Here are the two swords that I looked at today at a local museum in Bradford, called Bolling Hall.

Sword 1

Catalogue Description: English Commonwealth Rapier
Steel
1630-60
Donated to Bolling Hall Museum in 1928, from a local family in Ilkley, Bradford.

And that was pretty much all that the museum had on the sword. They had no records about where the swords had come from before hand. The curator said that the swords they had in the museum came from old established families that donated them to the museum in the mid 1920’s.

See this thread for a bit of initial discussion on this sword: http://www.myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=13163

And I promised some stats on the sword, so hopefully these are detailed enough for you.

Total length: 35 2/8“
Blade length: 29 ½“
Weight: 1lb 2oz.
P.o.B: 3 6/8“
P.o.P: 19 2/8”
Pommel Horizontal Diameter: 1 2/8”
Pommel Vertical Diameter: 1 3/8”
Tang width at inside of the guard: ½”
Tang width at connection to pommel: 3/8”
Width of tang button: 3/8”
Height of tang button: 2/8”
Thickness of Guard shell: 1/8”
Thickness of knucklebow: 3/16”

Blade measurements:

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So, the sword handled fantastically, despite the lack of wood core or any kind of handle. It was so light and swift but it did feel like there was a bit of a lack of presence to the blade. As you can see in the pics the guard was not symmetrical with the larger part of the guard on the right hand side.

There were no makers marks that I could see anywhere on the blade.

What do people think of the small indentations for about the first 3rd of the blade?

I’m going to try and do more research into these swords (time permitting), but if you have any more questions I’ll try to answer them on here or via P.M.

And the Pics:

Side view of handle and guard.
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Rear view of handle and guard.
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Front view of handle and guard plus first 1/3rd of blade showing pattern of indentations.
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Head on view of the guard
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Full sword
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Sword number 2 will follow tomorrow hopefully!!!

Sword Number 2

Museum Catalogue Description: Basket Hilt 17th Century

Iron

Donated by a local family.

As before the information on the sword is very sparse. Other than the fact that it is from a local family and an heirloom, nothing else is known. My personal idea is that it is not 17th but 18th century. Nothing really to substantiate this other than various bits of literature that I have read. Will do some more research but if any of you have a better idea please post!

Okay, here are the stats for this one:

Total Length: 32 2/8”

Blade Length: 26 3/8”

Blade: Single edged curved blade with back edge fuller.

Fuller length: 18 ½”

Curve of the blade from a straight line: 1 2/8”


Blade taper stats.
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Weight: 2 lbs spot on

P.o.B: 1 2/8”

P.o.P: 16 7/16”

Pommel Horizontal Diameter: 1 9/16”

Pommel Vertical Diameter: 1 8/16”

Width of Pommel Button: 4/8”
Height of Pommel Button: 2/8”

Handle: Appears to be fish skin(?) cover with a wood core. The wrap is wire (unknown metal). Light steel wiring at either end. Leather liner still remains, about 1/3 of full basket can still be covered with leather liner.
Width of handle at:
Blade: 1”
Midpoint: 1 1/8”
Pommel: 1”

Height of handle at:
Blade: N/A
Midpoint: 1 2/8”
Pommel: 1”

Thickness of basket: This is not uniform throughout the basket. On the larger flatter areas the basket the thickness hovers around 1mm whilst the bars are around 4mm (sorry for changing from imperial to metric!!! One of the problems being British, using both interchangeably :-S).

Width of basket from mid point of handle to widest point: 4 ½”
Height of basket from bottom to top of right hand side: 4”
Height of basket from bottom to top of left hand side: 2 15/16”

Pics.

Overall Sword.
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Basket from the front:
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Basket from the left side:
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Basket from the right side:
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Basket from underneath:
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Basket from top:
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Any comments of questions most welcome.