myArmoury.com - sword DIY project (in progress)

Posts: 443 Location: Granby (QC) canada

Tue 03 Nov, 2020 1:22 pm

sword DIY project (in progress)

Hello people, not active much but i recieved a nice blade from DSA yesterday for a project of mine. i'm going for a stacked set of fittings made of mild steel and horn. the guard will be very compact at 75mm long for a 55mm wide blade. for now with a planned handle of 9 or 9.5 cm long (i could go for 10cm even) the tang shows a lot of promise. the blade is 5160 so it's nice to not worry that much about stains and rust with it for the moment. (not having a scabbard yet and all...)

i planned to either leave it plain or add some kind of inlay made with paper staples. not sure though about the shape of the fittings edge wise... the easiest and less time consuming would be to keep the horn flat and bevel the mild steel to make a kind of tri-faced edge ( if you know what i mean...) i planned to seal the fittings with epoxy (at least the horn)

the fittings's plates are cut to lenght mostly. pommel needs a bit of grinding since it's a few mm too long compared to the horn plate lenght of that part. here's a few pictures of the project for eye candy :)

thanks for looking and any advice would be appreciated :)

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M. Adair Orr

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Posts: 97

Tue 03 Nov, 2020 5:12 pm

I don't know anything about this style of sword, but the proportions look nice to my eye. Always nice to see DIY projects. Thanks for sharing and I look forward to seeing the progress.

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Spenser T.

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Posts: 78 Location: Vancouver, Canada

Tue 03 Nov, 2020 9:17 pm

Is it going to be like a Frankish migration era sword? I love the early Germanic sword hilt style.

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Etienne Hamel

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Posts: 443 Location: Granby (QC) canada

Wed 04 Nov, 2020 5:30 am

Spenser T. wrote:

Is it going to be like a Frankish migration era sword? I love the early Germanic sword hilt style.

i'm aiming more for something like a migration era inspired rendition of the sword of lesja. i like the compact style of that sword. i like type m swords even though i don'T know if the sword of lesja can be considered one.

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Spenser T.

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Posts: 78 Location: Vancouver, Canada

Wed 04 Nov, 2020 2:12 pm

Etienne Hamel wrote:

Spenser T. wrote:

Is it going to be like a Frankish migration era sword? I love the early Germanic sword hilt style.

i'm aiming more for something like a migration era inspired rendition of the sword of lesja. i like the compact style of that sword. i like type m swords even though i don'T know if the sword of lesja can be considered one.

I took a look at the sword of lesja, very cool.
Looking forward to the progression of your project... should be a great quarantine activity. I hope you guys over in QC are doing okay.

Isn't darksword based in your province? were you able to just pop in and pick the blade up?

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Etienne Hamel

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Posts: 443 Location: Granby (QC) canada

Wed 04 Nov, 2020 2:42 pm

Spenser T. wrote:

Etienne Hamel wrote:

Spenser T. wrote:

Is it going to be like a Frankish migration era sword? I love the early Germanic sword hilt style.

i'm aiming more for something like a migration era inspired rendition of the sword of lesja. i like the compact style of that sword. i like type m swords even though i don'T know if the sword of lesja can be considered one.

I took a look at the sword of lesja, very cool.
Looking forward to the progression of your project... should be a great quarantine activity. I hope you guys over in QC are doing okay.

Isn't darksword based in your province? were you able to just pop in and pick the blade up?

ok as can be with the circumstances though having 50% of canada's covid cases is just plain bad... some people think it's a government conspiration or it's an hoax and the current situation is pretty much because of that :\

yes DSA is in my province, actually about an hour drive or so, i ordered it online though for convenience since i don't drive. :lol:

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Spenser T.

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Posts: 78 Location: Vancouver, Canada

Wed 04 Nov, 2020 9:16 pm

Yeah I see a lot of pictures on my news feed of anti-mask protests which are apparently out in Montreal. Looks like a crazy city. Hopefully the crazies can motivate you to stay inside and work on your sword! Something positive from this mess, eh?
Anyhow, there's a good few people who have roots in QC around here (and families who still live there), and my Quebecois friends have always been kind to me, so I really hope you guys are going to be alright. Best of luck!

