So, while checking out Lutel's stuff, I found that many of their hand-and-a-half swords had katzbalger-style guards. So far I've only seen this on custom swords, so I guessed it was due to Lutel taking creative liberties with their designs. (Which I don't at all mind; I like the style and all but fell in love with one of those models.)

Still, lately it got me wondering: are there any historical swords other then the katzbalger itself that have had this specific type of guard? (S-shaped, 8-shaped, etc.) It just strikes me as wierd that it would have been restricted only to a single type of sword.

And there were even daggers with this style of guard, so the full spectrum of blade sizes seems to be included with this style.

The subject has been brought up a few times, here is an old thread that shows some original examples of various sizes- http://www.myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=1515

The mushroom-shape pommel is "sort of" particular to katzbalgers although not all katzbalgers had them, some had different styles of pommel and I also seem to recall seeing some examples that have added bars on the guard, apparently evolving into a basket hilt of sorts. Whether all of these can properly be called katzbalgers is probably subjective, I'm really not knowledgeable enough to comment beyond that.

Plate #128 of "The Triumph of Maximilian" shows a squad of ten landsknechts holding two-handed katzbalgers. The guards look more like a double loop, but that's clearly a problem with perspective in the woodcut, as several of the landsknechts have traditional short katz's and the guards are identical to those on the big-uns.

Way back in the dawn of modern reproduction time before Museum Replicas was bought by Windlass, MRL offered a two-handed katzbalger made in Germany by Oskar Kolombatovitch. Most of my droogies went ga-ga over Oskar's "Austrian Masterpiece" longsword, but I still have the two-handed kat I bought back then. Overall length is 53", the blade is 41".

Actually The Austrian Masterpiece and Landeschnecht two-hander were made by Johann Shmidberger of Austria. MRL only carried Kolombatoviche's rapiers, parrying daggers and a colichemarde of his.

I stand corrected.

Johann Schmidberger (note spelling) had a website in Germany that went 404 a couple of years ago.

Oscar Kolombatovich still has some swords listed at American Fencer's Supply.