Hi

One thing that has always bothered me with a couple of my medieval sword replicas is that the pommel, either being ring- or coin-shaped, are obviously turned to shape on a lathe. The turning-process often leaves stripes that are difficult to get rid of, and the pommel is a little too perfect in its shape, if you know what I mean.

Is there any evidence that pommels or other metal work was ever turned to shape in the latter part of the medieval period? Given the tools available at the time, it would be possible, but is it likely?

Thanks,

Borger

In the case of steel or iron, forged roughly to shape and slots/holes run through with punches, then lots of filling and grinding mostly, by hand.

Option two, if it's a pommel from a cutler who is mounting a lot of similar stuff, is dies; material placed between open dies with the negative impressions of the pommel, dies are hammered and the material is forced into the cavities. Then lots of filing, grinding...

In non-ferrous stuff it could still be forged and punched, but a lot could have been rough-cast as well.

Turning was around in sort of a back-wards way to how it's thought of now, for example, I can take a pommel blank, and if you hold it just right and place it against a turning grinding wheel, the pommel will turn from the friction as well, it's called "engine turning", or used to be anyway.

Ball style and scent stopper pommels can be turned very easily this way by running a rod or stick through the tang slot, which allows the pommel to spin easily. On a scent stopper you could get a really nice roghed-out blank thats very even and would be perfect to then go on and carve and shape.

AS with most things, there are a lot of different ways to make the parts and pieces of a sword. Most are turned now because of the time factor, on some of my higher-ticket pieces, for example, that had pommels forged and hand finished, the pommels alone represented 6 or 8 or 10 hours of labour... a very expensive individual component that way, so if done on production or semi-production pieces, the end cost would be fairly unreasonably high just based on labour.

Hope that helps some