Hi,

For those that have seen the Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes with Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law/Watson is portrayed with a beautiful swordstick. It has a black shaft with a handle made of wood, bronze, and scrimshawed ivory. Does anyone know of someone making a decent replica... ie Master Replicas or Windlass Steelcrafts quality at least. The only one I can find is this and it looks pretty bad!

Thnx

Z

The prop in the movie was probably the same crappy thing as in the link you gave. It was not created especially for the film but rather an old tourist grade sword-cane made in India. Actual value ~$30. Quite common in the middle east. Such a shame, because good old Dr. Watson deserves a much better quality sword-cane, as was common with officers stationed in India back on the late 19th century.

At some point, I'm planning on buying a nice swordstick. Probably after I'm out of the military and a professor somewhere. Like a tweed jacket, it just seems like the sort of thing a professor/fencer should have. However, I have searched high and low for something of sufficiently high quality and utterly failed. There are the "tactical" ones (Windlass and Cold Steel make a few of these), and the cheap ones like in your link. I have resigned myself to saving a big pile of money and then approaching a custom smith (Jake Powning is my current favorite for this theoretical future project) to make me something I'd be proud to leave to a son someday.

This probably doesn't help much, but I can at least confirm that good quality off-the-shelf swordsticks are not out there as far as I've seen.

Brendan of Fable Blades would be perfect for this job. He is very good with both wood and steel...

Does anyone have an opinion on the cold steel sword canes? I have had my eye on the slender one.

http://www.coldsteel.com/swordcanes.html

http://www.swordcane.com/

You would be limited to the 440 mm blade, but rest of cane would be stunning.

Just for laughs, i asked if i would be allowed to use that particular cane http://www.swordcane.com/swordcanes/20080821b165.jpg during my recovery at my work, but they threatened to send me to shrink.

The sword canes of Cold Steel and Hanwei are both very good, personally after checking them out I prefer the Hanwei version http://www.hanweishop.com/proddetail.php?prod=SH2131 which contains a superior blade. Both are of modern design and do not appeal to those who are after the more traditional look. Legal in France, traditional cane makers there still produce them as before, prices are about half of that South African maker, and with better blades for the purpose - I like 440c in knife blades up to 8" and for long, slender 'punch' blades spring steel shouyld be desired. Very collectable also in Israel and only semi-illegal, we have several custom makers who produce fine sword canes using mostly cut-down floret and epee blades. If there's anyone intersted I can post one or two examples later.

Well, untill I'll take some photos and upload, here is one pic I already have - it belongs to a friend. Old Chinese sword-cane, probably mid-19th century. Plain wooden haft painted thick lacquere (you can see the areas where it comes off), the heandle is reinforced with two iron ferrules. the blade is jian style of very high quality, note the small leaf spring at the ricasso, this is a pressure lock. overall length is 90cm.

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Ooh! Check it out:
http://www.aliexpress.com/product-fm/42545206...alers.html
http://www.aliexpress.com/product-fm/36982436...alers.html
http://cascorblades.com/sword-canes/gil-hibbe...word-cane/

Sam Barris wrote:

...but I can at least confirm that good quality off-the-shelf swordsticks are not out there as far as I've seen.

So... I guess I stand corrected. I'll probably still go ahead with my plan, though. None of those are quite what I'm looking for.