How to - My new bone handled sword and scabbard

[Crispvs]

Although this has been done before, notably by Sulla Felix a year or two ago, I thought I would document, here on RAT, the process of making my new sword and scabbard.

As some here (Peronis, Caballo, Celer and C. Magius in particular) will be all too well aware already, this project has been underway for quite some considerable time already, but as it nears completion it seemed the time to start showing it here.

Considerable thanks are due to Matt Lukes for the wealth of helpful advice he has given me as well as to David Hare of the ESG, who shared pictures and advice on formers with me.

The sword itself, of course, came first. I had had the blade made for me back in 1995 in New Zealand (where I was at the time) but had never got around to making a handle or scabbard for it. Much more recently I decided that it was high time I got a new sword to replace the one I have been using for the last twelve years and its aged and inaccurate Simkins pattern scabbard. Not being exactly a man of means I decided to make use of the blade I already had lying around.

The blade is nineteen and three quarters inches long (not including tang) and two inches wide (my apologies here to those here who prefer to use French Measure), making it fairly big for a Pompeii type but it just fits within the known range.

Having seen a very nice bone handled gladius made by Erik Koenig back in 2002, and having started working bone at the same time I first got into re-enactment in early 1992, it seemed natural for me to make a bone handle for my gladius.

Unfortunately I did not think to photograph the process of making the handle, but the guard was made from the rear cannon bone of an adult cow, with the ends plugged with pieces cut from a cow's shank bone. The grip was made from the rear cannon bone of a calf and the drum of the pommel was made from a piece of the upper femur of and adult cow, with upper and lower caps made from pieces of shank bone. Each of these bones was specifically chosen for its thickness, curvature or section.
The calf's rear cannon bone is perfect for it's thickness and internal section and diameter. The thickness of the bone means that the grooves can be cut and filed down to the right depth without breaking through and the internal section is either round or more less square and narrow enough in a calf's bone to grip the tang well. I know of no other bone on a cow's (or calf's) body which is suitable for this purpose. I have found the bone in the front cannon bone to be slightly less thick by comparison and the section is D-shaped, meaning that neither the curvature (both internal and external) or section are suitable for use as a gladius grip. The bone needs to be cut at about the point of the small hole (for the passage of a blood vessel) close to the upper nock. Beyond this point the bone is both too thin and too porous.
I referred closely to the Vindonissa catalogue when making the grip and its length, at three and a half inches is about average for the examples in there. I filed the cut piece of bone until it was a roughly equal diameter all along its length and close to square in section and then cut the grooves into it. Initially I was doing this with a half round file but I found this too time consuming so switched to cutting them out quickly with a hacksaw and then finishing them off with the file. Having filed the grooves to the right depth and width I then filed off the corners and brought the whole grip to an octagonal section, making sure that the grooves continued correctly around the entirety of the grip. When assembling the handle I filed the ends of the grip quite carefully so as to ensure a good fit with the guard and pommel. I also pushed small wedges inside the grip to make sure it had a secure grip on the tang.

As an aside, if anyone is thinking of making their own grip and like me starts off presented with a butcher's cabinet full of entire cows' feet (especially if you live in or visit an area with a high Caribbean population), you will normally find that the upper nocks are exposed and so you can make an educated guess about the best ones to buy. This photo shows the upper nocks of four of the cannon bones I experimented with. The nock on the bottom left is the one from the bone I used for my grip. The one above it is from an adult's rear cannon bone. The two on the right are from foreleg cannon bones. As you can see, the rear cannon bones have a distinctive 'T' shape groove on their upper nocks, whilst the nocks of the cannon bones of the forelegs have a different shape and a notch in one side.


The 'drum' section of the pommel was made from a section from the upper part of a cow's femur. Again, this seemed to be the only bone on a cow which was suitable in terms of its width and external section and curvature. The caps to cover the upper and lower ends of the pommel are made from sections of shank bone. The shank bone is more or less triangular in section and features the only flat areas of bone on a cow's body which are both large enough and thick enough for serious bone work. For this reason it is the bone most favoured by professional bone carvers. As the caps each needed to have a flat side which could connect with the drum section it was essential to use shank bone, as it is only possible to make a flat piece of bone of sufficient width and thickness from this bone. A pommel of this construction is, of course, hollow. It seemed necessary to me to fill this space in order for the tang to be fitted securely through the pommel. I used a piece of rowan wood from a branch I had cut from a tree in the garden which was about the right diameter. I glued the pommel together and then drilled through it from the top, before widening it with files to make the hole the correct size (wider near the bottom than the top) to securely fit over the tang.

