I have recently become pretty interested in complex hilt bastard swords. In my digging around for images I was struck by the fact that pretty much all of the ones I have come across have scent stopper style or some variant along those lines.

Does anybody have an example of a complex hilt long/bastard sword that has a disk type pommel?

I can't think of any.

Any thoughts as to why that might be?

As I understand it, scent stoppers were used to keep the weight as far back from the cross as practical, and they were used for two handers and longer longswords. Moving the weight back meant that less weight could be used to achieve the correct balance and dynamics.

Was there use in later long swords a fashion thing? Did disks fall out of fashion at some point? Were disks still used on cross hilted swords?

Are there any wheel pommeled rapiers? This isn't really my period, so I am not particularly familiar with alot of examples, but from what I am familiar with it seems that complex hilted Bastard swords followed the trends going on in other complex hilted shorter swords. It seems that wheel pommels might have not appealed to the aesthetic sense of the period.

As I think about this more, I don't know exactly what makes a hilt complex. Is it anything that is added to the cross. Finger guard? One side ring? 2 side rings?

I currently have a custom sword in the works that will have a fairly simple "complex" hilt in my opinion - straight cross with 2 side rings, similar to this.

[ Linked Image ]

Again, I have only ever seen non-disk pommels matched with this style of hilt.

I think I have seen rapiers with disc pommel, but not longswords. Only addition to cross on disc pommeled swords I have seen is a finger ring (Alexandria type XIX for example).

One example below. Eltz Castle Germany.

Thanks Julian! That is interesting. I have to think it occurred but certainly does not appear to have been common. The sword at the top is really nice too, btw. I like that one a lot.