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I Forge Iron

Das Zweischneidige Schwert Der Germanischen Volker-Wanderungszeit by Behmer, Elis


Alaric

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This book have been mentioned here a number of times and is one of the pricier references. I recently discovered that this book is available from a French book seller as a soft cover reprint. I just received my copy and although I can’t comment on how it compared to the original as I’ve never seen a copy it is a very well done reprint. The site is in French but IE11’s built in translator made it possible for me to place an order and the person I communicated with did so in English, all automated emails were in French. The price was 39 Euros, shipping was a little pricy at 25 Euros, total cost to me $90.48 through PayPal.

 

I won’t post a link do to forum rules but if anyone is interested I found it through a Google search or you can contact me via PM and I’ll share the link (unless that is also not allowed).

 

Richard

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This is a rather "esoteric" source and even most swordmakers would not be interested; however if you are interested in migration era swords this is a great book.   Note that this book was written during an extremely nationalistic period and so all "conclusions" should be filtered with that in mind.  The pictures are great and do not mislead save by possible selection bias. 

 

Sadly this book is not the most expensive in my research collection by more than a factor of 3...(Currently "The Knight and the Blast Furnace" Alan Williams, holds that honour---just be cause I'm too broke to afford some of the $1K armour books...)

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"The Knight and the Blast Furnace" looks to be on par with "The Celtic Sword" cost wise and easier to find. There seem to be a lot of good reference books that fall in the $300 to $400 range. I wanted this book for the pictures as I don't read German, I wasn't willing to pay $300 plus for it so this was a good alternative for me and I thought I'd pass on the information to anyone else who might feel the same.

 

I'm not familiar with "The Knight and the Blast Furnace" but it looks like I might need to add it to my want list, thanks for the referance.

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The Knight and the Blast Furnace is a *massive* tome on the metallurgy of European renaissance armour written by one of the leading authorities in the field and is *modern* research!  Funny it was over 3 times as expensive as "The Celtic Sword" when I bought my copy of Pleiner's work and like a number of my more expensive works was a present from my family as a "we finally found a gift you would like so happy Birthday^x and Merry Christmas^z"...

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Well The Knight and the Blast Furnace was never cheap even when first out: 900+ pages, large format; if it was steel you could make a striking anvil of it!  Esoteric subject with limited readership, massive costs to publish---lots of academic books are quite pricy and often go *up* on the used market after the original print run is exhausted.

 

Of course I got my Astragael press edition of Moxon's "Mechanics Exercises" in Van Buren at a used book store near the old train station. (Trolling used bookstores is a typical vacation activity for my family)

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As an example I’m also into traditional archery and lot that long ago I ordered a book called “traditional archery from six continents” by Charles E. Grayson for the $59.00 cover price and it got lost in shipping, the seller was unable to get another copy from his distributor as it had recently gone of print. It took me almost a year to track done another copy for what I considered a reasonable price, around $100.00, this was just over a year ago. I just checked Amazon and they have 3 listed starting at $2,877.00.

 

The book was published in 2007 so it’s not even very old.

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ILL is your friend.  I've had a standing search request for an out of print book for over 12 years now with no luck; however I can ILL it form our small town library for US$1.

What are you looking for Thomas?

Is it the BAR series one by Brian Gilmour? If so he told me it is up for re-publication...I contacted the BAR and they say yes...was slotted for 2013.

 

 

Ric

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