The landscape of spathae blades! -- myArmoury.com

Martin Wallgren · Posted: Sun 20 Aug, 2006 6:56 am Post subject: The landscape of spathae blades!

I have finaly got the old digit out of you know what and started on my first own sword. It´s going to be a spathae for a impression of my Roman Auxilliary trooper from arlund the time of Trajan. Now, I am going to grind out the blade on this one. A local knifesmith and I made the rough shape of the blade and I are now in the stage of grinding out the fuller/fullers and edges and so forth. My cousetion now is that the plan I have for the sword is to have a short fuller aprox. the first quarter of the blad from the handle. It has a little distal taper and is also tapered about a total of 5 mm towards the point on each side. The blade has a with of 45 mm. But is this a plausiple shape of a spatha. On Peter Johnssons concept drawnings for Albions Next Generation there seem to be three totaly diffrent blades. I just wanna know so I don´t make a complete fantasy here.

Thanx in advance guys!

Martin

Matthew Amt · Posted: Sun 20 Aug, 2006 8:11 am Post subject:

Ave!

I certainly encourage everyone to make more Roman swords! Bearing in mind that I have *not* done a ton of research on the spatha, I think your plans are close but a little off. As I recall, the spatha of Trajans's times should have parallel edges, not tapered (though distal taper is certainly fine), and I don't think there should be a fuller at all. A width of about 35 mm is better, too. The blade you describe could be a spatha from the 3rd century, perhaps, or later, but that's going out of my area (and era) of expertise. So doing it just as you describe could be a perfectly good Roman sword, just a century or so later than Trajan, that's all.

Good luck with it!

Matthew

Mikko Kuusirati · Posted: Sun 20 Aug, 2006 10:39 am Post subject:

AFAIK, fullers only came about when Roman designs started mixing with the Germanic ones used by their barbarian auxiliaries; the original Roman patterns of both gladii and spathae had a flat diamond cross-section, sometimes with a reinforced point, with no fuller.

Martin Wallgren · Posted: Sun 20 Aug, 2006 10:51 am Post subject:

Shane Allee · Industry Professional

Fullers start popping up on the celtic blades during the La Tene III period.

I really can't remember too many swords that have short fullers though, that seems to be a much later concept.

Shane

Robert H. Shyan-Norwalt · Posted: Wed 23 Aug, 2006 8:09 am Post subject: Spatha-first try.

My first go round for one. I'm doing, -not done yet, a 150 layer straight lame, to flesh out a Pictish persona.