Single-edged blades with a ridge
 

As part of a project on kopis and machaira swords in the ancient Aegean, I am thinking about cross-sections and swords designed for low-carbon unhardenable steel. Its not generally appreciated that these swords had ridges not fullers if they were more than a simple wedge-section. The fullers are more typical of war knives from Iberia. I have archaeological drawings but little data on distal taper and most ancient swords are too rusted to precisely measure anyways.

So I am trying to collect types of single-edge blades from the last few hundred years that often have a thickened spine or a ridge along the blade close to the back edge. The three that come to mind are:

- many Ottoman yataghans and kilij
- many peshkabz daggers from the Persianate world
- some nineteenth-century sabres from western Europe like Prosser's pipe-backed blades for the British Army

Am I missing any single-edged weapons that tend to have a T-section or -+--- section?

Welcome to the Ethnographic Forum! Interesting question and I hope one of our knowledgeable members will be along shortly to help you.

Much like their smaller pesh-kabz cousins, Afghan Khyber knives usually have a T-section spine.

It seems like T-sections were popular from the Ottoman Empire to India in the 18th and 19th century? I wonder how they made them because that shape can be a pain to grind and polish.

Blades with a ridge a bit forward of the spine remind me of a classic five-sided katana blade. I don't understand blade engineering well enough to understand why katanas have that section. Guillaume Stanislaus Marey-Monge thought it made for good cutters.