Outstanding, and I can hardly believe how quickly you get them done. I'm really starting to appreciate saber blades due to their complexity, I'd love to see cross sections sketches of these.

I'll echo an earlier post and say based on personal preference only I like the sword better without the pieces from guard to pommel. Still looks awesome as per the original though.

Simply fantastic work.

Preben B wrote

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Do you plan on making a video with it or perhaps have Matt Easton give it a go? I'm sure I'm not alone wanting to see this one moving in someones hand.

I will drop Matt a line and ask if he would like to review it which would be interesting because sabres (although 19thC) are really his thing.

Guillaume Vauthier wrote

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It is so great. I think this (a reproduction pictured together with the original) is the thing I would see the most often, together with a graph of the swords dynamics.

Again I will try and arrange this with Toby.

Paul Watson - Thanks

So here we are all finished and I hope you like them as much as I do. I have made scabbards for both swords, but kept them simple, so no outrageous over the top ones this time around. As a note, just before the yelman, there are two small rebates on each side of the blade as per the original.

It has been a journey.

The second sword will be for sale

Tod

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Magnificent! After the A479 what a pleasure to see you tackle more of my favorite Wallace pieces!
Your repro is bang on as expected - great work.
Cheers,
J

Tod, I've read you say that these swords were the most difficult swords you've made. Can you share some thoughts as to what the challenges were and what difficulties you had to overcome?

Julien M wrote

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Magnificent! After the A479 what a pleasure to see you tackle more of my favorite Wallace pieces! Your repro is bang on as expected - great work.

Thanks and there is a langmesser there with my name on it - one day.

Nathan Robinson wrote

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Tod, I've read you say that these swords were the most difficult swords you've made. Can you share some thoughts as to what the challenges were and what difficulties you had to overcome?

Part of it is psychological in that every aspect took a long time, so you work for ages and seem to have very little progress. The blade was slow going and was hard and required intense concentration, but the guard was also very slow going. Every bar had to be bent and checked against the view in multiple photographs at every bend and tweek, I handled the sword and traced and measured the blade, grip and guard and dimensioned as much as I could, however......I took photos myself whilst I handled the sword and I also have the excellent photographs from the Wallace, but presumably because of lens distortion, and optical stuff I don't understand, when I scaled my pictures and the Wallaces pictures and compared the dimensions to my drawing, I ended up with three different sets of dimensions. That was annoying and slow and required interpretation jiggling things about. This was rather unexpected and troubling especially as I am planning to take the sword back in to the Wallace, so hopefully I have got it close.

The other part of it is the sheer physicality of it. The blade is thick and as I use stock removal and as the blade was ground hard, it was difficult going. The blade is also unusually long and so that is very physical and on top of that the hollow grinding just requires one slip to destroy the blade and so every one of the thousands of passes had to be correct (or at least nearly correct). This of course means that you get tired and the more tired you get the more likely you are to make a mistake, so the process is also quite stressful. I made the blades first and t be honest that left me shattered for the rest of the week.

Tod

Thanks for sharing that, Tod. I could speak about the distortion of the lens, point of view and perspective and all that sort of thing, but it really doesn't matter. The bottom line is that translating 3d to 2d and back again to 3d is immensely complicated as you've no doubt discovered many times over. I think such things would really be a surprise to most customers.

The physicality of it all was interesting to read because Craig Johnson of Arms & Armor has said the same thing. He also shared with me that when he made my sword back around 2009 that it was also the most complicated project he's completed and he ended up learning a ton from that sword.

I suspect this was a milestone project for you as well and I thank you for sharing some of the process with us.

Today was an interesting day.....

I took the sword back into the Wallace Collection and handled the original and my reproduction together.

Toby liked it - which was a relief of course and very generously allowed me to film the encounter, so in a couple of weeks I will post up a film of us chatting about the sabre, both mine and the construction in general.

I have attached some photos of the two pieces together and I will notify you when the film is out. Strangely the 'lens distortion' issue has haunted me again, as these were actually pretty close, but the different angles from the camera make them appear quite different - drat!

Tod

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They look spectacular Tod! The pictures next to the original drives home how good of an artist in metal you are. I would daresay that with some aging would look like an identical twin of the original!

I'm not sure which one I'd rather have.

Wow....I mean, just freakin' WOW! :surprised: :eek: .....McM

Sean asked the question, "I'm not sure which one I'd rather have." I know I would prefer the recreation. I know, it may sound like heresy, but the recreation has the look, luster, strength and polish of the original the way it would have looked and felt in the hands of the medieval nobleman, knight or captain, that commissioned the original. Also, it does not have to be treated with white glove care as would befit a Ming vase. It could be used for reasonable test cutting, for example, without fear of damaging a precious original. Not to mention, the recreation is no doubt, more affordable than an original would be if it found its way to one of the big auction houses. Probably much more affordable.
Henry

Just to let you know, the video of Toby and myself looking at this sword is up.

Basically two geeky guys contemplating two similar objects....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SY_GYDq-nJY (correct link now)

Tod

This is fantastic Tod, great to behold the two side by side.
This is reproduction work at its best as the video (and the praise from Toby) plainly shows.

Wrong link though - try this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SY_GYDq-nJY

This vid is incredibly great. Hope there will be some other in the same spirit if you reproduce some other piece from the Wallace Collection one day!

Anyway, I had a question: are you considering to make in the future another similar saber, but with a simpler construction and some more crudeness, as you talked about before in this thread and vid? I'd be curious to see what is the result, and to heard a word from you if it comes one day.