[Sjouke de Jong]

Hallo,

Allow me to properly introduce myself before I come to my questions.

I am Sjouke Mark de Jong. I am a 21 year old student from Holland. I'm new on myArmoury.com
I've only bin a member for about 4 days now, so I don't really know my way around everything yet.

I am a great Pirate enthusiast, and there most conmen used sword, "The Cutlass" tickles my fancy.

I personally like the "Shell Guard Cutlass" the most.

And I'm planning on buying one, namely the "Windlass Steelcrafts, DutchCutlass"

Now, I like this sword A LOT as it already is, but the knuckle bow's with is about 10mm,
As it would be more historical correct if it would be about 8mm.

Also It's shape is suppose to go from square to almost round, and back tosquare again.

I have seen this on a antique Dutch Cutlass I've seen on tortugatraiding.com
It dates back to 1685, as is marked in the blade:

http://www.tortugatrading.com/data/inspect.as...rd+Cutlass

Now my question is:
If I remove a small amount of the knuckle bows,
will that have an effect on the "Balance" of the sword?

I hope you can help me out,

Sjouke de Jong

[D. Austin]

Removing anything from a sword will certainly have an effect on it's balance but this needn't necessarily be a bad thing. The sword may not be "correctly" balanced in the first place, and you'll just as likely end up improving it's performance as not. Of course, I know nothing of this manufacturer, their swords may be very well designed.

If it's only a few millimetres being ground down, the effect will be minimal in any case and is probably not worth worrying about. In the end, as always, it comes down to personal taste, and I'm a firm believer in trusting your own instincts and doing what feels (and looks) right.

Good luck with your project, I'm also quite interested in pirates (and cutlasses) and it's good to find someone who shares that interest.

Darren.

[J. Pav]

I have this sword, and there's really no need to modify the hilt as far as being historically accurate. Not every hilted cutlass followed the one you described. The hilt is nice and sturdy, and looks nice, IMHO.

It's pretty blade heavy. I think a more pertinent modification would be widening the fullers, or combining them into one larger one.

[Gary A. Chelette]

I also own this blade, and it is forward heavy. My friend loves it and says it feels like it wants to hit something.
It's a good piece and solid. I would not change it at all. It's a hacking sword and it would live up to a "Pirate's Use".

[Sjouke de Jong]

Thanks a lot for the reply everyone,

I have decided to keep the knuckle bows at a width of 1 (or 1,1) cm

You where right J. Pav, after what you said I resumed my search for antique Dutch Cutlasses.

And I indeed found one... or someone I know found one.

He knows someone who oned a 17th century Dutch Cutlass.

It was the same type as the one that Rock Brasiliano
was holding on his most famous historical engraving: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afbeelding:Rock-Brasiliano.jpg

this one had knuckle bows of 1,1 cm thick.

It's shape however did go from square to almost round, and back to square again.

But the most part of it was square.

So I think Im going to give the knuckle bow (only the fron one) a slight rounding at the lower part of it.

And leave the rest as it is.

Thanks again guys, you really helped me out.

Sjouke.