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J. Nicolaysen
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 Posted: Sat 29 Oct, 2016 6:38 pm Post subject: |
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| Kristjan Runarsson wrote: | | J. Nicolaysen wrote: | ....
I'm not doing the math of chape finds vs sword finds to hypothesize how common they were in these Eastern areas. But it's clear they were used, perhaps one could say while not common, they were not rare. Can we make solid suppositions based only what we have found, regarding widespread use? Likewise I won't hypothesize whether chapes were solely a "high class" feature. |
I have a book that collected some statistics on Norway, they had no more than 10 chapes (this was in 2000) but over 2000 swords found in Norway so metal chapes were anything but common. If metal chapes were extremely common you'd expect them to show up in graves all over the place. Leather chapes or wrapped fabric 'chapes' (if one can call them that) are a different story.
P.S. Thanks for that link, very interesting. |
Hey you quoted me pre-edit! I changed it to say "in these Eastern areas" meaning Baltic, etc. I don't know if any one has numerated the chape finds across the area and compared it with sword finds. I certainly haven't. Anyhow good thread here, nice information.
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Kristjan Runarsson
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| Posted: Sun 30 Oct, 2016 3:53 am Post subject: |
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| J. Nicolaysen wrote: | | Kristjan Runarsson wrote: | | J. Nicolaysen wrote: | ....
I'm not doing the math of chape finds vs sword finds to hypothesize how common they were in these Eastern areas. But it's clear they were used, perhaps one could say while not common, they were not rare. Can we make solid suppositions based only what we have found, regarding widespread use? Likewise I won't hypothesize whether chapes were solely a "high class" feature. |
I have a book that collected some statistics on Norway, they had no more than 10 chapes (this was in 2000) but over 2000 swords found in Norway so metal chapes were anything but common. If metal chapes were extremely common you'd expect them to show up in graves all over the place. Leather chapes or wrapped fabric 'chapes' (if one can call them that) are a different story.
P.S. Thanks for that link, very interesting. |
Hey you quoted me pre-edit! I changed it to say "in these Eastern areas" meaning Baltic, etc. I don't know if any one has numerated the chape finds across the area and compared it with sword finds. I certainly haven't. Anyhow good thread here, nice information. |
Interestingly enough many of the chapes found in Iceland come from the baltic region, not Norway or England.
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Kristjan Runarsson
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| Posted: Sun 30 Oct, 2016 4:08 am Post subject: |
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| Baard H wrote: | | Kristjan Runarsson wrote: | | Baard H wrote: | | Oh, wait... Wax... |
Right, you can't paint the waxed linen but nobody says you can't use coloured cloth. You just have to pick very light colours because the wax darkens them. A piece of linen dyed medium woad blue, for example, became almost black. Looking at that scan from Geibig's book (Abb.28,1), the scabbard tip, you could wrap the tip with two different colours of linen bands and then make the strips on the main scabbard body in alternating colours. You don't have to use plain natural linen. You can also embroider pictures into the linen. How archeologically correct embroidery is I don't know but it's something you can do. As for coloured cloth I'm pretty sure that was done even if I have not a shred of archeological evidence to back that up. |
Ah, the possibilities!
If we're to go with clothing fashion, then embroidery is probably out for Scandinavia, at least until the 12th century.
Question from someone who's got little experience with wax: do you glue the linen first or just soak it in molten wax and then apply it? |
About Embroidery, I found this article on the subject:
http://www.cs.vassar.edu/~capriest/vikembroid.html
Seems Norse women were embroidering by the early 9th century. There are even some patterns in that article.
As for the wax I just put it in an aluminium foil cup, put the foil cup in a pot of water and boil the water until the wax melts (You want to be careful with this if you are using a gas flame). Then I apply it with a brush but that does not cause the wax to really soak into the material, it just gives you an even surface coat. Then I just take a hair dryer, set it to the max setting and blow on the wax coat until it soaks into the material. You have to be careful though, only heat the wax enough to soak into the material, if you heat it too much it will discolour. The linen will be completely waterproof, the water just kind of beads off the the material. Like I said before somewhere I think the waxed cloth was just sewn onto the scabbard core without gluing it onto the surface. My theory is that the halves of the scabbard core may have been held together by the covering and possibly also tied together with cross ties or straps. Up until now I enjoyed the luxury of modern adhesives so I usually glue the core halves together but next time when I build a scabbard for my English sword I'm going to test this theory so I reserve the right to be totally wrong about this.
