I pecked away at this for a year and decided early on to wait until it was done to post.

This is a short bastard sword in the German/Austrian style of ca. 1525, of a type that morphed or branched off into the single-purpose Richtschwert by the middle of the century.

Some rough A&A castings (undrilled, seam lines, etc.) came to me in trade and I found an interesting match for them in the latest version of the Windlass German Bastard Sword blade. That blade is broad, thin and relatively short, with a unique section of hexagonal in the upper part and changing abruptly to lenticular in the lower. You wouldn't see it before 1500 (probably not after, either) but there are some interesting blades in the early 16th c. I haven't seen a blade like this in surviving examples or art of the period, but I liked the way these parts looked and felt together, so I proceeded with the project described below in photos.

Those who have followed the thread on my thrift store by-knives now see what I had in mind for them. In one of the photos you will see that I originally planned for brass caps on those, but I decided against that.

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Finishing assembly and moving to the scabbard. You can't see the buckle well here, but it's from Tod's Foundry. I made the plate, and originally planned to use a linden/heart cutout to match my forged brass chape. The buckle is so beautiful and detailed that I decided to make the plate relatively plain. Better photos of that later.

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A slightly better view of the byknife sheaths. Finally, just for kicks I decided to see how the scabbard would look on my EBE Hauswehr. The scabbard is much too broad, but I think it looks great! Same period and culture, but a civilian sidearm that needs a scabbard set of lighter and finer construction/finish.

I'll probably have some better photos of details soon.

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Forgot the chape. This was my first attempt to forge a brass chape, so I was surprised it turned out as well as it did. Brass chapes of this type typically would have been cast, with the back open to receive a plate. I shaped it that way, but the rear turned out to be the problem. I had to redo that a few times and still didn't have a satisfactory result (this image shows my first attempt--there's a bad reflect there that makes it look distorted on the left side, but it's actually quite neatly formed.

I finally just forged a mirror-image of the front of the chape, sans decoration, and joined front and back with some appallingly bad soldering. I might revisit that part at some point, but I can live with it for now because I think the proportions, form and decoration of the front work very well.

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38.75" OAL
29.75" BL
6.5" Grip
9 3/8" Cross
2" Blade width at cross
COP 18" below cross
4.75" POB
2.08 Lbs sword only
3 Lbs. set

Sean, well that is quite an impressive upgrade of a Windlass Blade and A&A parts + all the other work on scabbard and byknives etc .....


You are getting to be as good as many a top maker, at least on how good and historical your finished projects look.

Great work Sean, you made great use of all these bits...as expected.

A bit of roping and decoration on the scabbard would have been a must, but that's just me :)

Very cool work on the scabbard shape too.

Thanks for the castings! There's a bit of roping on the risers at the top of the byknife sheaths, but none else. I agree that some subtle decoration is typical, and I tried a few things on the face of the sheaths and main body of the scabbard. The problem is that although the chamois scabbard cover polishes well, it isn't thick or stiff enough to take any significant tooling. It works better when the chamois is backed by cord or veg-tan. That's why I almost always rope risers on grips and scabbards. The first image below shows a sketch of some ideas for decoration. I completed a version of that decoration of the sheaths (minus the stars at top but with stars in place of the diamonds) and thought it looked great. It compresses too easily, though, so I just burnished it out. Some day, maybe, I'll be able to afford better leather for the scabbard. That pattern is going to turn up on a knife sheath or two, though.

As soon as the wax is good and hard I'm planning to have another go at decoration just to see what's possible at that stage. In the chape image below you can see a vestigal vertical line I didn't rub out well. I'll revisit those lines, for one thing.

The other images below show carriage of the sword on a loose belt resting on the top of the right hip and held in place by the weight of the weapon, and the Tod's Foundry buckle with my plain buckle plate (you can see why I didn't want to compete!) Tod's Foundry buckles come highly polished, by the way. The scratched and subdued finish you see here is my own.

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Here are the two main non-art historical inspirations for my scabbard. Both are relatively plain--even austere-- but obviously of good quality. I briefly planned to use a central rib on my scabbard and make a chape like the one on that Dresden Schlactschwert. I really want to make a version of that sword, though, so I'm going to hold those ideas in reserve. I leaned more toward the plain scabbard associated with the Dresden Hauswehr I commissioned from EBE, which is why my scabbard looks pretty good on the Hauswehr.

One of the things I didn't notice until I started this project is that the chappe of the Dresden Schlactschwert is shaped to completely enclose the tops of the byknives.

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Nice!

Were it up to me, I'd have colored the crossguard a nice shiny brass but I can't argue with your results!