Hi All,

I have wanted to make this dagger for years and finally I had the chance and here we are....

These are two medieval/renaissance quillon daggers based on the A811 from the Wallace collection.

The Dagger in the red sheath is very closely based on the Wallace dagger and is dated around 1530. The dagger in the black sheath is a variant I made for a client, using a similar guard to the Albion Munich sword to enable the dagger to be a companion piece for the Munich.

The A811 is an iconic dagger with its unusual 'fleur de lys' pommel, amazingly gothic horn grip and detailed quills. The blade is 316mm/12.5" long and is very string, being 8mm thick at the guard and only gently tapering down to leave a strong needle sharp point.

The daggers were paired with sheaths suitable to their period using custom fabricated shapes and hangers. Whether the dagger was ever worn by a Landsknecht we will not know, but the quillons are very Landsknecht and so I had to nod at this with the file detail on the chape and the woven suspension detail on the sheath.

Needle sharp razor, or razor sharp needle?

Technically the piece was not as challenging as it looks perhaps, but the work had to be slow and careful and so took ages, but I hope you like the result.

Any questions or comments are very welcome.

Regards

Tod


The red sheathed dagger will be on my 'in stock' page shortly.

https://todsworkshop.com/collections/in-stock

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Beautiful work as usual, Tod.

I find the way the pommel and grip interact very striking, I can see why you have wanted to work on this piece.

Forgive my ignorance but what is the purpose of the line 1/3 up the blade? Is it some kind of half ricasso?

Simon H wrote "Forgive my ignorance but what is the purpose of the line 1/3 up the blade? Is it some kind of half ricasso?"

Firstly welcome and second not ignorant at all, however I can't really answer that.

This is primarily a thrusting dagger and so the blade is strong and stiff all the way to the tip and a diamond blade is necessarily more flexible than a single edged blade and so this blade will be stiffer than if the diamond grind went all the way back. However the blade is plenty stiff enough either way, so it really does not serve a purpose here.

On some weapons like rapiers you get a blunt 'ricasso' area so you can 'finger the guard' and get a finger in front of the guard and this helps point control in fencing type fighting. It may be the case here...

Other weapons like bollock daggers, which are primarily working knives, sometimes have a blunt back, which is useful to press down on, but having a diamond tip is useful for penetration, so they compromise by having a blade shaped similar to this one.

In the case of this dagger, as I say, I can see no purpose other than looks, but please chime in if any thinks different.

Tod