This may be a stupid question...but I was looking at rapiers over at Arms and Armor's website and I noticed that in most if not all of them looked as though the hilt was sitting on a naked tang...a tang far longer than the one handed rapier hilt. Since many of these rapiers had blades that could pass for type XVIII longswords, I was wondering if it is possible that early rapiers were remounted longsword blades.

Or, perhaps there is some other reason for this "naked tang" effect?

Hi Nathan,

As the majority of my "knowledge" revolves around longswords, I am not unfamiliar with the ricasso. However, looking at the Arms and Armor rapiers, which I believe are highly accurate recreations of originals, I noticed that many of these rapier ricasso taper the way a tang would (narrowing towards the pommel).

I have never seen ricasso with a backwards profile taper on anything other than rapiers. If you remove the hilt of a narrow bladed longsword and peen a three ringed rapier hilt on it, the resulting sword would look identical to a rapier, tapering ricasso and all.

Surely this cannot be coincidence?

Interessting indeed!!!! :) I´m temted too agree with Michael on this.

What of this: Tangs aren't finished (polished), whereas the ricasso is finished as the rest of the blade.

Regardless:

Do I think that longswords have been re-hilted with compound hilts? Yes, absolutely.

Do I think that rapiers are re-hilted longswords? No.

The National Museum in Edinburgh Scotland that has a sword that might fit this idea og modifying old swords for new styles. I will look for picturesof it for you. There were fullers running down most of the original blade and later it was modified and they run to the point now...

RPM

I'm hard-pressed to understand why it woudn't be easier to just slightly reshape the tang if one wanted to mount a new hilt. In fact, if one is creating a hilt, I don't know why one wouldn't simply make it to fit whatever blade it was made for. Just slapping together spare parts without modification when lives are on the line just doesn't pass the smell test, in my opinion. As for the upward taper of some ricassos--a less dramatic step down to the tang might have implications for the durability of the tang. Plus, a narrower ricasso might better accomodate the finger, but leaving it wide where it meets the blade again may have implications for the strength of the forte, not to mention balance.

Hi all,

I'm not thinking in terms of general practice...more like initial practice that then set the style. For example, say you have a few people walking around with these fancy hilted swords, the blades of which are not as thin as they eventually become. Some young fashion conscious noble sees these lovely swords and hears about these exotic new fencing styles and wants in. He looks at his outdated longsword and says "well the blade is pretty much the same, I just need a new hilt". So then he goes to a cutler, commissions a rapier hilt, and has his sword remounted. Others follow suit, resulting in many rapiers with naked tangs. The tangs would be rough, but how hard would it be to polish them, and would that not be part of the cutler's job when remounting?

When the next "generation" sees the rapier, they see an exposed tang and that becomes ingrained as the way to make rapiers. Therefore, next generation rapiers use that style of ricasso.

Would this not have also happened when hilt rings became popular? Even though low quality swords became cheap during the late medieval period, expensive masterwork weapons would still command a high enough value that the frugal gentleman would be loathe to discard them rather than rehilt them.

There are parellels in the history of Japanese swords. Remounting blades was standard pratice. Many antique nihonto have multiple holes in the tangs despite the use of one mekugi in the fittings, tangs that have been shortened and are flat at the ends (tachi remounted as katana, large katana remounted as smaller ones to meet regulations, etc.). There are even more extreme examples...katana remounted as pole arms (naginata) and vice versa. Spears as daggers, etc.

At the very least, it's seems like a sensible hypothesis for trying to explain the reverse tapering ricasso used on many rapiers.

Well, methinks we'll never know for sure.
But even if it was a fashion-conscious noble it was probably a fairly isolated incident. It just doesn't seem practical, unless it's a show-off piece and in that case wouldn't it be easier to have a cheap one made that looks good, but lacks durability, etc?
Just my 2 cents.

I just found this in Tom Leoni's new article (great read, linked elsewhere in this forum):

Quote:

Throughout the 16th and 17th Centuries, it was quite common to outfit old blades with newer hilts and vice-versa. This means that swords that were born as "swords" could have become "rapiers" just by virtue of having their hilt or their blade replaced. This is another reason why it is imprecise to say that a rapier is only a weapon with a thin blade, or only one with a complex hilt, or only one that has a civilian thrusting blade as opposed to a military one more apt for the cut. These characteristics were mixed and matched at the time, as surviving examples prove; which is further evidence that Italian swordsmen of the time thought of a sword as a sword--with a longer, shorter, thinner, wider, lighter, heavier, military or civilian blade perhaps--but a sword nonetheless.

The reason I specifically asked about longswords is mostly because of the length of rapier blades...though my knowledge of antique swords is limited, I have not seen many single handed swords with 36+ " blades. I should probably have said "medeival swords, such as longswords".

As for simply slapping on a rapier hilt, that is not what I had in mind. In Japan, when swords were rehilted, tangs were modified extensively. The same could be done to a longsword (or single hand sword) when remounting it, and there is no reason to think that if it was done, the sword would not have been modified to work with the new hilt.

I tried slapping a rapier hilt on an Atrim 1506 blade. Things didn't fit particularly well, but despite that and despite the length of the tang, the result was not too terrible. If I really wanted to remount this sword as a rapier, I would have to shorten the tang and modify the hilt to set correctly on it, but I think it can be done, and with favorable results.

Interesting question.

Didnt Oakeshott mention something about old blades being remounted numerous times over? I dont know if this transfers to the question at hand, where weapon types are changing drastically, but I will dig through the books to see if I can find the reference.