Do Giant Swords get any real benefit from being sharpened?

Do Giant Swords get any real benefit from being sharpened?
It doesn’t seem like it’s worth the hours of effort.

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>he doesn't spend hours sharpening his sword

Assuming we're running on the bizarre combination of fantastical and real logic that giant swords operate on, I guess the sharpness helps against "very-large-but-soft" creatures?

Yes, they cut better.

They're pretty great against the giant monsters that are also commonly running around in these settings.

You see, if you were to bring something like a claymore or a gladius to your ho-hum fantasy setting; chances are that they'll lack the mass to cut through monsters the size of city buses and beyond. With a sword as big as a human being, however; the weapon's size and weight plus the user's presumably augmented strength and the fantasy's general disregard for inconvenient things like realism and physics, allows them to cleave through thick materials like scales, bones, armor, muscles...etc, with ease. Its not the most practical way to go about it, but then again this is fantasy; your imagination and sanity is the limit.

The big reason why giant swords are impractical is weight, right? So if we assume that there is some kind of metal that's far lighter than titanium and far stronger than any metal known to man, to the point where a Cloud-sized sword would weigh as much as your average chef's knife, would a bigger sword be better if we assume it's well balanced?

>carving handles directly into the blade instead of attaching them outside it
>curved edge on a weapon that can barely even be used as a cleaver
>spikes for no reason other than to pierce the user's head when they're pinned down
You look ready for sundering.

No. You'd want a giant ass sword that still weighed a couple pounds. A fuckhueg sword that only weighed as much as a chef's knife would be more akin to waving around a razor-edged fan.

A longer sword would, until it gets too long to practically swing around. At that point its functionally a spear.

A broader blade has no direct benefit, sword broadness was about material strength and balance (if you want it tip heavy make that end fatter basically).

Depends. Are they just big, or are they actually heavy?

You know that Zweihanders didn't weight more than 3kg, right? Those need sharpening.

Now if your sword is like pic related, you don't need to sharpen it whatsoever. Just having a somewhat edge-shaped... edge, even if it's already blunt, will make it cut through stuff.

>spikes for no reason other than to pierce the user's head when they're pinned down

They look like they'd do a fair job at punching plate and catching people on horses.

>curved edge on a weapon that can barely even be used as a cleaver

?

It takes about three hours to sharpen a katana properly. My guess is that it would take roughly 5-6 hours for a blade twice the length of a katana.

That's half the day, gone.

>It takes about three hours to sharpen a katana properly.

Try several days, and depending on the value of the blade and the degree of polishing, sometimes several weeks.

Someone did the math at some point. Apparently if you recreate Cloud's Sword using modern materials, you can make a decent, durable blade that weighs around 20 pounds.

>20lbs

This one weighs 80.
youtube.com/watch?v=xogheZdAO18&feature=youtu.be

>several weeks to sharpen what amounts to a big knife

I mean are we talking about adding an edge to a newly forged blade?

wouldn't that giant sword be unnecessarily clumsy, would there be and actually good reason for that sword to be that big while the altenative is more practical?

That's 40 kg, right? That's... not impossible to lift, but you'd be better off chopping wood with that than actually fighting.

OK. First off, that's not a gaint sword. That's a giant blade.

Second, you don't want a sword to be any sharper than it needs to be.
You won't cut yourself if you hold it right, but you might if you lose your grip.

>hours
I can sharpen a chef's knife in under five minutes. How big is this giant sword, 7 stories? Do you even cutlery?

If you're a snooty noble samurai kid maybe. If you're just a ronin merc who has to get the job done, no polishing is necessary.

>He doesn't make weapons that sharpen themselves mid combat

God I love me some Khana Edge.

Are giant swords blunt weapons? If so then why would even exist? Maces already do that job pretty well.

How do I adapt Capcom's Monster Hunter series into role playing? I like the idea of taking the body of the creature you defeated and putting it in your armor.

There must be someone somewhere that already thought of Capcom's Monster Hunter series for this, since Veeky Forums loves videogames.

No, because then it would have more surface area, reducing the amount of force applied. If you're going with a large but light weapon, a spear is better.

When it comes to expensive katana, you can't "sharpen" them without potentially irreversibly damaging the blade. They get sent to a specialist, who needs to carefully "polish" the blade by hand in order to preserve its geometry. Two to three weeks is pretty standard on a single blade, though it can often take even more time, since its essentially more meticulous restoration than anything else, and requires both technical knowledge, artistry, precision, and a fair amount of blood and sweat. It shares more in common with restoring a painting than sharpening a kitchen knife.

But, that's almost entirely reserved for display katana, though some rich bastards who can throw down $3000+ might get it done for special Tameshigiri events. It's ridiculous to imagine someone getting this done for a blade that would see combat.

But muh buster sward