I bought the saber in the 1980s from a gunshop in Fairfield, CT. They had a wooden barrel full of them. They were real cavalry sabers that had been chromed for marching drills. Of the ones I examined, I bought the one with the best edge. Some had been apparently roughly dulled with a mill file, this one was sort of lightly rounded. it sharpened up nicely with not a lot of effort.
The two-handed sword was made to withstand theatrical combat. It took a little more work to sharpen, but it sharpened up OK.
It would seem to me that one of the better ways to make a zombie fighting tool would be to take a common carpentry hammer and reforge it. The claw end would be forged into a pick and the radius lessened to match a radius of about four feet.
The hammer end would be reforged into more of a constant-diameter cylinder, rather than a broad hitting surface that then necked down. This would have two benefits: First, it would reduce the area of the flat striking surface, which means more force on the reduced area. Second, if you got a really good blow in and sank the hammer's face into a zombie's skull, a constant-diameter cylinder would reduce the chances of the hammer being caught by the zombie's skull.
The shaft probably needs to be at least two feet long so that the fighter could strike the zombie before being grabbed and bitten. Ideally, the shaft should be of steel and the head made a part of it. The fighter's end can be wrapped with something to improve the grip, of course.
Of course, what has me thinking of all of this is the new AMC show "The Walking Dead".
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