I'm looking for the dimensions of the copper-inlayed sax found at Honeylane, blade length in particular. It would be good to know the thickness, too. I've always thought this was one of the smaller ones of the type, but honestly I do not know.

Thanks in advance.

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Honey lane seax

Hi,

I've seen the Honeylane Seax in person. I don't have exact measurements but I'd estimate the blade to be about 20cm long. From pictures you'd think it would be small and delicate but it's quite bulky, you could imagine a poor ceorl using it in conjunction with a shield as his primary armament. It's like an Anglo-Saxon bowie knife.

is the tang on that knife bendt out of shape, or is it supposed to be like that?

My guess would be that the tang was bent at some time. I would think that originally that the center line of the tang was parallel to the back of the blade. That's just my opinion as a knife maker. I just don't see what mounting the blade to a handle at that angle would do that was of any advantage.

If you look closely it does seem that where the tang meets the blade the iron is thinner and seems to be warped. This has almost certainly been bent.

Thanks for the information.
Yeah, I think it was bent simply because it is, as far as I know, the only sax with a tang going off at that angle. The corrosion makes it impossible to say (at least from a photograph) if it was bent or intentional.

I know that earlier styles of sax were quite thick (up to 10mm), but I believe they got thinner over time?

That new picture even makes it look like the tang was rotated just slightly.

Additional photos of the Honey Lane seax, that I took at the British Museum, can be found in this topic:

Seaxes found at the British Museum

There is also plenty of discussion in there about the "bend" in the tang.

The tang is highly corroded on that sax, and in particular in the transition to the blade there is very little metal left. A lot of swords and knives are found bend out of shape, and in the earlier days it was common to bend them back again. Bending out of plane straigthening is a lot easier then in plane straigthening. So it's possible that it was a lot more deformed when it was originally found.

Also keep in mind that a lot of knives found in London are from rubbish dumps, so they represent knives that have been thrown away. So it's also possible that it was already damaged when it was in use, though unless there was a serious defect in the metal, or it had been inside the forge (or in a fire), I don't see how that could have happened. But as this is the only broken back sax with such an out of line tang, I'm pretty certain that this is damage, not the original intended shape.

A couple of months ago a similar discussion was going on and I proposed that the tang was meant to be at this angle, but looking at the bottom of the tang in the pictures I would also agree that it looks like damage. The blade is likely to be mainly wrought iron and so this can bend quite easily.

That being said these were general purpose knives, especially the smaller ones and for any who have tried cooking activities with a seax it is quite clear that the edge line being in line with the bottom of the handle makes a lousy tool for this purpose and the cranked tang would help in this regard considerably. Maybe damage, maybe deliberate but I would say that the inherent value of the metal means for certain it would not be thrown away but recyled or repaired so it was probably ultimately a lost object.

First of all, thank you for the replies. It's always good to hear fresh thinking on the subject.

What makes it odd to me is that the tang is fairly robust for the type. Inclusion-rich or over-heated steel could be to blame.

Perhaps our poor ceorl (I bet he had a spear, in addition to sax and shield) found himself with a sax rather out of whack after his last battle, but then he did throw everything he had into that one blow, only to hit the shield instead of the guy behind it.... I have inflicted similar damage to a knife of roughly the same size due to youthful enthusiasm many years ago. I have seen an antique bowie knife that was deliberately made that way (and it also is the only one of its kind), so I can't rule it out. Best to never say never when it comes to saxes, I've learned.

Perhaps someone got tired of banging their knuckles on the cutting board.

Roughly 20cm (8 inch) blade, then, and not thin by any means.
In which museum is this knife located, perhaps they could give me the measurements?

Hi Jeroen, this seax isn't all that small when you see it in real life. I personally think this would primarily have been a tool for applications such as skinning and gutting animals, it seems a little robust for a scramaseax.

Lundenwic was, throughout most of the Anglo-Saxon Period, just a small trading and agricultural village. It gained more political and commercial importance by the 10th century, but still was hardly a metropolis.

It is, of course, entirely feasible that it may have been an eating utensil but it just seems too big to me. There are lots of seaxes which have been identified as food knives (scramaseax) and they are in general much smaller this.