[Stuart Quayle]

Dear all

I am hoping one of you knowledgable folks might be able to identify an extant(?) short sword blade, which was apparently found in the River Shannon, Ireland possibly 40 years ago.

The blade itself is in pretty good condition and has a double edge, is 34 cm long and tapers from the hilt area - (4cm across) down to 3.5cm before it finally acutely tapers to a point.

A double fuller runs along the blade length, which is only broken in the middle by an urn(?) shaped stamp mark with maybe a tiny cross therein. On one side the urn stamp has an empty square engraved box alongside it.

I have no idea if this blade has been shortened, as the current owner has fixed their own homemade hilt to it, which I have not featured in the photos.

Any help much appreciated

Regards
Stuart

[Jonathan Hopkins]

Stuart,
Do you have photos of the entire sword? Based on the photos we have, it looks like it may be a blade for a kindjal.

Jonathan

[Stuart Quayle]

Many thanks Jonathan for your kind imput

I deliberately left out the grip of the weapon from the photo, as the father of the boy who now owns the weapon thought the blade might be a Roman Gladius and roughly carved out a Roman wooden handle for it, which would not have helped the issue.

However, the father did confirm to me that the blade is indeed short - measuring only 34cm (not including it's short tang for the grip to fit into).

I have just done a Google search on the "Kindjal sword" (please pardon my ignorance I had no idea what one was) and it looks like you are right. The Russian Caucas (Georgian) short sword I found in this search showed a very similar double fuller design along it's short gladius like blade and contained an Urn type stamp with a multi-pointed spiky star therein.

You may have solved the mystery Many thanks again

Kind regards
Stuart