Please note I did amend my suggestion that this grip was some sort of cast sheet, it still seems cast but in simulated wire.
The term transition toward rapiers is extremely vague, but seems to apply mostly to hilt styles with rapiers vs small swords and the elements of these.
The blades on rapiers had been traditionally thin thrusting blades often of notable length, 32" to 40" or even longer in some cases.
The small sword blade which evolved toward end of 18th century has become known as the 'colichemarde' which tried to combine the more substantial forte (elongated to over a third of the blade for parrying) with the narrow thin thrusting rapier blade. In effect this blade might be a kind of hybrid with the direct descent from wide to narrow point without the immediate change in blade width part way down the blade.
Optimistically speaking, while possible, the elliptical section of the blade and the numbering at the forte is concerning in regard to a hybrid of this sort from 18th c. The suggestion is offered only as an analogy regarding the comparison of blades in 18th c.
As an arming sword, blades of 29" are not unreasonably unusual and in colonial environment long blades were an encumbrance not especially like by the men.
For my feel on this, it still seems an ersatz weapon of munitions grade for colonial or rurally posted units either Spanish or Portuguese but hard to say when alterations were made, late 18th into 19th. ?
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