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Nick Bourne
Location: London, United Kingdom Joined: 09 Nov 2008
Posts: 44
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| Posted: Sun 30 Oct, 2016 4:44 pm Post subject: |
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Does anyone have any info on Swedish scabbards? I believe bird patterned chapes were prevalent but I don't know anything about their construction
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Kristjan Runarsson
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| Posted: Thu 10 Nov, 2016 2:10 am Post subject: |
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Ok, I went and built a scabbard covered in waxed linen. The core is made of poplar plywood with the strips along the edges of the sword being made of birch plywood for strength. I covered it like the illustration in Geibig's book (Abb.28,1) but instead of the wrapped linen tip I put a leather chape on it and wrapped the tip with a 2mm thick 1.5m long leather ribbon which was inspired by an article in Oldtiden VII, page 165 by Jan Petersen entitled "Baandformet omvikling av sverd- skeder i vikingetiden" which has an illustration of a sword found at Rypdal Farm in Romsdal, Norway that seems to have had the entire scabbard wrapped by a 9mm wide leather strap. I have no historical model for the leather cover on the scabbard mouth. The suspension method was copied from the Ballateare sword and since I prefer to have a baldric I copied several of the suggested baldric reconstructions for this sword and found that the one I chose is the only one that really works, at least for me. The inside of the scabbard was lined in sheep fur even though most of the surviving scabbards seem to indicate that a linen lining on the inside of the scabbard was more common.
I rather like this scabbard. For one thing it only weighs about 0.5 Kg complete with baldric as opposed to 1Kg for my previous all birch leather covered efforts so it does not pull on my shoulders and hips and does not dangle as much as the heavier scabbards do. It seems that no matter how much leather-grease I put on my leather it always ends up soaking up some water but the waxed linen is completely waterproof if you rub some wax into the seams when you are done sewing it up. Sewing waxed linen is also a lot easier than dealing with leather because the waxed linen can literally be moulded around the scabbard and will retain the form it was moulded into once you let it go. The waxed linen was not glued on, it was just sewn tightly around the scabbard without any attempt to permanently bond it to the wooden core. So far it has not shifted a single millimetre. I puzzled a bit about why the scabbard in Geibig's book (Abb.28,1) had strips of linen on the scabbard rather than just covering the entire thing in a single monolithic piece of linen. After talking to some women who make a lot of reproduction clothing I was told that work clothes were sometimes made in 'sections' so that you could quickly replace, for example the elbow, belly or shoulder sections of the garment when they wore out. This lengthened the lifespan of the garment and saved fabric while the garment looked less untidy after repair than if you just slapped a simple square shaped cloth patch on it. I now think that the scabbard was covered in strips of fabric to enable quick field repairs of a punctured or torn section of the covering by simply replacing the damaged strip of linen. I leather wrapped the tip of the sword mainly to shield the waxed linen. As a small bonus, apart from being completely waterproof, lighter and easier to repair in the field, this scabbard is also considerably cheaper and quicker to make than a completely leather covered one.
The one thing I'll do differently next time is not glue the halves of the scabbard together like I did this time to see how that works out.
A final point is that my sword now somehow looks 'right' in this scabbard as opposed to the leather covered one I built before with all it's bronze decorations where this sword always looked out of place:
 Attachment: 16.81 KB
Attachment: 80.92 KB
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Kai Lawson
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| Posted: Thu 10 Nov, 2016 7:06 am Post subject: |
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That looks pretty good. The sectioned pieces make sense to me--will you be doing any field testing with this set up, to see how it actually performs outside or in damp or sunny conditions? May I also ask what kind of wax you used?
"And they crossed swords."
--William Goldman, alias S. Morgenstern
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Kristjan Runarsson
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| Posted: Thu 10 Nov, 2016 11:05 am Post subject: |
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| Kai Lawson wrote: | | That looks pretty good. The sectioned pieces make sense to me--will you be doing any field testing with this set up, to see how it actually performs outside or in damp or sunny conditions? May I also ask what kind of wax you used? |
I used beeswax pellets that I got in a local crafts shop but you should be able to get this stuff anywhere, florists sometimes have this stuff too and you can simply buy beeswax candles failing all else. You must be careful what wax you buy since not all beeswax seems to be the same, some kinds seem to be softer and melt at lower temperatures. I melt the wax by putting it in an aluminium foil cup-cake mold and then float the thing in a water filled frying pan at a slow boil until the wax is liquid. You want to be careful not to overheat this setup because the wax can discolour. Also keep in mind molten wax is a fire hazard. When you brush it on the wax just clings to the surface of the cloth. You'll want to scrape the thickest gobs of wax off using a credit card shaped piece of plastic and a hairdryer or heat gun to prevent it from pooling on the underside of the cloth piece before going over the piece of cloth again with a hairdryer/heat-gun and carefully melting the wax into the fibres of the cloth.
