Posts: 206 Location: The Netherlands
Fri 11 Mar, 2005 5:10 am
Liebau sword
Hi guys
A couple of days ago, Kirk was so friendly to send me two scans of pages concerning the Liebau sword. He recently found them and they contained some German text and some new (to me) pictures of the Liebau sword and his reproduction. He asked me also if i could to translate this German text in to something english speaking people could read...
Alltough German is not my native tongue (only two years of education) and English isn't either, I had some fun with a small dictionary Dutch to German (how handy :lol: ) and
http://babelfish.altavista.com/ and some bigger dictionarys English Dutch and Dutch English.
So I did my best and the result you can read here... (Whiping the sweat of my forehead)...
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Liebau
Long double edged iron sword with scabbard (with bronze front- and iron backside)
On the tang fits a wooden grip. Of possible other materials such as metal, boon, horn etc. is nothing found. The grip is fastened with three iron rivets (nails). The strong/firm tang, with square cross section is at the end fitted with a bronze button that is drilled thru and riveted. At the upper end of the grip, are two the same, short, somewhat upwards bending wooden arms. These arms are also finished with bronze buttons attached with long iron nails. The other lower and of the grip, has one bell shaped wood construction (of two legs) who are also finished with bronze buttons, attached with long iron nails. All bronze buttons are decorated with three surrounding circles.
The blade tapers to a (sharp/acute?) point and has on both sides, up close to the point, a small but strong and proportioned midrib with a half-cross (?) shaped cross section. The other upper end of the blade by the grip, is also bell shaped (like the wooden legs). Some parts of the scabbard are rusted on two this.
The front plate of the scabbard is made of bronze, the iron edges (of the back plate) are shaped (and hammered) around the bronze front plate edges. The cross section of the scabbard has the shape of a “Lens” (?) (I guess we call it almond shaped). The tip/end of the scabbard has no point, and instead is horizontal and also has the same edges as the other longer sides. The bell shaped upper side has also an iron border along the bronze edge. Underneath this edge on the bronze front is a decoration engraved. These consist of one upper and one lower Lyre spiral (??) (I call it a C-shape) and between those two shapes are two S-shapes (facing each other, so one is mirrored)
From the upper curves of each S-shape come two stretched fish bladders (??) with the tip upwards
Parallel two the down going middle sections of these S-shapes. All the (S, C and bladder) shapes are filled in with dots.
On the iron back plate of the scabbard is a iron (square shaped cross sectioned) loop riveted with obviously half cross sectioned discs.
The inner side of the scabbard has some remainings of wood inside.
The bronze has a green patina with adhering rust. The bronze parts are broken and the iron is strongly rusted. The blade and the back side of the scabbard are extremely flaked/bladdered and rusted together.
The sizes:
Overall length: 92,9 cm; Hilt: 16,4 cm; the middle part of the hilt: 7,3 cm; cross section tang: 0,7 cm x 0,7 cm up to 0,9 cm x 1,6 cm.
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