Wannabe swordsmith!

[Lenaghan]

Haven't posted here in a long time so what the heck! Dont wanna be a welder anymore just wanna make swords(I can dream right?) just a little random assortment of work over the past bit...

 

 

[beech]

Do they hold an edge, or are they primarily for show?  To my inexperienced eye they look pretty good.

[Tubalcain2]

having never made a sword, I think they are awesome.

[Frosty]

Welcome back from the lurkosphere. I'm not one to judge blades but from what I see you're doing pretty well. I think your fit and finish on the furniture needs the most work but still pretty nice for getting started.

I give you a hearty Frosty, "Well done."

Frosty The Lucky.

[JHCC]

I'll be honest: when I saw "Wannabe swordsmith!" as the title of this thread, I got that sinking "Oh Lord, here we go again" feeling. Then I saw your photos.

Nice work! I'd actually disagree with Frosty about the fit and finish -- there's a rough charm to its rusticity. Your skills will improve as you go along, but there's something unique about your artistic eye that I hope you don't lose.

[Daswulf]

I think they look great. Nice work. 

[ThomasPowers]

Well part of that is that swords were a very upscale item in the early medieval period.  Run of the mill warriors used spears and axes; so what you compare them to is things like maseratis and ferraris today.  Would you expect a "rustic" body job on those? Look at all the sword fittings in the Staffordshire Hoard done in intricately worked gold or gold and garnets.

Now I know Hollywood has us thinking that everyone had a sword and the local blacksmith would make them with no problem---but it wasn't so!  I was so pleased when I toured Marksburg and when we were looking at the blacksmith's shop built into the castle wall the tour guide told the group that it was for daily use items and that the Owner would have of course gone to Nuremberg or Innsbruck to purchase armour or swords!

(National Geographic has a book out on the Staffordshire Hoard: "Lost Gold of the Dark Ages", Caroline Alexander)

[Frosty]

Hammers, Thomas, you forgot war hammers and picks. Run of the mill warriors facing plate armor would carry hammers as common weapons. There's nothing like smooshing up the joints on plate armor to take the fight out of a person. Unless of course it's putting the pick end of the hammer through the helmet, even if it doesn't go far, it's not the way a person want's to be trepanned.

Frosty The Lucky.

[ThomasPowers]

Plate armour and early medieval are kind of oxymorons and people in plate were often mounted---that's where halberds of an almost infinite variety start coming in too.  Of course the idea was to capture the folks who were rich enough to own plate in the high to later middle ages, not so much when munition armours became more common. 

Funny thing the way to tell a felling axe from a fighting axe is that often you couldn't save that the fighting ones tend to be lighter...(and felling axes were often what was to hand when you had to grab a weapon and defend your land.)