Effective Bending Stiffness & Buckling Load Update!

Last year, I wrote a post about the effective bending stiffness of flexible trainers and had measurements of trainers I was able to get my hands on at the time. Well, thanks to my good friends at the Chicago Swordplay Guild, CSG North, the CSG 'Southern Expeditionary Force', the Rocky Mountain Swordplay Guild, and the Susquehanna Valley Swordplay Guild, I was able to get a pile more during a recent trip to Chicago.

So let's get down to details, then into the data:

• The measurement process was the same as outlined in the previous post
• I only added arming sword and longsword measurements. Sorry rapieristi and other later-period types: I'll give you all some love once I put together a portable method to deal with all them crazy hilt fittings.
• I decided to calculate the absolute error in the effective bending stiffness, \(EI\), based on the estimated accuracy of my measurement methods. These will be included on the graphs given here. For the FIE ranges, since these were back-calculated, I've assumed the error to be zero (no measurements, no error).
• I also updated the buckling load list, and will include those as well to help put things in perspective.
• I decided to interpret the data based my own personal experience with the weapons based on the Subjective Index of Sparky Skewering Efficacy, or SISS-E, since I found some of the trends interesting.