Ahoi.

I was wondering if there was any way known to the folks around here, to contact Albion Swords.

When there are questions about some of their upcoming Products, the minions on the ground seem to either be disinclined to comment, or have ben ordered not to be helpful in any possible way.....

They're having a few things 'available' for 'advanced reservation' for ages now, and getting ANY information from them at all, seems to be impossible. :/

Alex

Mike Sigman has always been forthcoming & helpful over the years. I think he checks the company emails every day he's at work & responds same day, at least he does to my inquiries.

So I assume he's frequenting this forum under that name?

Does anyone know him, and has pointers? I tried to look him up on the members list, but with THOUSANDS of people starting with "M", no option for searching members by name, and only options to slowly click one page further, one single page further...another page forward...through the register, it seems a full work days worth of work to find him in the list :/

If you go to the main Albion web page you will see a link at the top labeled 'Email'.
https://www.albion-swords.com/
Odds are pretty good that Mike will be the first person to read your email if you choose to send one. No need to track him down on a forum. He's also the guy who takes orders for new swords. At least he has always replied whenever I ordered a new Albion sword.

I've never had a problem with communicating with any company in this business. None of them appears to me to be playing 'hide the ball' about their products. I'm very surprised to read your suggestion that there's anything opaque about operations at Albion, just as I would be very surprised to hear that you were having trouble getting reliable answers from any other reputable supplier.

Your best way to contact Albion is their official e-mail : quest@albion-swords.com

Mike Sigman will answer you, he has always offered me good service.

My apologies if it came across as doubting their honesty and quality.

I just asked them a long while ago if there was anything they could tell about their smallsword and rapier trainers, and whoever I had on the phone or mail at that time was, if I recall correctly, unable to comment anything except that they can't comment on upcoming items.

Even though the items have been up for advanced reservation already for years on their website at that point.

Basically I'd just apreciate if there was any comment on wether these items were coming at all, or got scrapped. I'd be interested to purchase them once they come out, even if they take some more time, but gaving absolutely no info either way pretty much sucks, and you don't wait at the bus stop, if you don't even know that there is ANY bus scheduled at all.. :/

The Maestro rapier and smallsword have been unreleased for quite a few years. It wouldn't surprise me if, like the Alaris and the German bastard swords, they are never released. Their status could be a sore point withy Albion.

A swordmaking firm would be foolish to commit to the production of a complex new product without first carefully testing for market demand. If there's not enough interest in a new type to predict more than a few score orders for it I would expect it to be shelved. The fact that prospective buyers have been invited to volunteer whether or not they're willing to buy a sword of a new type should not be misread as an unalterable commitment to put the sword into full production. That's especially true if the business is already fully occupied meeting orders for existing types. Albion certainly seems to me to be busy enough selling examples of the current lineup.

A full on dead silence on any usefull information about the projects doesn't strike me as a very good way of gauging potential customer interest, though.

I'd personally apreciate, if there'd be some answer(s) to interested potential customers. I.e. if they ask, if the project looks promising right now, or not so much etc.

Utter info black out doesn't really feel nice, imho.

------------------------------

On a vaguely related note, The market is so far lacking ANY manufacturer, be that industry or individual craftsmen, to offer any half decent real triangular smallsword blade at all.

The smiths don't offer them, the industry doesn't, except that horrid crowbar cold steel has been pushing....

If there was any quality maker for such blades, forget about handles and hilts, just the bare blades would suffice, I alone would instantly soak up 1-2 dozen blades...

As far as I can tell, it takes some specialized tools to forge true hollow ground triangular blades, which aren't worth the investment for small shops.

A large firm like Albion, especially as they machine the blades on computer controlled mills etc., selling even a comparatively small number of these would stand to have a much more economical outcome. Especially since the tooling issue with lathes and mills does not seem to be as bad as when forging.

What reportedly DOES take some effort, and maybe trial and error on a few blades (thus making a single order not viable on a small shop as opposed to production swords) is the heat treatment. A true sharp smallsword blade has so little material stretched so thin, that it is (so i am told) a very difficult thing to heat treat it without warping, bending and twisting.

Although I would expect Albion to be amongst the few who could get it right.


A.

I've been asking Mike about those two for years. I'd call from time to time, and usually run into him in person at Gen Con. I've never known Albion to not have top notch customer service, and Mike is a huge part of that. Admittedly, the length of time they've been in development has made me wonder on more than one occasion whether they'd been scrapped and they just never got around to updating their website. I have a Meyer, and it's as perfect a tool as I could have hoped for (which is about how I describe every Albion I've owned or held), but the fact I haven't given up and sought a rapier trainer elsewhere is more a factor of not having time to add rapier training to the pile of other things I need to do. Your mileage in that respect may vary.

I'd love to know, as well.