Hi All,

This is a rapier and dagger set based on excavated pieces from the South of France and dated around 1600.

The blade is 107cm/43" and is hexagonal for the first 80cm approximately and then goes in to a diamond. It starts at 8mm thick and thins rapidly to around 6mm at 30cm from the guard and then tapers fairly evenly to the tip. Overall rapier weight is 1390g or 3lbs1oz

The dagger is based on the same find pair and has a 33cm/13" blade.

Both weapons have steel hilt furniture and iron wire binding and Turks heads, over wooden grips. Notably the the rapier has a hollow pommel.

The rapier has a poplar cored wooden scabbard covered in a bonded leather outer with a fabricated steel chape and a 6 strap hanger with bronze fittings.

The dagger has a double layer leather sheath with fabricated steel fittings and a staple on the rear of the locket which the belt passes through.

The belt itself is veg tan leather with an embossed pattern and bronze furniture. The hanger set is available here https://todcutler.com/collections/sword-chapes/products/hanger-set-1

We now have an Instagram page which I am finding quite useful for just diarising my workshop and you can find various stages of this build here https://www.instagram.com/todsworkshop/

I hope you like it and of course if you have any questions or comments, please fire away.

Tod

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Beautiful work Tod! I especially love that hanger hook. Very nicely done.

I'm curious, when you do the double layer leather scabbard technique for daggers, what do you use to bond the layers? Contact cement, or something that dries harder? What weight leather are you using?

Also, how did you go about hollowing the rapier pommel? Is it a cast piece, or fabricated?

Asking for a friend.... :-)

Jesse

Jesse Belsky wrote

Quote:

Beautiful work Tod! I especially love that hanger hook. Very nicely done. I'm curious, when you do the double layer leather scabbard technique for daggers, what do you use to bond the layers? Contact cement, or something that dries harder? What weight leather are you using? Also, how did you go about hollowing the rapier pommel? Is it a cast piece, or fabricated? Asking for a friend.... :-) Jesse

Hi Jesse,

Thanks.

I sew the layers together, but if I did bond them, then I would actually go 'old school;' and use an animal glue. I don't know the weight as we go by thickness in the UK, but it is 1.6mm or 16gauge.

The pommel is fabricated from two shells at the equator and in this case welded. I have not seen a braze line on rapier pommels, so I assume they were welded, though earlier hollow pommel swords were sometimes brazed and sometimes welded - I have seen both.

Your friend is most welcome

Tod

Very interesting. Thank you!

A wonderful piece of work, as anyone could guess looking at the pics! But of course, it is more badass to have this in hands...

The sword feels not so heavy as what I expected. While not precisely agile, it sure wants to thrust and stay just in front of you. By manipulating the beast, you understand that it is more a defensive weapon, in accordance with the Nicoletto Giganti rapier treatise for example (1606) in which the goal is to defend against attacks.
The blade presence is substantial but not excessive, it can surely give you a good presence in the bind and a nice inertia hile cutting.

The grip is ribbed, and the association between those ribs and the steel wiring, together with the shortness of the grip (8cm - a little more than 3 inches long) allows to have a nice and effective handling of the sword.

The leather work, while very sober, is very classy. I love the scabbard, and the roughness of the metal parts is pretty damn beautiful... So I guess that I couldn't have a better rapier, whose historical accuracy looks over nine thousand!

In fact, I thinks it's a shame that Tod doesn't make more rapiers...

Here the graph of the rapier dynamics:

[ Linked Image ]

And a few pics in situ, with postures taken from Nicoletto Giganti and Salvator Fabris rapier treatises. First a pic with all the stuff at the belt, to show the dimensions of the thing. I'm quite short but fortunately I have a size close to the average of the 16th/17th centuries european average:

[ Linked Image ]

The normal guard by Nicoletto Giganti:

[ Linked Image ]

The normal guard with dagger:

[ Linked Image ]

A guard from Salvator Fabris:

[ Linked Image ]

And a lunge:

[ Linked Image ]