[Ryan Renfro]

I picked up the following blade in the Albion moat sale a few months ago and have been trying to think of what to do with it. It’s short and has a good deal of profile taper so it’s probably a Geibig type 4.

Mercia Sveiter offer a replica guard and pommel from the Mileham sword (Norfolk Museum record no. NWHCM : 1949.210 : A) which appears to be Petersen type R. Although more-or-less contemporary with my Albion blade and approximately the same length (27 in.), the Mileham sword has little or no profile taper.

My first thought was that it might not balance well, however Paul Binns offers a replica of the Mileham sword which may use the Mercia castings and he states that the point of balance is typically 8 inches from the guard on his blade, which has less profile taper than mine. I know I can’t draw any solid conclusions from this, but it may mean that I have a bit of room to loose some mass in the weak of the blade.

Does anyone have any advice concerning the appropriateness of the match, especially the union of a Geibig type 4 blade and a Petersen type R pommel?

Thanks,

Ryan


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[Steven McIntyre]

DON'T BUY THOSE CASTINGS!

Sorry for the caps lock but I'm trying to save you from the same mistake. I bought these same fittings off viking-shield to use on an eventual project, but neglected to check their size. These are too small to be used on a real sword; the pommel is only 5.5 x 3.5 x 1.5cm and the guard is 10 x 1.5 x 1cm. Luckily I bought these before the blade.

It's a shame because I really like the look of the guard, the other side has a different design.

[Ryan Renfro]

Steven,

Hmm, most of the dimensions don’t seem to be too much smaller than an Albion Clontarf, except for maybe the width. The pommel is only 106 grams, which even if the total weight were down to 0.8 kg or so it would still only be 13% of the total weight. Less than 20% is not uncommon for a single-handed sword, but that might be pushing it.

The pommel of Sword Fittings Set #2 is 144 grams, so that might be a better bet.

http://www.viking-shield.com/swordfittings.html

I won’t be over to the States to collect the blade until Christmas so I don’t even know its weight. I’ll test it out with a variable pommel and see how it performs.

Thanks for your help.

Ryan

[Johan Gemvik]

The Mileham seems to be a smallish sword for its' type. By the photo it seems to have a total lenght of around 770 mm and a width of about 55 mm.
A good idea when reproducting a historical sword is to print the photo of it in life size and glue it to cardboard or foil backing. I use aluminium tape but any backing works. This helps tremendously when trying to get the details just right, I use this for the Beagnoth Seax I'm working on now. This would also show exactly how large the blade is and what would fit.

I tried to fit the bronzes on a Hanwei Tinker viking blade which is at the larger and longer end of the viking sword spectrum, and ended up making the blade into a Gaddhjalt and the bronzes I fitted to a dagger blade that looks just like a shortened and re-tipped sword. Both turned out very nice so no problem for me.
If you want a blade to go with the fittings the best bet is to get the measures from the museum that has the original, and then custom order a blade to those specifications or forge one yourself.

[Johan Gemvik]

Here, I printed out the photo in sections, taped it togehter, cut it out and set it next to my Tinker-Viking-bladed Dybeck reproduction as well as the unfinished dagger with the Mileham fittings on it.



Looks smaller but not all that tiny. Very short handle though, perhaps one could use the handshake grip with the index finger over the crossguard. Anyway, these fittings deserve to become a sword, so I'll just have to forge a blade for it when I've made the other stuff on my list.