I was thumbing through the Christie's catalogue from the sale of Howard Curtis' collection. Both feature unusual cross-sections. Unfortunately, these are the only pictures I have.

The first one is double-edged but has an unsharpened area on one side (half a ricasso?).

The other is even more unusual.

Anyone seen stuff like this before?

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That unsharpened area in front of the guard on the first one is common on sabres, though I'm more familiar with later period ones. Also, since the accompanying text says the forte is single edged, that sounds like it is in keeping with many sabres, as they are a form of backsword.

The other one is just odd though :-)

As for the second sword, I have seen a fair number of examples of what I understand to be termed "staged ricasso fullers", that is, multiple fullers in the ricasso to various depths (e.g. three very shallow fullers at the hilt, below which are two broader but deeper ones followed by a final narrow one that runs down the length of the blade) and which can be deeper/shallower in turn, but never a fullered ricasso with variable depth fullers that extreme. thanks for sharing! tr

Are you sure that the first example isn't a backsword?

Check out This Sword in the Wallace Collection. I'm not near my books, but it appears to be a nice single-edged weapon with an interesting ricasso as well.

The confusion might be thinking of forte meaning only the ricasso. I always thought it ws the third of the blade closest to the hilt. Mezzo and foible being the other two thirds. The ricasso is just a section of the forte.

Cheers

GC

Hi Chad,

I think the wording the fine, the term forte covers more than just the first couple inches: generally 1/3 or 1/2 of the blade. I think the right side of the blade in the picture (i.e. the back) is unsharpened over the entire part of the blade shown in the picture, which is all forte. Therefore, most of the forte is sharp, there is only that heel or ricasso that isn't.