Sword sound effects

The draw most edits reach for first, and the one that establishes how long the weapon is before the audience has seen it. The rasp rises as the steel clears the throat of the scabbard, then rings briefly.

Displaced air with a whistle at the fastest point of the arc. Use it when choreography looks quick but plays soft, since the ear reads speed from the whistle long before the eye reads it from the picture.

A deep bite into dry timber that stops the swing dead. It gives a strike somewhere to end, which is what separates a real hit from a swing that simply fades out of the frame.

A thick, wet pass with weight behind it and no metallic ring at all. Reach for it sparingly: one of these in a sequence reads as brutal, and three in a row read as comedy.

Three grinding passes along a coarse wet stone. It is the quiet card on the page and the most useful one for character, because sharpening is something a person does while thinking.

The blade going home, ending in a padded stop rather than a ring. It closes a confrontation in one gesture, which is why it so often lands better than any line written for the same moment.