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Etienne Hamel

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Posts: 443 Location: Granby (QC) canada

Sat 07 Nov, 2020 1:43 pm

the more i progress in the fittings and the more i have a question in my mind... i saw some fittings that had the ''edges'' (tips) angled and the sides fla, the type C fittings and was wondering if it would be a possible route to go.... the style would be reminiscent of a type C guard but with certain curves in the profile like a type R or Q if you guys know what i mean. same for the pommel...

my first plan was to angle the metal plates everywhere but it's already a lot of work to just make the plates conform to the horn plate with only a file since i don't have a belt sander (which i would definitely use if i had one... sigh...) ^^'

i still have to fit the second steel plate of the pommel to the horn before starting the guard... i'll use the hack saw to cut most of the corners for the guard. using the angle grinder with a low table vice really hurts the back while using a hacksaw doesn'T really put a strain on anything for me...

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Etienne Hamel

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Posts: 443 Location: Granby (QC) canada

Tue 10 Nov, 2020 11:19 am

update! i bought some oak for my grip and scabbard, i thought i had made a mistake so i searched a bit on this website and found that there was occurence of oak being used for both the grip and scabbard so it doesn't seem that far off which makes me pretty happy actually :) https://sagy.vikingove.cz/wood-species-used-for-sword-grips/

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T. Diamante

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Posts: 70 Location: United States

Fri 20 Nov, 2020 8:38 am

I was hoping to read that list of woods used but it looks like the website is under maintainence. Do you remember some of it by chance? :)

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Etienne Hamel

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Posts: 443 Location: Granby (QC) canada

Sun 20 Dec, 2020 2:47 pm

T. Diamante wrote:

I was hoping to read that list of woods used but it looks like the website is under maintainence. Do you remember some of it by chance? :)

i have no trouble getting on it but sure i can tell.

will note here the different stuff written. some of them aren'T precise so a bit of imagination will be required for those... for grips there is beech, linden, maple, yew, deciduous wood, coniferous wood, alder, willow, karelian birch, oak, ''normal'' birch. for scabbard it was pretty much the same materials, of course karelian birch was probably not used but that's only an hypothesis of mine (if you're going to cover the sheath with leather or a kind of fabric why would you use something that has a beautiful look? )

here's the conclusion of the article: The wooden grips of the swords were made by different methods, in different shapes and also from different materials. The information contained in the catalog allows us to state that the grips were usually made from locally available wood species. However, we would like to point out four interesting facts.

The grips are more often made of deciduous trees. Maple, beech and oak are known for their strength and durability and were often used in the early Middle Ages to make handles and shafts. The choice of linden, willow or conifer shows a lack of these materials or other preferences in the design of the handle.

An interesting phenomenon is the use of two materials in the case of the H-type sword from Lednica, Poland. This solution probably has no practical or aesthetic meaning and could have a certain symbolism for the owner (Stępnik 2011: 79).

Although most of the wooden handles were covered with a textile or leather strap, two Norwegian L-type swords show that an aesthetically impressive material was deliberately chosen that was not wrapped in any way.

The last interesting point is the match or mismatch of the grip material with the scabbard material. In the case of Haithabu swords, the examined grips do not correspond to the scabbards, but in the case of the Gulli tombs, it is clear that almost all the wooden products contained in the tombs were made from the same materials. This fact may be conditioned by the unavailability of other tree species, but perhaps also by the practical handling of the material. The idea of production of all the tool and weapon handles at one time – whether before or after the death of a man buried in a grave – is very tempting.

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Etienne Hamel

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Posts: 443 Location: Granby (QC) canada

Sun 20 Dec, 2020 2:57 pm

by the way this is my progress on the pommel, the guard is barely started and my new (but still old) vice isn't bolted yet so it might take a little while until i resume... the plates aren't yet secured together unfortunately.

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