How practical is a triangular blade, like the angel blades in Supernatural, in real life?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “angel blade knife“
About Luna
Written by: Luna
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How practical is a triangular blade, like the angel blades in Supernatural, in real life?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “angel blade knife“
About Luna
They are imminently practical… for stabbing and thrusting. For cutting, on the other hand, not so great.
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The blade shape itself is … fine.
You can see aggressively triangular blades on medieval armored fighting daggers, particularly (though not only) those with so-called “rondel” hilts.
It’s sort of a silly blade shape for unarmored fighting; its designed to let you put a massive amount of weight behind a thrust through somebody’s mail (your whole body, if you have to). Unarmored bodies don’t need that much spiking power, and blades like this can’t cut very deeply.
That said, daggers like this were reasonably popular as “civilian carry” knives (presumably a medieval version of tacticool). And they will put a stonking great hole in an unarmored body; its just over-specialized.
The problem I see with those knives is not the blade shape but the hilt. You took a blade that is only good at stabbing and have it a tiny little insignificant rondel like that? I’d be a bit afraid that my hand would slip onto the blade if I delivered a powerful stab. There is a guard; I just wish it was a bit more substantial.
So …I’d say they’re fine. Aggressively fine.
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Its very practical and very real.
It in fa1 t has one usage and that is to make sure someone dies. A blade cuts you. You can heal from that. But a triangular blade “punctures” you. There was no way to come back from that in ancient times. In fact unless your at the hospital door, you probably wouldn’t survive such a stabbing now a days.
This is the knife equivalent to an automatic machine gun. In fa1 t even militaries don’t issue it. The one exception I know of is maybe green berets and delta force. But they are going in to kill people and make sure they are dead.
Unlike other knives you can’t claim you are going to eat dinner with it. Its purely a weapon to kill other humans. Henceforth it being banned from most societies. That’s probably why it seems so odd to you. But nope, it was a natural evolution of weapon technology.
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Following on from Eric Lowe ’s very good answer about rondel daggers, another place in which you can find triangular-section (or triangular- ish section) blades is on quite a lot of smallswords. Take a look at this one, shown from both sides (an item at Bolk Antiques ):
and the other side:
What you’ve got is something like a deeply concave-sided triangle, such that it’s getting close to a V or Y shape. These blades aim to provide a good thrusting tip on a light blade with a high degree of stiffness (for point control, penetration and some authority when binding, parrying etc) at the cost of cutting ability; which is fine since their purpose in life was chiefly to win duels in civilian contexts and to look nice, without unduly crumpling their owners’ sartorial finery.
So, quite a different application from your pictured dagger, I suppose, but again a demonstration that a triangular section isn’t too bad an idea if your aim is something long and stabby. Still, like Eric Lowe, I’d be looking for a little more in terms of grip and guard; unless you’re wearing very grippy gloves (unlike the characters you’ve pictured) those daggers look like a hand-slip nightmare.
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The blade shape itself is fine – the issue is the size of the guard on the hilt, making them good at stabbing through armour and not great at blocking attacks. I guess angels get by on being complete badasses and fast.
Or if you’re feeling charitable in-universe, they need to be that shape to kill demons for mystical reasons.
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These blades, such as the jagdkommando knife, exist in real life as well. They tend to do more damage than typical single or double blades.
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