[Nathan Robinson]

This sword, made by Michael "Tinker" Pearce in 2000 was recently featured in a post by Adrian Ko on Sword Forum. After seeing the photo posted, a member here asked if I had any additional photos of that sword, knowing that it was in my procession for awhile. As it turns out, I had actually done a full photo-shoot. I'm unable to post on SFI, so I'll share the photos I took with you here.







As Adrian mentions, this is a very lively sword. It's quite "handy" in that its dynamic properties are such that the sword is able to be used to make authoritative cuts while having enough agility for accurate tip-cuts and a quick recovery. One thing I really loved about this sword was that it didn't subscribe to the modern belief that these types of swords (falchions, messers, etc.) are meant to be overly-heavy cleavers with a lot of mass. Many of them throughout history were actually quite light and lively, as this example by Tinker is. Based on the excellent dynamics, I would have bought this sword for my own collection, but a few factors, particularly choices for fit and finish, kept me from buying it.

I feel the entire hilt is a bit over-sized, but not outside of reason. This was just a personal preference. I didn't care for the choice of polished wood for the grip: I would have preferred the grip to either be of a more historical nature with leather and cord, for example, or have the bare wood be scales over the tang with rivets in a grossemesser fashion. A pin is used on the "pommel" to secure the sword together and solder was used in the junction between blade and cross-guard. These stood out to me as looking too much like modern construction methods. The solder is a bit sloppy as well. Additionally, the fuller ends in a real abrupt way before hitting the cross-guard and that issue stood out too much for me.

The grinding on the blade is excellent. The edges are blended masterfully and the false edge, probably my favorite part of this whole piece, is absolutely perfect. The blade's bevels, spine, edge, and other details are some of the most crisp I've seen of Tinker's work and I liked that fact quite a bit. The way in which the fuller blends out at the tip end is quite well done, too.

Overall, I liked this sword quite a bit. As I mentioned, the handling characteristics are excellent but I felt it fell short of my own needs in the fit, finish, and history departments. It had too many details reminescent of modern construction for my tastes. This sword is some 4-5 years old now, and Tinker's work has no doubt evolved since then.