New sword! Del Tin 5182

This is the Del Tin 5182 18th Century rapier I ordered from Kult of Athena. I ordered it in July and it arrived last night. I haven’t seen anyone talk about this sword so I thought I’d say some things and show some pictures. This is a beautiful example of a transitional style between rapiers and smallswords, so it has a smallsword-style hilt on steroids. It is light and tight, and fits in my hand comfortably. The blade is a little short for a rapier, bit if it were longer it would be whippy (EDIT: it is whippy). The blade is 37 inches long and 7/8 inch wide, and the whole sword is 44.5 inches long. It weighs only 1 pound 11 ounces and the balance point is 2.5 inches from the clamshell guard.

I have two main criticisms. The blade is not as stiff as a rapier should be, and can bend with only moderate force. Also, the tip is very chunky. I ordered the sharpening option from KoA since the default is round tipped, and they gave the edge a secondary knife bevel. This isn’t too much of a problem since it’s not a cut oriented sword anyway. I would prefer the tip to have a more acute profile, but it isn’t too bad. However there is almost no distal taper, and the tip they ground onto it comes at about a 45 degree angle when you look from the side. This is too wide for a thrusting weapon, and these two things lead to much more force being needed to thrust into soft targets such as the box it came in.

Still, I am overall pleased with this sword. I’d give it 8/10. The craftsmanship is top notch and it feels much better and more lively in my hand than the similarly sized Cold Steel Cavalier rapier, which I also own. Del Tin’s reputation for overly heavy swords is not upheld by this one, though I do wish there was more distal taper or the sharpening done better.