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Old 17th January 2017, 06:48 PM   #1
Roland_M
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Join Date: Aug 2014
Location: Germany
Posts: 523
Default Small Sword with long triangular blade

Hello,

Probably an Italien, French or English small sword from the early to mid XVIII th century.
It has a lovely pierced steel hilt with a twisted wire on the grip and a hollow pommel.
The whole sword is made from steel, it's steel in steel. Thats the way I like it!

With 35" or 89.5cm the laminated blade (refined steel) is quite long for a small sword,
the effective length is ~93cm, the whole length 107cm.

The most interesting Feature for me on this sword is the light weight.
When I first put it on my weighing machine, I thought I need new batteries.
I used my precision balance and the sword weighs indeed only 435.1 Gram or 15.4 oz after the restoration
I removed a lot of rust from the handle and gave a new finish to the corroded blade.
The loss of weight from my restoration is only 0.8 Gram of steel, thats ok for me.

This is a real old duell sword, the blade is slightly bended, it has many nicks and the point is worn.
I added a picture of the grip wire. How many duels does it take until the wire is worn-out like this? The pattern of abrasion allows me to understand how the sword was hold in hand. Requires a pretty strong hand. The fact that one or more noblemen used this sword for duels is most exiting for me. In my opinion the real duels were much harder, more powerful and dynamic than in the movies.

I made one picture together with a rapier, the development is clearly visible.
The small sword looks almost modern and weighs less than half of the rapier (~1000 Gram and 435 Gram).
In a duel the rapier duelist has pretty bad cards and will probably lose ~8 or more out of 10 duels, because the small sword is as quick as a flash and got more stiffness.

Compared to the modern Cold Steel Small Sword, the old sword is 10cm or 4" longer but also 265 Gram (9 oz) lighter than the modern reproduction.
This old original outclasses the modern CS small sword in every point, especially in length and ergonomics.

Hope you enjoy the pictures and I also hope to read many comments.

Roland
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Last edited by Roland_M; 17th January 2017 at 07:41 PM.
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