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Al Muckart
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 Posted: Thu 19 Aug, 2010 1:07 am Post subject: |
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| Nathan Robinson wrote: | | Al Muckart wrote: | | I think red was quite a difficult colour to do with medieval leathers and I'm unconvinced it was terribly common, but we'll see. |
It's in a great deal of period art. Further, it was not a difficult color to achieve in fabric. The dye was readily available.
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It's an easy (though expensive) colour to achieve in fabric with kermes or chochineal dyes, but to get them fast you need to boil them with a mordant, which obviously you can't do to leather.
You can fairly easily dye alum-tawed hides with cochineal because the alum is one of the things that will turn the dye red to begin with, but for pit-tanned leathers its much harder. The surviving red dye recipes for leather I'm familiar with are all berry-based and are extremely fugitive to light. It's complicated by the fact that the tannins in the leather itself will darken on exposure to light too. The standard way to get brown leather was to oil it and leave it in the sun.
I guess the bit I haven't worked out is whether alum tawed hide makes good sword grips or not. It makes pretty good medieval dress shoes but it isn't stable in water so it's not great for outdoor shoes unless you're one of the really rich types who doesn't need to worry about that sort of thing.
| Quote: | | Please allow me to tell you that you're being much too harsh on your skills... a trait we all probably share! |
Thanks  You're right, it's probably a bit harsh to say I'm not happy with the grip, there are bits of it that worked very well, the texture is good, the seam is good, and the skived and rolled edges at each end came out good and clean. It's probably more accurate to say I'm not entirely happy with it. If I bought a new sword whose grip had those flaws I'd expect the maker to fix them and since I have more of the leather, glue and cord and I'm not adverse to learning experiences I don't have a big problem with pulling it off in a couple or three months time and redoing it when I'm ready to fit the chappe over the scabbard mouth. If I weren't just about to move cities and change jobs I'd probably have started work on the scabbard first.
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Al.
http://wherearetheelves.net
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Matthew Stagmer
Industry Professional
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| Posted: Thu 19 Aug, 2010 12:14 pm Post subject: |
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Give credit where credit is due right? Peter your work inspired me to work up a prototype for a fishtail pommel that I can do quickly. This guy had about 30 mins of work on it. Something I can fabricate fast enough for production without having to cast it. Thanks for sharing your work.
http://baltimoreknife.com/images/broadswords/fishhnh1b.JPG
Matthew Stagmer
Maker of custom and production weaponry
Youtube.com/ThatWorks
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Peter Lyon
Industry Professional
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| Posted: Thu 19 Aug, 2010 1:00 pm Post subject: |
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| Eric W. Norenberg wrote: | Absolutely stunning. The red leather sets off the anodized aluminium very well.
Al, thanks for sharing that "in progress" photo showing the tang. I don't recall ever seeing a sword where the spine (and general section) of the blade continued through the grip like that. Can either you or Peter speak to any historical precedence for that?
Best,
Eric |
I have to say Al, that I would be pretty happy to do a grip to that standard, so I'm keen to see the final version. It is looking really good, and the proportions looks good now the extra bulk is there.
Eric, I don't know of precedents for the spine running up the tang either, though I haven't studied huge numbers of period examples either and there could be examples out there. It was really a practical consideration, that allowed me to avoid either an abrupt section change at the base of the tang, or having a blend area at the top of the blade; so I continued the spine up the tang.
Still hammering away
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Sean Flynt
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JG Elmslie
Industry Professional
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| Posted: Thu 19 Aug, 2010 3:24 pm Post subject: |
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just got to say, along with echoing that red leathers were pretty common, after blacks and browns ranging from sepia to straw in tint, green dyes are most common, but seem to be less popular, than red/vermillion hues, based off artwork, while permanant blues seem to be the rarest dyes for leather.
But much more importantly, I'd like to say that the maglite with raisers is rather inspired....
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Al Muckart
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| Posted: Thu 19 Aug, 2010 6:24 pm Post subject: |
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| Eric W. Norenberg wrote: | Absolutely stunning. The red leather sets off the anodized aluminium very well.
Sorry.
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 the main reason I used my maglite as a test piece is that it gets carried around and used a fair bit and I wanted to see how the leather would wear over time. I like it enough that I think I'll replace it when it wears out now.
| Eric W. Norenberg wrote: |
Really, that sword is unbelievable. I know a rain chappe is a very interesting bit of detail, but the pure gothic severity of the sword as it stands is, well, earthly perfection. Congratulations to both craftsmen!!!
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I like it, though I can't take much credit for the look, that's all Peter's work. The chappe is going to interrupt the lines of the sword a bit but given that the sword is going to spend most of it's time scabbarded, and the chappe is going to fit in with the scabbard I hope it ends up looking Ok. Part of the beauty of working out how to do grips is that you can change these things if you decide you don't like them.
| Eric W. Norenberg wrote: |
Al, thanks for sharing that "in progress" photo showing the tang. I don't recall ever seeing a sword where the spine (and general section) of the blade continued through the grip like that. Can either you or Peter speak to any historical precedence for that?
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Peter's already answered this but I thought I'd point out that you can see this happening with fullers on extant pieces where the fuller extendes down onto the tang a short way. Whether that has any bearing on the grind of hollow-ground blades like this I don't know.
| Eric W. Norenberg wrote: |
I think we're all excited to see scabbard, as well.
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Sadly that's going to take a while. I'm going to experiment with laminating it out of thing sections of bent wood and linen. I have some 1.5mm 3-ply birch I'm going to use because I just can't find quartersawn or riven straight grained ash in the dimensions I need to split out laths for the scabbard.
I might get the core done before I move cities in a few weeks time, but getting the leather to cover it is going to take a while since I have to order it in from pergamena and I haven't done that yet and I also have to find good fittings, or someone who can make good fittings for it. If I get the core done I can get Peter to finish sharpening the blade though, then I can cut with it, which I'm very much looking forward to.
I have no aptitude for wax carving but if shapeways.com get their high-resolution wax printer going I'll build 3d models of the parts I need and use them to print waxes for casting the fittings up in bronze which I'll tin. The scabbard chape I plan on just making out of sheet brass stock, silver soldering a knob on the end and tinning but that's months away since all my tools are packed and I haven't even found a house to move into where I'm going yet.
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Al.
http://wherearetheelves.net
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