[Ibrahiim al Balooshi]

Originally Posted by Mel H

Hi there, I don't mind the third degree, but having said that, I don't consider myself to be an expert, I'm just a keen student of antique arms and armour who's learned a reasonable amount over a lifetime of collecting.
We have to remember that international trade has been around for many centuries, styles and ideas spread more quickly than we realise, some were short lived and others overlapped each other, pining these things down is not simple. The rapier took many forms, evolving for more than two hundred years, from heavy, broad bladed weapons to the familliar slender blades of the late 17th C. I may be proven wrong but I don't think that the hollow ground, three sided form of blade that we see in smallswords was much used for rapiers. In general terms they tend to be of flattened diamond, ovoid or hexagon form.
As the rapier fell out of fashion it transitioned into the smallsword quite quickly, the new style being an effective and deadly weapon weighing a fraction of the earlier 'large' sword. I'm sure that most of the smallswords we see are of continental manufacture, in answer to one of your questions, I have French, German, English and Dutch examples. For some reason most of the smallswords I see, though nicely engraved, do not have any indication of who made them or where and when they were made. If they are marked at all, it is often on the top mount of the scabbard, but parchment scabbards tend to have a shorter lifespan than the swords and are often missing.
Just to make things more interesting, there are other styles of sword mixed in the equasion, pillow sword, scarfe sword, mounting sword (I'm not quite sure where the terms came from), but the earlier smallswords did tend to have flattened blades, the hollow ground ones becoming more prolific in the late 17th / early 18th C.
Generally speaking a better indication of a smallsword's age will be seen in the style of the hilt rather than the blade.
The Colichemarde and slender blades were in use simultaneously, a few years since, I would have answered that they were a later innovation, but have to admit that these days that I'm not sure, as I said earlier, pinning these things down is not simple.
Another thing to remember is that the hollow blade is not confined only to sword blades, the socket bayonet favoured universally for military flintlock firearms used a short three sided hollow blade. The British Brown Bess being the best known example.
M. H.

Salaams Mel~ On the point (scuse pun) about the Brown Bess Bayonet! When the soldier’s musket was empty he relied on the bayonet, which had a sharp, triangular section blade of about 44cm. British bayonet charges were greatly feared by enemy troops. The soldiers were very keen to engage the enemy with their bayonets and often thought that they should be allowed to ‘give them the Brummagen’. (Brummagen is a slang name for Birmingham where many bayonets were made.