Bones are NOT stronger than steel. Bonesaws are made of steel.
Swords are sharp, but not razor sharp. The cutting power of them comes with the leverage and the shearing action of the properly swung sword. A razor sharp sword would quickly become dull in combat. The only safe ways to bring your body in contact with an opponents blade are these; If you hit the flat of the blade, or if you first stop the motion of the blade with your own sword. (at this point the opponents blade can be grasped) Any attempt to block a sword stroke with a limb, or to grasp the blade during the stroke, will result in serious injury.
Japanese swords used to be tested on condemned criminals. A strong swordsman with a good blade could cut through three torsos in a row. Modern swords are often tested on pig carcasses. They seldom have difficulty cutting through pigs of the same girth as a human. You can break a human skull with a glass bottle, to say nothing of a sword.
The fact that a human can break a concrete block with his hand does not mean that bone is harder than concrete: it means that that the force that he applied at that particular place on the concrete block is sufficient to break the block but not his hand. As an architect, I note that martial artists never hit the block from the direction that the block is strongest. Martial artists (or, I should say, the unarmed martial arts of asia) frequently talk up the power of the art and the human body, getting all mystical in the process. Really, these things are just tricks. I have no doubt that if I were swinging a 2x4 at someone with the intent to injure them, they would not be able to break it without suffering injury. It is quite different than a demonstration in a dojo. May I ask which direction they hold the board in when they hit you? Do you get hit by the 2 or the 4? I'm guessing its the 4. The 2 would injure you. Building materials have different strengths depending on the geometry.
and swords and armor are made of steel. structurally bone
is as strong as steel. fresh bone that is, it begins to weaken as it is dried out. a fresh human femur can support more than 2000 pounds. and just like building materials it has its geometries too. a hack in the right direction would cut clean through but a block in the right way and a cut would be about the worst you would face.
and they started us with the four, as we got better they moved to the two.
one of bones negatives in its strength compared to steel is that it is brittle. one of its strengths is that can change strength by the forces it deals with constantly. shattering a skull with the bottle is just the same a shattering the bottle with the hand. i should know since i had a guy try to kill me with a skate board by hitting me with the trucks. he hit me wrong and snapped his skate board on my head.
i would say i beat his ass but when i turned around i looked right into the sun with my dilated eyes. i hurt him bad, but didn't beat him like i wanted to.
on mythbusters they were testing the strength of human bones for their re build of buster. a dried humerus was breaking at about 300 lbs laterally.
oh and i remembered the term, its pectoral girdle. pectoral.
and a bone saw cuts through bone by taking off a small layer at a time.
and while I'm rambling here.
Steel is not the most bad ass of materials on any one of its traits. it is not the hardest metal, or the lightest, or the easiest to get, or even the best material like it. what makes it so great is that is has a blend of strength and weight, malleability and resistance to time not found in many other materials.
and on that link to the weapons cutting through bones only 29 out of 456 slicing wounds found, actually cut through the bone. (and i have a feeling that they were from a 2h sword or an axe.
so loisse, depending on how long the battle has been going your guy can either be in the blue or dead by the blow that didn't stop at the arm. if it was long enough in that the other guys sword is beginning to dull then i would say that his arm was cut deeply like in the femur in the third picture down on zornhau's link. if they have just started fighting, or the other guy had a second sword he just recently whipped out, then your guy is in bad shape.
