaller area.

If this thread is sexual, well played.

Here OP, a user's guide

There are accounts of people being battered to death with blunted tournament swords from within full Gothic plate harness. You don't have to actually penetrate anything.

>butt to face with head
>sneak in quick strikes with "pommel" end of handle
>pull legs with crook of axe head
>when they're on the ground or totally open, take a nice big swing

You do realize most axes were single-hand jobs and usually came with a shield or at least a sword to compliment. They're decent for locking up weapons or finishing people off.

and they're scary af, would you want to fight a guy with an axe?

That's because users of plate mainly lanced and daggered other plate users, the sword was for killing poorly armour people as you rode by.

Plate users didn't use crossbows much either, stil at good weapon for punching through.

Viking axe technique was similar to sword and buckler. Well, all shield technique is fundamentally similar for that matter. You chop as you reach out to cover your hand with your shield. The only real difference is that you can't thrust with most axes.

Die Axt im Haus erspart den Zimmermann.

...

>butt to face with head
If that connects, your going to wish it was a sword.
>sneak in quick strikes with "pommel" end of handle
Sword crossguards and pommels make them more effective for that.
>pull legs with crook of axe head
This is useful if you're fighting in a battle where you can surprise a guy that's not fighting to directly, but blows below the waist are useless in a duel because they're so easy to avoid. Also, you probably should have just buried axe head in his ankle.
>when they're on the ground or totally open, take a nice big swing
Once again, only works with someone who's otherwise tied up. The counter is to move in and grab a wrist, where you have little leverage, and kill you with the weapon in the other hand.

>Viking axe technique was similar to sword and buckler.

We don't really have any sources at all going into detail about how they fought that I know of, so regardless of whether it was or not, how would we know?

Then again, I.33 S&B isn't the same as Bolognese S&B.

And what work Roland Warzecha has done on trying to come up with a way to fight with viking style sword and shield, despite being very much an I.33 person, he appears to have turned things around for the Viking gear, leading with the shield and then going in with the sword once an opening has been created.

youtube.com/watch?v=dkhpqAGdZPc

Given the difference in equipment, such changes in use makes sense to me. The bind&wind of I.33 would certainly be greatly affected by switching from sword to axe, as would the different shields.

And if we where then to switch from centre gripped shields to a strapped-on variant, well, that'd probably change quite a lot too, to begin with all the pivoting around the grip is suddenly gone.

But he says that Viking sword and shield is fundamentally similar to i.33 s&b in as many words.

That really is a great video, thanks for the link.

>axe
>and not a shovel

Gentlemen, the Chinese have managed to turn a folding shovel into a multitool of great proportions.
youtube.com/watch?v=b60OZhrTB6o

You want a wire cutter? Ya got it.
You want a hammer and nail puller? Ya got it.
You want a shield? You want a slashing or stabbing weapon? Ya got it.

It's easier to make pun with axe than with sword.

You're missing the last important part that is the difference between limpwristed faggot taps and a split target: Swing it trough with force with proper edge alignment.

There's a reason we had normal handles in our own-
>Is that a bottle opener?
Best shovel tool, ever.

You can use an axe for just about everything you need.

multitools are kind of like sporks. They can do a bunch of things but are outperformed by the dedicated tool.

This.

Plus, sword and hatchet are a great dungeoneering combo. Sword's a primo melee option, but not always handy where the hatchet could be more use. Tight confines, etc.

Plus, makes a good parrying device when you're using the sword.

What's the purpose of the brass bar on the butt of the haft, there?

>But he says that Viking sword and shield is fundamentally similar to i.33 s&b in as many words.

The only similarity mentions that I can spot is that attacking the shield side straight away is unlikely to work. Otherwise he very specifically mentions how they're different, and demonstrates it.

21:10 "There's hardly any blade contact. It's a completely different system. This is about the shields"

He then goes on further how you don't fight with blade binds here, but shield binds, which is pretty much the direct opposite of I.33, where the sword is the big star, the buckler is largely there as a "detached baskethilt", and blade binds are a very big thing (30:10, or youtube.com/watch?v=WOO2ch5uNBc ). Followed by him specifically stating that the size difference between shield and buckler changes your technique, and demonstrating how and why it'd be a very bad idea to try the round shield fighting moves with a buckler.

Plus the talk about how the shield fighting style her means you don't need a large cross-guard, which the old swords don't, but the I.33 period swords do. Once again, different gear, different styles, with gear and styles both shaping each other.

Style, probably.

>The only similarity he mentions
That's because he's describing how they differ. You don't explain how a truck works to someone that owns a car by talking about all the ways in which they're similar. You start with the foundation that a truck and a car are fundamentally similar and talk about body on frame vs unibody, FWD vs RWD, etc.

They claim wasn't that he was describing how they differed, but that he was stating they were fundamentally similar.

Still, even with this new goal to aim for, to once again quote the man: "It's a completely different system." That's a pretty clear statement that things are, indeed, about as different as we can get as long as the basic physics, biomechanics, etc remain constant.

Presenting how the shield fighting differs from I.33 works for an audience familiar with the latter, but since he ends the talk with presenting the I.33 system, that doesn't appear to be the case here.

Yes I have an elementary understanding of physics too, but the force you can put behind a stab is so much less than that put behind the swing of an axe that it doesn't serve as a sufficient explanation
Exactly my point, an axe would be even better for that.

Ideal for breaking skulls

that's all i got.

>Please enlighten me on the practical applications of an axe.
Battle axe or an actual axe?

SMASH AND TWIRL!
GIVE NO QUARTER TO THE GREEK AND HIS INFIDELITY!

It's a lot easier to get the mass of your body behind a stab than a swing with the benefit of being able to do it from longer range.

Penetration wounds also don't need to get very fair (just a few inches) to be lethal.

That said, just because you were dealt a lethal wound doesn't mean you instantly go limp and nonthreatening. Arcing strikes which spread out the trauma have a tendency to knock you off balance or stun as opposed to stabs which you might not necessarily feel.

Some of it involves keeping momentum up as you would a mace, however because you're using a blade it also means your angle of attack is very important. You can strike high, low, middle, from the sides, upswing and even bonk someone with a backhand- but with the cutting face it needs to be aligned to get the most 'bite' when it strikes. Hence a good handle with be an 0 shape and not round like an O, it orients your grip to the edge.
Drawing cuts, not really as you would with a sword as there's not that much surface, even on a larger axe most are around 5-8" of blade length and the smaller 1-handed versions are around 3.5-4"

What you can do though, is punch people with it when they get in close! Much like a polearm you draw the haft to move the axe head closer to your hand, grab them with your offhand if its free and smash away.

Bit of it is style, most of it is the handle poll/swell to stop your hand falling off... yes a knob on the end
Also its a fairly large chunk of metal and does move the balance from about 4/5ths of the way up the haft down to about 2/3rds of the way- makes it nice to swing. Guess if I was feeling mean I could sharpen it and use it to poke things but I'd be more likely to injure myself accidentally!

>It's like ya gits aren't even tryin'

this book also lead me to just drink beer when im hungry