I made this Hanger or Hunting Sword in XVII-XVIIIc style about 5 years ago as a hobby project and posted it on myArmoury for discussion (the thread was lost in the site crash next year, unfortunately).
I’ve been at knife/sword making and remounting as a hobby for almost 20 years on and off, lately finishing maybe one or two projects a year. Since I haven’t sold any in a few years, I now have several swords and daggers just sitting around gathering dust. Will be putting some of them up for sale, this is the first one.
The story behind the project – I wanted to produce a kind of short sword that a XVII-XVIIIc gentleman in England or more likely American colonies would be able to take with him on a militia officer service and use as a close combat weapon; as a tool (machete like tasks for the sword, by-knife for eating and small jobs) in a wilderness; and looking good enough to just wear around a town, too.
I don’t have a setup for making blades (not above a few inches at most) so I looked around for a suitable blade to reuse, not too expensive but strong and sharp. I chose a Kris Cutlery Pinuti (a Philpino sword, they don’t make this exact style anymore) because this is just the perfect short sword blade shape for me. Short enough to be handy, long enough to be effective. Thick enough for parrying blows but a lot of distal taper so not too heavy. Pointy and stiff enough for thrusting but wide and flat at the sweet spot for cutting. Also I used several KC blades over the years and found that they make strong, solid quality blades with no extra frills. So I chose this blade for practical considerations, even though it isn’t a typical shape for European swords of the period.
Vital stats:
- Sword blade 20 ¾” long; 1 ¼” wide at the base, 1 ¾” widest point; ¼” thick at the base with strong distal taper. 5160 steel (KC used it almost exclusively back then, not anymore), differentially hardened. I finished it to a kind of fine satin polish (not mirror). Very sharp.
- Sword handle 5” long of stag horn; with shell guard (soldered in place), buttcap, spacer, and nut of nickel silver.
- By-knife 3 ¼” blade, 3 ½” handle, made in matching style of stag horn and nickel silver. It’s a quality carbon steel blade with Scandinavian grind (made in Norway if I remember right), razor sharp like most of those.
- Scabbard has a solid poplar wood core, with compartments for sword and by-knife (sword’s shell guard is holding knife handle in place when scabbarded).Covered in thin brown leather, sort of “antiqued” finish. Scabbard fittings were fabricated from sheet nickel silver, bent and soldered. The hook on the front is to hold the scabbard in place when carried in a frog or baldric of any kind. Overall it is exactly the kind of setup you see on European hunting swords of the period in various museums.
- I included a simple leather frog to be carried on a belt (see pictures under the link below).
See the attached picture, and more pictures are available here: http://public.fotki.com/aindman/hanger-or-hunting-s/
I am asking $350 for the set: sword, by-knife, scabbard and a leather "frog" to carry it on a belt. The price isn't much more than the cost of materials that went into the project, actually.
Plus shipping, say $20.
Preferred payment method is by PayPal.
If you are interested, feel free to ask any questions.
Alex.
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