The Artifact: The Blood Gutter

In this episode of STBYM’s The Artifact, Robert discusses the fuller, a groove found in many blades that you might have heard referred to as a “blood gutter.”

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
I Heart Radio. Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and
this is the Artifact, a short form series from Stuff
to Blow Your Mind, focusing in on particular objects, ideas,
and moments in time. Weary, scornfully bad Billy one time

(00:25):
that he didn't even know what a blood gutter was.
Billy guessed it was the drain in the bottom of
the iron maiden, but that was wrong. A blood gutter,
Billy learned, was the shallow groove in the side of
the blade of a sword or bayonet. That's an excerpt
from Kurt Vonnegut's classic ninety nine novel slaughter House Five,

(00:46):
in which the character Billy Pilgrim endures a lesson in
weapon design from the sadistic Ronald Weary. If you're like me,
a high school read of this classic novel may have
introduced you to the concept of a blood gutter, often
said to either allow a wound to bleed more or
to allow easier extraction from the victim. In my own case,

(01:06):
I think that my memory tends to combine two different
sections of the novel, Wearies ramblings about blood gutters and
a later ramble about triangular blades, but the long groove
you find in many blades has nothing to do with
blood or the physics of stabbing someone. The fuller, as
it is more properly called, is purely structural. As Nick

(01:32):
Evangelista points out in the Encyclopedia of the Sword, the
groove or grooves cut into the face of a blade
simply serve to make it lighter. You use less metal,
as much as thirty five percent less to make a
blade that's just as durable and well stappable. And yet
the Ronald wearies of the world continue to mislabel fullers

(01:54):
as blood grooves or blood gutters, terms which are not
only incorrect in terms of function, but also, according to
Pope and Steven's in Arms and Armor of Knights and
Landsnecks in the Netherlands Army Museum quote betrays a rather
too romantic and bloodthirsty view. How fitting then that Vonnegutt

(02:16):
mentions it in the same breath as the Iron Maiden,
a torture instrument of mostly fantasy that most historians believe
was never actually used. Tune into additional editions of the
artifact each week. As always, you can email us at
contact at Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff

(02:45):
to Blow your Mind is production of I heart Radio.
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