[Elling Polden]

Hi everyone.
Does anyone have specs on historical civilian or military smallswords?

[Glen A Cleeton]

Hi Elling,

There is the Bashford Dean catalogue scanned online that offers some basic specifications for fancy smallswords.
http://swordlinks.com/courtswords/intro.html

I have just one trefoil bladed dress sword and it is not really comparative to swords from the 17th and 18th century. There are other books such as Neumann's Swords and Blades of The American Revolution but again, the specifications are kind of sparse. It is though a good pictorial book of many variations.

There there is what one may consider a true form of smallswords. Some lump military epee and spadroons in the bucket and to me, that is not looking at what the genre of smallsword really embodies. While there are hilts with ovoid and flattened diamond shaped blades that do still falll into the parent form, hilts without pas d'âne (in my mind) need not qualify but some feel they do. Then you have pas d'âne that evolve from large to quite small during the 18th century and become more useful (but almost vestigial/obsolete) in a different handling characteristic. The evolution then somewhat embraces that late 18th and then 19th century military epee qualify as smallswords but in truth, the form no longer really acts as one any more. There are some threads here that discuss the French soldier's swords with ovoid or diamond blades with pas d'âne but I feel this again kind of misses the point (truly intended) of the trefoild bladed smallsword.

There is a wide range of blade width for trefoil blades and the Colichemarde types maintain that geometry. Aside from the Colichemarde, there are still quite wide blades that are as much as an inch wide or so, which os quite broad for a trefoil form.

Cheers

GC

[Scott Woodruff]

http://swordscollection.blogspot.com/2012/03/...ntury.html That's it for now, I'll add more as I find it. It seems that blades can range from 70-85cm long. http://metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-c...n_IHN.html

[Scott Woodruff]

Another:http://www.hoeglund.org/vapen/vaerjor/Solingen_IHN.html
Edit: sorry, don,t know why link is not working. The specs are total length: 94cm, blade length: 78cm, max blade width: 18mm, max blade thickness: 8mm, fuller length: 14.5cm, flattened rhomboid section.

[Glen A Cleeton]

There is alos this thread , wherein a lot of information and pictures have been shared .
http://www.swordforum.com/forums/showthread.p...mall-Sword

One of the few photos of these in my files was a piece selling through Sunny Tampa some years ago. I dropped the ball in not finding a way to get it (it went fairly cheap). This is at the large end of the category with a blade longer that 32" and a blade quite wide. A good fighting sword size. There is another I had watched too late and if I remember where in my files I put it, will add here.

Cheers

GC