Hello!

Have anyone tried any of the pieces from Arma Bohemia? They have several goodlooking things on their site. The price-range is very wide and I was thinking of trying on of their swords for blunt-fighting.

Does anyone have experience from any of their products?
Here is the webpage: http://www.armabohemia.cz/

Best wishes/
Anders

they have added many new pieces since I last looked at it. If that's crap I'll eat my hat. There are so many gorgeous things there I don't know where to start. And very reasonably priced too. Check out the €10000 gothic armor, and the rapiers and the polearms. The new pollaxe has to be the best repro i have seen.

I particularly like this helmet.

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Interestingly enough, the scabbard pictures are identical to those at www.swordcutler.com ... It'd be quite interesting to know who makes those scabbards.

Rabbe

Well as I said there are several nice object, some are extreme like these ones:

http://www.armabohemia.cz/imgnew/epees/reste/kladivo.jpg

Good combination between warhammer and gun, just awsome! The finish of the piece is crazy!

http://www.armabohemia.cz/imgnew/armures/zbroje/gantelet6v.jpg

Have anyone seen a pair of gauntlets that have more advanced deisgn. Well its worth the money I guess..

Well, Thanks for the answers!

/Anders

I met Jakub Malovany (boss of Arma Bohemia) just 2 months ago in Prague. He was on his way to some German medieval festival, but he kindly arranged a meeting and showed me all the stuff he was intending to sell there. So I had the chance to wield some of the stuff from his program and have a short talk with him.

I must say that I wasn’t surprised that my wielding of swords on Keplerova street, just behind the Hradcani – Prague castle (also I believe residency of Czech president) didn’t attract any attention. Czechs are cool about medieval weapons.

I wielded EP 20, archers’ cutlass from XVth century and a longsword that is not in his catalogue. Prices there and then were 200 Euro for cutlass and 250 for longsword.

[ Linked Image ]

Swords were rebated to a quite thin edge (about 1 mm), had nice distal taper and very good balance and feel in the hands. I had some reservations about using sword with such a thin rebated edge in a “stage combat” – edge on edge contact, but I have since then seen other Czech swords that can do that without much damage to either of swords. Finish was quite nice, and hilt components were beautiful – very clean lines and “hand made” look.

I also saw a couple of daggers, made by Pavel Moc (also not on the page), and they were also very nice. Unfortunately quite expensive, but I was very tempted to buy one. My girlfriend bought a small eating knife with scabbard, and it is well made (and also quite cheap).

Arma Bohemia don’t make the items on their page themselves – they commission other Czech smiths to do the work for them, but in most cases they provide the design and specifics. On their page you can see works of Radek Lobko, Pavel Moc and other Czech smiths whose names currently escape me – those two swords that I handled were made by some new smith that works only for Arma Defensiva, so they are slowly becoming real makers of medieval equipment.

Jakub Malovany is really nice guy, he speaks English fluidly and is eager to debate and explain everything about the weapons he is selling. He told me that custom made swords and other equipment would not be much more costly than program on his home page. I would have no reservation about ordering items from him, but unfortunately he is little above my price range.

And he didn’t look a bit disappointed when we parted but spent only 25 Euros for his stuff. :D

I was in e-mail contact with Jacub and his responses were informative and very quick (he was even in contact during the weekend). He provided me with the sketch for the design for the B23 glaive. This was very nice of him. And according to him the order completion time is about 2 months. I only asked bout the glaive so I do not know what the waiting time for the other weapons would be like.

As a result I will be getting that glaive (or a similar design of my own choosing) very soon.

Alexi

Good looking stuff indeed. That combination Warhammer-handgun is a fairly good rendition of a pair in the Doge's Palace in Venice... the difference being that the originals are VERY early wheellocks. They date from probably prior to 1520, so very cool pieces. Anyway, the matchlock version looks to be otherwise line for line, and an excellent way of making a "reproduction" that is still affordable as well as period.

Good stuff, thanks for posting the links, guys!

Gordon