Originally posted by FiringAimlessly
What's the purpose of the wavy design of some double-edged sword blades?
Its a combination of decoration and armour piercing.
Where a straight blade can hack, and then drawing it along the target causes extra damage to an unarmoured opponent - against a heavily armoured opponent (e.g. plate), you only have the initial impact to rely on (as drawing the blade only blunts it against the armour). The waves in the blade provide a smaller point of impact (i.e. the tip of the curve as opposed to a longer section of a straight blade) - thereby concentrating the force of the blow and improving the chance that the armour will be dented sufficiently enough to cause damage (or even pierced).
So why bother with an expensive wavy blade such as the flamberge when there are many other, cheaper weapons which are especially designed to puncture armour and do it much more efficiently. e.g. many pole-arms, war-picks, war-hammers, maces etc ?
Well, the sword was always a status symbol - especially excessively decorated and obviously expensive swords. Also there were many uses for the greatswords other than hitting armour (the wavy blades were almost exclusive to great-swords for war - on anything else they were pure decoration). The greatswords were very effective against lighly or un-armoured mercenaries and militia. They were very useful at taking the legs out from under horses. They were also used to hit ranks of pike and bill-men in the flanks - specifically targetting their weapons to try and break them or knock them onto the floor, allowing others to then close in from the front. Adding a wavy blade to a greatsword still allowed for these uses - but also increased its ability against heavy armour.
Probably more than you ever wanted to know, but you asked ;-)
