Shotley Bridge swordmakers

[urbanspaceman]

Hi Ibrahiim and thank-you for that excellent article. I recently received the French Second Empire Court Sword made at Klingenthal that I bought at auction (see post 29) and I have to declare it feels truly deadly in the hand. It has an incredibly sharp point and I can understand why it was such an effective weapon. A rake down the back of the hand or along the forearm would be very deep and probably immobilising, which I gather was the ultimate incarnation of the duel.
Byron sounds precisely like the 'Mad, Bad and Dangerous to know' character of Caroline lamb's description; a bit of a 'bounder' in fact, when you consider that William Chaworth was his cousin.[IMG]

[kronckew]

a thrust through the body was usually fatal, given the state of medicine of the times. but not always. a certain american gentleman by the name of james bowie was involved in an altercation with a number of people armed with blades on a sandbar and was run thru the lung and out the other side with a sword cane blade of similar proportions to a small sword, and managed to kill all of them, and survived himself, tho poorly for a while thereafter. hands, arms, legs were preferred first targets as if you thrust into his body, he had a lot of time to thrust into yours before succumbing, disabling him first was better, you could then finish him off at leisure. (there is an artery that runs across the inside of your elbow that, if nicked and left unattended during a scuffle, can bleed you out in a couple minutes, and disabling you a lot sooner. ditto on the vena cava inside your thigh, or the neck veins/arteries. there are also a number of areas where a thrust would miss vital organs completely. see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wj6Drp7hWhY if you are not squeemish. (he died young after thinking he could swallow a steel needle)

[Ibrahiim al Balooshi]

For a realistic portrayal ... A Duel see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOBTFfHJjV8

[kronckew]

i agree more with matt here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQVrb_cAVfQ

the duellists is a cool movie tho.

see also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlsT9VZyehE

[Mel H]

There has been some discussion here of smallswords and whether any were produced at SB. One of the fascinations for collecting smallswords is the almost infinite variety of hilt designs in existence. From simple iron or brass ones through elegant cut steel and silver, to some which can be described as nothing other than works of art. Many books will show page upon page of hilts that are visual delights but skip over any detailed descriptions or photographs of the blades, leaving the reader to assume that all 'triangular' blades are the same.
While it is true that there is a general similarity in all of them, the colchemarde style being the only distinct variation remarked on by most, it has to be noted that when examining a good selection of blades there are some distintive differences in the methods of forging and grinding.
The nearest ones to an equal triangle are seen the more recent examples which saw something of a revival in the Victorian and later court swords, often seen with cut and studded hilts and worn by diplomats with court dress. The blades on some of these are actualy round at the ricasso and give the impression of being made from a piece of round bar and produced by grinding rather than forging. I have no evidence to support this and would be please to hear if anyone knows more.
Getting back to the period in question, sword blades were trditionaly hammer forged on an anvil, the Hollow ground blade must have required a major change in technical skills, possibly leading to the rolling mill that has been spoken of.
If we look at a cross section of a three sided blade, the sides are not equal, two of the concave sides are smaller than the remaining side which will vary from being almost flat to a noticable concave. Some, on this wider surface, are evenly ground for the full length, others show a definite forge line fuller running down the centre almost to the tip.
Another thought concerns the actual grinding of these blades. Many antique illustrations show huge grinding wheels being used by some unfortunate soul lying on a plank holding the blade against the wheel, producing a near flat surface. A hollow grind of the type seen on smallwords will have an internal radius measured at less than an inch making the normal grinding method impossible, unless of course a large stone could be produced with a narrow, radiused outer edge and the blade offered up in line with the wheel.
All just food for thought.
I tend to ramble on a bit, I'll take and post some photographs soon, to make what I've said here a little more understandable.
M.H.

[urbanspaceman]

Hello Mel. I do not have any books relating to small-swords, so I was wondering if you could tell me a few things?
The small-sword popularity appears to have begun in France, was it mid 17thCent.?
Where were the blades coming from back then, as Klingenthal came much later didn't it?
Your collection is of British small-swords right?
Are there any blade manufacturer's marks on them?
When does the earliest example date from?
I understand that, initially, the cross-section of the blade was simply a smaller version of a rapier blade, and that the hollowing began with the Colichemarde; does this mean that the typical three-sided hollowed blade didn't appear until after the Colichemarde or were they appearing simultaneously?
What I'm trying to ascertain is precisely what was everyone looking-for blade-wise when the SB workers arrived, because petitions had been frequent for exclusive rights to produce hollow blades long before 1685.
Hope you don't mind the third degree.

[Ibrahiim al Balooshi]

Colichemarde According to Wikepedia.....The Colichemarde blade configuration is widely thought to have been an invention of Graf von Königsmark, owing to the similarity in pronunciation of their names. However, the first blades of this type date from before the Count's lifetime.

The colichemarde first appeared about 1680 and was popular during the next 40 years at the royal European courts. It was especially popular with the officers of the French and Indian War period. George Washington was presented with one during his inauguration.

The widespread misapprehension that the Colichemarde quickly ceased to be produced after 1720 dates to the opinion given by Sir Richard Burton in his "The Book of the Sword" dating to 1884. However, many securely dated colichemarde swords from as late as the 1770s can be found in collections.

This sword appeared at about the same time as the foil. However the foil was created for practicing fencing at court, while the Colichemarde was created for dueling. It made frequent appearances in the duels of New Orleans. A descendant of the Colichemarde is the épée, a modern fencing weapon.

Please see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5zsmJRilkg where a couple of video presentations look at various interesting Colichemarde and small sword variations...

[Mel H]

Originally Posted by urbanspaceman

Hello Mel. I do not have any books relating to small-swords, so I was wondering if you could tell me a few things?
The small-sword popularity appears to have begun in France, was it mid 17thCent.?
Where were the blades coming from back then, as Klingenthal came much later didn't it?
Your collection is of British small-swords right?
Are there any blade manufacturer's marks on them?
When does the earliest example date from?
I understand that, initially, the cross-section of the blade was simply a smaller version of a rapier blade, and that the hollowing began with the Colichemarde; does this mean that the typical three-sided hollowed blade didn't appear until after the Colichemarde or were they appearing simultaneously?
What I'm trying to ascertain is precisely what was everyone looking-for blade-wise when the SB workers arrived, because petitions had been frequent for exclusive rights to produce hollow blades long before 1685.
Hope you don't mind the third degree.

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.