Clyde Hollis at Imperial Weapons is working on a new Knightly Riding Sword. He was kind enough to send the first prototype to Adam Sharp and myself for an early look and testing, and to provide input for changes to the production version. We put together a joint review and made suggestions for changes to the production version. It is published to the Sword Buyer's Guide Forum.

I thought some folks here might like to take a look. Here's a link to the review in case anyone would like to see what we had to say.

I would like to thank Clyde for being responsive to the sword buying community's desires by allowing normal consumers like us to provide input and have an impact on future production swords.

Thanks,
Mike

Nice work, Mike! It's nice to see this kind of effort posted.

What's the weight on that sword? I didn't see it mentioned.

Moved to off-topic since this is a topic about an article and a link to that article rather than a discussion of historical arms and armour.

Thank you, Nathan. I appreciate your kind words.

I didn't weigh the sword when I had it, since it's going to change considerably before it goes into production. If I guessed, I would say between 1lb, 15 ozs and 2 lbs, 3 ozs. But those are just guesses. My take is that the production version will weigh just under 2 lbs.

Thanks. But I must say that at least half of this was Adam Sharp. He really got things rolling and did most of the grunt work of getting the co-review put together. I'm just the luck guy with the still and video cameras. :D

Yes you both did a great job on the review.
Thanks,

Just wondering, any thoughts here?

I've just skimmed the review so far, but I was surprised to read that the reviewer considered Albion's Prince and Knigmaker to be riding swords. They're both of battle sword length and heft in my opinion.

Here's a pic of the original sword, from the Christie's sale catalogue of Howard Curtis's collection (this sword was in Oakeshott's collection, the Douglas Ash's, the Howard Curtis's, now?).

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Interesting review, now that I've had a chance to read through it. What I miss in it are straight-on overall and hilt shots. Angled shots make it hard to tell some of the proportions. The hilt seems a bit off from the original in shape and maybe size, but without a straight-on shot it's hard to know.

Handle is a bit thick for my hands I'm afraid. Otherwise, looks great.

M.

Clyde, if you are taking suggestion (which I think is a great idea BTW), may I suggest going with a type I pommel as per the original. I think by doing this it would allow you to make the pommel smaller in diameter, but still have anough mass to balance out the blade.
Thanks,
Dan

If those are to scale then...I don't think I like the reproduction at all.

M.

The modifications should make it very appealing and be closer in proportions to the original.

Comparing the two in the pic the prototype looks/feels like a huge dagger while the original looks/feels like a small compact short sword: It really is all because of very subtle differences in handle, blade width, blade length, handle thickness.

There is also the issue of wanting to copy as closely as possible the proportions/size of the original or making a sword based on the original but with different but still good looking proportion on it's own merits i.e. A design decision, but either choice could work. ;)

Since the original is so harmonious and attractive in proportions I would choose duplicating it as closely as possible.