Posts: 813 Location: Windsor, Colorado
Sat 14 Nov, 2015 8:36 pm
When I was in high school, my youth pastor had this sword (I knew we would get along the day he threatened to decorate the youth room in
maille, but that is a story for another day). He used it as his costume/beater piece (including a little light sparring). I don't know who the maker is, but I do know that he bought it from a shop that dealt almost exclusively in Marto and Deepeeka items. Since Deepeeka is Indian, that leaves Marto (at the time I think they were Marto and Matespa or something like that) as the most likely candidate. They certainly don't have that piece in their catalog these days, though, so I can't verify very easily.
As for quality, I don't know real well. I recall this piece as being an odd combination of elegance and blockiness. The blade was ok, the guard was actually quite nice in thickness, but obviously has way too much height, the pommel was actually quite nice, etc. The blade is a carbon steel, but pretty soft if my memory serves me correctly (there were some noticeable nicks from the light sparring mentioned above, and that was after he had filed the worst of it out). You will not be damaging an heirloom quality piece if you clean this up or let people handle it. With some effort, you might make a nice sword out of it, but I would speculate that you would have better results using a Windlass/MRL blade as your starting point.
-- Greyson