[Michael F.]

Hey everybody, I got my Albion next Gen. Crecy 2 days ago. It's been so hard to put it down and write my thoughts! I decided I'd write a myArmoury style review (minus intro)on it so here is goes.-

Overall

The Albion Next Generation line is literally "The Next Generation" of Medieval reproduction swords. I was interested in the Crecy as soon as I saw the drawing, but never hoped that I'd actually get to own it. On wednesday the UPS guy came and dropped off a big white box. I was almost too nervous to open the box! I opened it, and there was my Crecy, more perfect than I could have imagined. Albion puts a great amount of detail in their Next gen's. To my suprise, there was not one bit of patina or rust often associated with the trip to the customer. The quality and performance were beyond what I could ever had imagined.


Handling Characteristics

The Crecy is an absolute dream to handle. I'm 6' tall, and the approximately 45in. size suites me very well. One of the first things I noticed when I took it out of the box was how very light it felt. I'm not usually one for using a one-handed grip on a longsword, but the Crecy handles almost as well with one hand as it does with two. With two hands however, it's lightning fast and easily controllable. I own "The Swordsman's Companion", by Guy Winsor, and practicing drills from the book takes very little effort. Both cuts and thrusts are very quick controlled. I cut some water-filled milk jugs (not the best test of how well a sword can cut, though) and the sword just soared effortlessly through them. At 3lbs, 1 ounce, the distal taper and other dimensions make the Crecy feel like 2lbs. Thrusts are just as deadly as cuts. I was suprised at how pointy the tip was. The blade is pretty flexible (at least compared to my other very low quality sword) but stiff enough for fantastic thrusts, and probably splitting maile.

Fit and Finish

The fit and finish of this sword is extremely well-done. The hilt components are such that is is almost impossible to tell they were cast. I ordered the sword with an Oxblood color grip, after debating on dark drown. I made a good choice. The color of the grip is a dark brown with slight reddish hints in it, just as described by Albion. The grip wrap is extremely tight and the cord and risers are very well done. I must admit I was worried that the grip would be a bit short for complete comfort. I have medium sized hands and the grip fits perfectly, though the best grip is with the bottom hand half on the grip and the pommel in the palm. I literally had to search for the seam as it could *barely* be seen and cannot be felt.

The grinding on the hilt and blade are both very well done and brought to a nice even satin finish. The blade is one of the most attractive features of the sword. The blade slowly tapers to a sharp point with a deep fuller that covers roughly 4/7th's of the blade. The fuller extends into a diamond cross-section for more deadly thrusts. The wheel pommel is actually quite comfortable in the hand. The hilt is very solid and the peening on the pommel cannot be felt at all, though it can be seen, which is good, as it shows that it will not loosen as time goes on. This is certainly the fit and finish of a $510 USD sword ( plus shipping and on sale that is ).

Conclusion

This is one of the highest quality things I own. The Crecy has been called a "Jack-of-all-trades" and a "grey hound" by it's designer- noted swordsmith and author, Peter Johnsson. The Albion Next Generation anniversary sale is going on for another three days, so take advantage of it! For anyone wanting a good priced, high quality 14th century sword, the Crecy seems Ideal.

P.S. I'll have some pics and stats up tomorrow once I can size the pictures down.

[Taylor Ellis]

Thanks for the review mate. Got any pics?

The Crecy is my favourite design out of all the net gens (but the Valkyre is mighty nice). I'd own one already if I didn't have a custom XVIa from Peter on the way.

[Michael F.]

[Mikko Kuusirati]

[Michael F.]

I tried getting the photos to the allowed sizes but they became very small. I have Microsoft Office picture manager. If I try to get them lower than 125KB they get even smaller and a lot lower quality...

[C.L. Miller]

What file format are you using? 125kb is pretty hefty for a jpeg, which is what I would recommend. The full-size images included with most of this site's reviews usually top out at around 20-40kb.

[Nathan Robinson]

Forget MS Picture Manager. You need an application that can both resize (pixel dimensions) an image and save it with various file compression settings. This lets you alter your photo size and quality independant of oneanother. I use Adobe Photoshop. It's expensive and much more than the typical user would ever want to touch. There's another version, Photoshop Elements that is also awesome, even though it's scaled back from the full version. There's a trial version available direclty from Adobe. Alternatiely, you can download one of the thousands of other applications for this sort of thing, such as the free PhotoPlus 6.03. There are a million sites on the 'net that talk about graphics: many of these focus on how to resize an image and reduce the filesize to an appropriate size for Web delivery.

You can do it in MS Picture Manager, too, but the controls are, well, lacking. Read this for some insight. Your resize functions are in the "resize" section of EXPORT, and your quality settings are in the "JPEG Settings" section of EXPORT. Go to, say, 800x600 pixels (or 600x800 if it's "tall") and quality of 60 and see how large your file is. If it's too big, reduce your quality and try again.

[Michael F.]

I finally got it down. Thanks for your help guys. Turns out I was overthinking it ! Silly me. Mr.Robinson- thanks for the info. I will definately consider what you have suggested, as MS picture manager is hard to get to do what you want it to...In the meantime, I finally got it all figured out, thanks for the concern. Here are some (not very good) Pics. *Note* the grip looks black in the photo, yet in person in looks like a very nice dark brown with some red in it. I also took some rough measurements.

Overall length- 44 7/8 in.
Blade Length- 35 3/4 in.
Grip length- 6 3/4 in.
Hilt length- 9 1/8 in.
Weight- around 3 Lbs (feels lighter, plus I dont have an accurate scale.)

[Eric Spitler]

Lot better pics than I got of mine! Absolutely gorgeous sword.

[Anton de Vries]

Nice review, nice pics. Thank you. Now I need a Crecy too. *sigh*

[Nathan Robinson]

Michael: Great photos. Very nicely done!

[Michael F.]

Thanks everybody! I absolutely love the sword and everything about it. Working with Albion has been great too. I really hope to get another Albion sometime in the future, though, I don't think It'll be for a while because they're expensive (but worth it!). Again, thanks for the kind remarks.

[Greyson Brown]

Thanks for the pictures That oxblood is even darker than I had imagined. Doesn't make me regret ordering my Crecy in oxblood at all, but it does make me curious what my dark brown grips (Landgraf and Poitiers) are going to look like. And, of course, there is no substitute for seeing them in person. Man! I need Christmas to get here so I can go home on leave!!!

-Grey

[Steve Grisetti]

Michael, congratulations on your beautiful new Crecy! And kudos for your review and fine photos. I would love to have a Crecy. The XVI blade shape/proportions, as executed by Albion in this example, appeal to me very much. And your photos of the hilt show it to be more attractive than it appeared to me from the Albion site. But, there is no room in my budget for another sword at this point.