Simon, as Gordon said contact Peter Lyon direct for his availability. IIRC in conversations with him he may be tied up full time from next year for a year or two but you may get in before then, or after, but I doubt you will ever have to wait 6 years for a sword from him, I mean how many more movie trilogies as time consuming as The Lord of the Rings do you think he will be involved with :)

As far as pricing goes, you will find him very reasonable, it is going to cost me less for him to make me a custom sword than it will be for me to continue importing swords from from Albion (please note this is due to shipping, the NZ dollar exhange rate with the US dollar and having to pay taxes upon entry of the item into the country, this is no reflection on Albion I have been very happy with every dollar I have spent with them and will continue to do so with some more swords). It will only cost more than swords from Albion if I start to get extreme with my design requests.

Wow, 98cm of blade and only 121cm long overall ? The DT 2142 must have a pretty short grip as is... That's 10cm less grip than on a Baron, and I find the Baron's grip to be, well, quite sufficient but not very roomy...

I still have not found definitive information on early great swords, and nothing on early real two-handers in the size I'm looking for (150cm). Seems like there are no surviving examples and only scant knowledge about them. It doesn't really matter though, I wasn't going for dead-on historical accuracy, so I'll just try and ponder on "if there were two-handers at the end of the 11th century, what could it have looked like ?". In fact, from the start my idea was to have a sword that would be more a chansons de geste (or romance, if you prefer) sword than a museum-referenced, period-representative sword. I would even take some sort of sadistic pleasure in designing a sword that is not right off-mark, but doesn't fit well in any period/category, something to drive the forum members of the 31st century's myArmoury.com to madness ( * insert evil laughter * ).

Plus, historical accuracy proponents (and I say this while being a History student) can always imagine the following dialogue taking place during the siege of Jerusalem, july 1099 :
"Howdy, lads !
- Hail fellow, and all that... Say, what's that strange sword you have ?
- It's called a two-hander. Comes from Overseas.
- It looks ugly and dumb. You shouldn't buy stuff from foreigners, they have the strangest ideas. Better stick with our trusty, time-honoured blades.
- Yeah, well, you stick to your backwards one-handers you got from your great-grandads. In a century or two babies like this one will be all the rage, I tell ya."

As an aside, but actually more important than these silly considerations, I stumbled on the website of Odin Blades the other day, and I think I'll add this maker to my list of potential smiths. I'm about set on either Arma Bohemia, Odin Blades, or Peter Lyon. Now I will pit them three in a ring with grete swerdes and see who wins. :D

Is Peter currently accepting commissions? Do you have to know him or have done previous work with him to get on his waiting list? I thought that he might not be accepting any new commissions whatsoever, but maybe not ??

Hey, thank you very much Luka for your link to this very informative thread ! It escaped my researches through the forums. Either the search function is not very powerful, or I am not skilled at using it (maybe both ! :p ).

Anyway, it confirms the ideas I started to throw yesterday evening as to what this sword could look like. I was thinking about a "type Xa on steroids", as Peter Johnsson put it in the thread you linked to ; with an acute point. My inspiration is mainly Records Xa.7 ( http://www.myArmoury.com/view.html?features/pic_spotx18.jpg ). Another hypothesis was a buffed-up early type XII (as Records XII.1 and XII.3 : http://www.myArmoury.com/view.html?features/pic_spotxii03.jpg and http://www.myArmoury.com/view.html?features/pic_spotxii05.jpg ) but I feel this idea is less interesting as the result would be some kind of XIIa. I find the idea of a "bastard type" more interesting, a sword that is far from "typical" but that could have existed as the result of a lunatic knight's wish or of a crazy smith's drunken bet (well, maybe not going that far, I don't want an anime sword... :cool: )

It's a shame Peter cannot unveil more details about this sword he talks about in this thread, but as I'm not actually going for a museum-documented replica, it doesn't matter much. It suffices me to know that there were some swords that breached the neat Oakeshott classification's rules, and especially by being "beefed-up" one-hand types. I found another example of that with Records XIIIa.5 that's apparently a type XI beefed up to type XIIIa proportions ( http://www.myArmoury.com/view.html?features/pic_spotxiii09.jpg ). It makes my idea of a two-handed type Xa not too much preposterous, even if it definitely would be, as Peter pointed out in the aforementioned thrad, walking on thin ice. But I don't mind (as long as Alexander Nevski is not around, I should be fine).

Another interesting observation is that

Peter Johnsson wrote:

On the contrary, earlier often means more elaborate.

I wanted to give this sword "elaborate" traits, as I said earlier, but I did not have (and still do not) many ideas, as in Oakeshott's types, earlier forms (pommels, guards etc.) do seem to be less elaborate. I guess it just shows the need to

Jeremy V. Krause wrote:

think beyond Oakshott's typology

which is kinda hard for a newbie sword amateur such as me to do (classifications are sooooo convenient... and so misleading !).

As per the guard, I'm about set on a style 4 (and saying that, I demonstrate that I do not think beyond Oakeshott's typology at all :\ . But it does provide nice, clear, newb-friendly boundaries as to what is about historical, and what is definitely out of bounds). As to the pommel, type R intrigues me (it's a spherical style). A plain sphere would be, I think, quite ugly : it would look like a golf ball stuck at the end of the tang. But I think this style could offer much potential for an elaborate design, if done right (as it could also be very tacky). I need to think about it and research this style of pommels, and also to research what traits, exactly, make earlier swords "more elaborate". If you have suggestions, please chime in. Meanwhile, I'll be diving through this wonderful site's pics... :p

Ah, it is as I feared. I will have to fire someone down in Technical Services and hire someone else. It's the last thing I can do to avoid taking the blame myself. :D

(Seriously, though, the problem I'm having with it is that I can't seem to comprehend how to search for exact expressions. The consequence being that searching for "early great sword", even with the "search for all terms" option ticked, will yield instances of "hey guys, I recieved this sword early this morning, and it is great !". No "order results by relevance", either, or I am missing that too. Mmm, maybe I should try using ole Google to sweep the forums, as I'm more familiar with that...)

No specific reason. I'm not an expert in these things either. Of course it's theoretically possible, I just thought that maybe if you are going for a sword that is because of it's size something very unusual for the period maybe you would want the guard and the pommel which are really typical for the era so that people will see the sword and say: "Look at that nice greatsword! It's typical for 13th or 14th century! But wait, do you see the fittings? It's probably representation of those rare 11th century greatswords!"

You're welcome, I'm enjoying the discussion, I also collect ideas for my sword customization in it. :)

I forgot to say, I'll be away from the computer for about two weeks, so I'll join the discussion then again. Good luck.