Exactly Will, this is a long standing tradition of repurposing of old or damaged swords so as not to waste the valuable blades. While swords became essentially obsolete, there was always a need for knives, and in the case of the dirk, they were often left a bit longer than daggers.
In Scotland this was well known and the Scottish dirk became a form of its own, however early examples often used the blades of the heavy two hand claymore, while often these blades went to the basket hilt swords.
It would be impossible to list and discuss all the examples of sword blades repurposed into knives, nor for that matter all the forms of weaponry and ordnance that was repurposed or fashioned into 'trench art' etc. but here are two examples of sword into knife or short sword/dirk.
First is a composite of briquet grip, three bar cavalry hilt and cut down Spanish dragoon blade c. 1780 fashioned into a short sword type weapon.
Second is a British hanger cut down into naval dirk early 1700s.
While these have been discussed on the Euro forum they meet the standard for chronological demarcation ...........while these later period examples of course do not, thus are placed here as novelties in the proper context.
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