Getting stuff right about swords

Anyone interested in maintaining swords? Here’s a helpful post Eric Lowe pointed me to: Resharpening damaged swords.

A few paragraphs of text plus a video. This is about how Medieval people would have resharpened notched swords, not about how anybody today would do it, which is why it’s relevant to me, and possibly to some of you. It’s also just interesting.

I never plan to write a character who’s a smith, but this is a nice bit of research to kind of have in the back of my mind.

While on the topic, we do have a handful of fantasy novels where the protagonist IS a smith, in particular a bladesmith, including The Swordsmith by Eleanor Arneson and (a duology I’ve mentioned before and loved) Powers and Dominions by James Burton.

Also, the protagonist in Merrie Haskell’s delightful MG novel Castle Behind Thorns is a blacksmith’s apprentice. Not specifically a bladesmith as in the above examples, but still.

Anybody got a suggestion for other fantasy novels where smithcraft of any kind, or bladesmithing in particular, is dealt with in detail?

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