[Mike Arledge]

Windlass XIIA

Stats measured by myself

Weight: 2 lbs 14.5 ounces
Overall length: 44 and ½ inches
Blade length: 36 inches
Hilt length: 8 and ½ inches
Grip length: 6 and ¼ inches
Crossguard width: 9 and ¼ inches
POB: 7 inches from guard
COP: 23 inches from guard
Blade width at cross: 1 and 9/10 inches
Blade width at COP: 1 and ½ inches

Impressions:
When I first saw this sword in the newest MRL catalogue, I liked it a lot. I found it visually striking, and felt compelled to take a risk in buying it, even though I had sworn never to buy an MRL piece again after bad experiences with several pieces over the years which included owning: The Mercenary, the Damascus Viking, the Leuterit Viking Sword and the Historical Excalibur. I felt this piece might be different if it was done right. I purchased it from Ryan at kultofathena.com. I must say my expectations were low to not disappoint myself, but as I think you will see, this is a heck of a piece from Windlass.
http://www.kultofathena.com/product~item~5009...+Sword.htm
http://www.museumreplicas.com/websto...type_xiia.aspx

Windlass classifies this sword as an XIIA. For more info on this typology, read this from myArmoury.
http://www.myArmoury.com/feature_spotxii.html
I think it is safe to call it a war sword in shape, and it is close in proportions to say an Albion Baron (albeit slightly smaller in length and weight)
http://www.albion-swords.com/swords/...baron-xiia.htm
The Windlass XIIA clearly has tremendous blade presence. The Albion Baron, which is a longer sword, has a closer POB by almost 2 inches, but both share a similar COP at just about 23 inches from the Crossguard. I have not handled the Baron, but I hope this illustrates some of the technical aspects of the Windlass XIIA and can also give more meaning to my following comments on the handling of the XIIA.

I genuinely feel it handles well. To provide an idea of its weight, it weighs roughly the same as a Kris Cutlery Viking sword, but is a good 6-7 inches longer. It has a subtle distil taper that is hard to notice visually, but clearly is there as can be seen in the reduction of almost a half inch in the width of the blade from Crossguard to Center of Percussion. Its not a slow handling sword, and I feel fairly confident wielding it one handed for certain drills. I have not sharpened it yet, but the factory edge was sufficient for making messy work of plastic milk jugs. I think once a proper edge is placed on it, it will cut quite well against soft targets and possibly against harder targets depending on how hard the edge is. It has some flex to the blade, but it is not nearly as whippy as past Windlass offering have been known for. In fact, I think its flex is appropriate to its type and an almost dedicated cutting sword.

Conclusion:
I did not know what I was expecting in this sword after having bad luck with Windlass pieces in the past. Something drew me to this sword though, and I genuinely like this purchase a lot. For $170, I don’t think you can be too hard on it, and its quite a good buy at the price compared to similar offering like Hanwei and Gen 2 options. This just does not look, or feel, or perform like the previous Windlass offerings. I hope it signals a new trend is sword production from Windlass. Obviously, its not an Albion, Atrim or the like, but its nice, genuinely nice. I plan to put a good edge on it, commission a proper scabbard, and possible age the blade a bit to take away some of the blade polish. I will definitely have it on display with my nicer pieces.

[Roger Hooper]

That is a strange pommel and guard combination to put on a XIIa. I don't think they were used until type XV's started to show up. On the other hand, I bet there were some old but still usable XIIa blades that got rehilted with new furniture types

[Mike Arledge]

Roger,

It is an odd historical combination, but at least Windlass is trying some new combinations as well as trying to offer swords that fall into typologies.

I kinda like thinking of it as a rehilted heirloom

[David Sutton]

I recently bought the Windlass Ulfberht sword and I have to say for the price i was pretty impressed with it. I'd heard quite a few scare stories about their products in the past but recently their reputation seems to have improved. So as someone who is fairly new to the hobby I decided to take a risk, see for myself, and ordered it from Kult of Athena. It took a while to arrive seeing as I live in the UK (incidently something which has puzzled me is the lack of a Windlass agent in the UK or Europe) this was to be expected. When I got it unwrapped I found it to be quite a nice sword. The guard is a bit on the thick side and the diamond cross section at the point is not entirely accurate for a type X . Its also a little on the whippy side but I think it gets away with this being primarily a cutter. Its light and surprisingly well balanced with just enough blade presence. I think I'm going to re-wrap the grip at some point and I've removed the mirror look of the blade and given it a nice satin finnish, Albion stylee. overall I'm glad I got it.

Mike, your type XIIa looks like quite a sword. With a little work on the aesthetics it should be a nice piece I hope you post some pics of it when its done. As to the rehilting, the Japanese used to pass blades down as family heirlooms, rehilting them. I don't see why the same thing wouldn't happen in Europe.

[Max von Bargen]

It's nice to see that Windlass is making more fullered blades. A while ago, when I was looking at swords around that price range, pretty much all of them had a central rib instead.

For that price, it sounds like you got a winner!

Max

[Bruno Giordan]

[Glen A Cleeton]

Hi Mike,

You wrote, in part:

[Mike Arledge]

[Glen A Cleeton]

Well, er ummmmm…

Does the blade seem to exhibit distal taper? Something I've found handy to have around over the years are vernier calipers. These most often can measure inside and outside dimensions and are a handy piece of kit. From simple rule calibrated to more fancy dial indicators that let you get perzactumon, they are not real costly. Even without, you can usually eyball it with a ruler as well. Just lay it on a flat surface and sight across the thickness to the ruler.

Cheers

GC

[Mike Arledge]

Just eyeballing it, I would think no, but I will try measureing it as well to know for sure.