I'm going to field test this scabbard this winter on exercises and then during the summer at Moesgdaard in Denmark. I'm pretty confident though, I put the scabbard under a water tap and it really is completely waterproof. There is no hint of melting or stickiness at 20-25°C and the wax does not rub off on clothes. I also cheated with the wooden core and painted it in marine varnish but if you want to go for the completely original approach I'd recommend giving the outside of the wooden core a few coats of linseed oil or my favourite Tung oil (not period correct but better than linseed oil IMHO) just don't coat the inside of the scabbard because it might affect your ability to glue a fleece or linen lining to the inside of the scabbard.
Next time I'll build a scabbard for an English style sword I have. It has a bit of brass decoration on the pommel so I'm tempted to do something a bit more fancy like this German dude did:
http://www.reenactment.de/reenactment_start/r...cheide.htm
He didn't use waxed linen but I really like what he did with that red spiral.
Attachment: 33.18 KB
Last edited by Kristjan Runarsson on Thu 10 Nov, 2016 1:06 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Kai Lawson
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| Posted: Thu 10 Nov, 2016 12:55 pm Post subject: |
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Kristjan--
Thanks for the instructions. I'm currently on the fence as to whether or not I should use thin leather or waxed linen as a scabbard covering. I'm doing a scabbard from ~980-1030, and most of the AS, Ottonian and Italian manuscripts I've seen seem to show a single unbroken or unlined piece of material, which makes me think it might be leather (though I have only some evidence for that.) My main concern is that waxed linen will melt at higher temperatures, but if you said it isn't sticky at 20-25C and doesn't leave residue...
How much discoloration of the linen underneath is there following the coat of wax?
"And they crossed swords."
--William Goldman, alias S. Morgenstern
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Kristjan Runarsson
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| Posted: Thu 10 Nov, 2016 12:59 pm Post subject: |
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| Kai Lawson wrote: | Kristjan--
Thanks for the instructions. I'm currently on the fence as to whether or not I should use thin leather or waxed linen as a scabbard covering. I'm doing a scabbard from ~980-1030, and most of the AS, Ottonian and Italian manuscripts I've seen seem to show a single unbroken or unlined piece of material, which makes me think it might be leather (though I have only some evidence for that.) My main concern is that waxed linen will melt at higher temperatures, but if you said it isn't sticky at 20-25C and doesn't leave residue...
How much discoloration of the linen underneath is there following the coat of wax? |
Unless you want to emboss the leather I don't recommend using anything thicker than 1-1.5 mm.
The wax mostly just darkens the linen so you need to pick light colors. A woad blue patch of cloth became very dark blue almost black when I waxed it. About the wax leaving residue, I suppose it might if the sun is beating down and the ambient temperature is ridiculously high but I don't think it would be something that can't be washed out of clothes. I was thinking that if this became a problem one could simply sew a patch of leather to the back of the scabbard where it touches the clothes.
As for the scabbards, they are not always depicted as having a single unbroken cover by any means. What got me started on this quest was the observation that many of the manuscript scabbards are depicted as gray, if they were leather you'd expect them to be painted some shade of brown. See selection of manuscript depiction of scabbards below:
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Kai Lawson
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| Posted: Tue 28 Nov, 2017 11:05 am Post subject: |
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Im casting a thread necromantic spell to ask a question: Matt, do you have any idea as to the measurements of the scrap leather scabbard cover? I noticed that there are no obvious stretch or wear marks on the slits indicating that the cover was pulled, which makes me think that the weight was supported solely by the slide, which means that the gap in the slide for the belt was quite small. That to me seem to indicate metal or horn, as the top of the imprint is fairly flat, which means that the actual supporting arch would have been fairly thin, and this likely not wood, which could spilt with enough lateral or twisting force. I’m therefore curious as to the measurements, if available, before I begin to guess at the size.
Additionally, the lack of band or strap imprints makes me think that perhaps it was held on with flush rivets? That would also indicate metal, or something like horn to me.
"And they crossed swords."
--William Goldman, alias S. Morgenstern
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