Hello John, 

Thank you for also asking for input from others as well as myself.  For almost any topic, the more input you can get from various sources, the better.  With all the extra data, you can then apply what works best in your situation. 

On the dynamic of your sword blade- of course it will depend on the sword type, but almost universally the number one mistake we all make when starting to make swords is to make them too heavy. This comes from applying knife design to a sword.  Contrary to what we may think- the longer the blade, the thinner it has to be. 

Distribution of mass along a sword blade is an incredibly complex topic and without the specifics on your design I can't detail too much, but distal taper is important but not as linear as on a knife blade.  Swords are stout near the hilt tapering to a point and then leveling out a bit with a much lesser taper to affect balance and mass distribution in the "sweet spot."  You will see a lot of folks going on about harmonic nodes and pivot points, but we don't need to wiggle or tap a Louisville Slugger around to know where the ball should land to drive it out of the park, the "sweet spot" is fairly intuitive. 

Point tracking becomes more or less relevant depending on the sword function. Obviously, it is much more critical on a rapier than on a spatulate tipped Celtic piece.  The key to all of this is to make the blade alone feel light and quick with good sense of the sweet spot out there around 2/3rds the length of the blade.  After this, something such as point tracking is what I refer to as "fine tuning" accomplished by the appropriate weighting of the hilt.  This means it requires the addition or subtraction of ounces, not pounds.  It is very common for a first sword attempt to be 3+ pounds with a cannon ball type pommel to balance a blade that needed to be much thinner.  Think about it, real swords were often the product of several different craftsmen, often working some distances apart.  This meant that the guy making the blades, that were then being shipped all over Europe to be hilted, had to make them right, in the absence of the weight and measures of those later hilt components.  This way all the hilting guy had to do is fine tune the dynamics for the tastes and combat styles of his local boys.    

Thanks, Kevin for your response. Your advice is always helpful and I'm sure there are others looking at this post that will also benefit.  I may have bitten off more than I can chew and looking at my original post I inaccurately described it as 32 inches. That was the overall length.  Having measured the blade itself this morning it's more like 26 and 1.2 inches wide at the widest. I have whittled it down to the shape I like and the blade by itself weighs about a pound. I guess what i was asking was: should  I be shooting for a balance point at or near the hilt, or is a good handling sword balanced at a point further down the blade? I suppose there is not a good answer that applies to every sword, I was just trying to remember what I had heard from one of your lectures about sword building. I would send pics just for fun, but right now I can't seem to put my hand on the unique cord that connects my 25 year old camera to my computer. Guess I'm just a 20th century man trapped in the 21st

video I did for my pateron a couple years ago might help https://youtu.be/YKF66D6kqrA?si=Lwi3xja0bQfgNqzv

MP

I watched that, thanks.