The guard was made from the rear cannon bone of an adult cow. This was convenient as my experiments with cannon bones had left me with quite a lot of unused bones. I could however, have chosen to make a round section guard by using a section of femur, cut from the point where the femur starts to broaden and again cut upper and lower caps from shank bone. This is how the guards on both the Mainz and Dorchester bone handles were made and there are a number of round bone cap pieces surviving from Vindonissa. Here is a picture of the Dorchester handle.

I filled the holes in the ends of the bone with small sections of shank bone. I don't know what the evidence is for this but as I can't read Miks' text all that well but I have noticed that Erik Koenig does his that way (and Eric normally bases what he does on very solid evidence), so I think I am probably on fairly solid ground in doing this. Again, I drilled the hole for the tang before widening it with files to allow it to grip the tang at that point quite closely. Obviously there was a lot of 'dry fitting' on the sword tang before I was happy with the fit.

Having assembled the handle I then drilled a hole through a small round quarter inch thick piece of brass which I had cut from a solid brass door handle (which has also provided thick brass for a number of my other projects). I fitted this over the end of the tang and then used a ball-peen hammer to peen the end of the tang over it to finally secure the handle. To avoid the possibility of cracking the bone of the pommel, I cut a small hole exactly matching the size of the brass 'washer' in a small piece of thick leather an placed this over the top of the pommel as I peened the end of the tag over.

Unfortunately, as I stated above, I did not think to photograph the process of making the handle but here are a couple of pictures of the finished handle.





More in a few minutes.

Crispvs

[Astiryu1]

WOW! Very Nice... I always thought about what specific bones would work best but haven't ever had the project to try anything. Excellent work.

[Crispvs]

Now to the scabbard.

When selecting wood for my scabbard, I could not get hold of any maple, which I knew some surviving late Roman scabbards were made from. I decided that whatever wood I chose, it needed to be a hardwood. Rather naively, I chose a seasoned oak plank to cut my scabbard halves from. If I was doing this now, I would have got hold of linden wood, but I knew less about wood then (actually several years ago - I did say this had been in the works for a long time) than I do now.

I cut the scabbard shape out from the plank and then cut this into three laths each a little over three sixteenthss of an inch thick. I selected two of these.


Having decided to try and use techniques as close to the way the originals might have been made, I decided not to use my dremel, vertical tool stand and router bits and instead decided to chisel out the insides of the scabbard halves by hand. This is where I realised my mistake in using seasoned oak, as chiselling it turned out to be very hard work. Sanding it smooth and then gradually deepening the trenches with sand paper was very time consuming as well. When I made a toy car out of pine for my son recently I was amazed by how easily and quickly I could file and sand it down compared with the oak.


Having done the basic chiselling and sanding, I then taped the halves together to check the fit with the blade. Having done this several times, interspersed with removing the tape and doing further sanding, I was finally happy with the fit.


Having achieved a good internal fit which would also allow for an easy draw, I then rounded off the external edges to achieve the final shape I wanted for the wood. Sorry there is no photo of this.

More shortly.

Crispvs

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Nice work Crispus!

[jvrjenivs]

Having seen some of the bit at close recently, I'm still impressed by the work. It's no matter the time it took, you finally get there and have an sword and scabbard done by yourself, and that is most important . (Now I have to get back to my work bench where I'm working on a pugio blade and have a gladius blade laying around also; to much jobs to finish...)

[Crispvs]

Thanks everyone.

Now, leaving the scabbard body to one side for the time being, let's look at the metalwork.

The metal parts were the most daunting for me. I had done plenty of woodwork and bonework before but I had never really worked metal. Therefore, pressing, punching, annealing etc. were all new experiences for me. Much credit is due here to Matt Lukes for his encouragement and advice.

First of all came the decision on which scabbard parts to copy. I decided on the locket from the Guttmann collection, mainly because it was not particularly well known compared to many others and also because I had not seen another reconstruction of it (although I am now aware of two other reconstructions of the same locket, but that is still small beer compared to some other locket plates). This was a definite challenge for myself as it features much more intricate openwork than many other locket plates.


Unfortunately this locket plate is not associated with a chape, so I needed to find one with a good deal of openwork to compliment the locket. A look through Miks revealed that there are very few complete examples of Pompeii type chapes, so the choice was limited. In the end, with some misgivings, I decided on the Nijmegan chape, which has been reproduced many times before, but which seemed to be the one which exhibited the greatest amount of openwork.


More later

Crispvs

[Redguru]

Crispvs, I am making a very similar grip, guard and pommel and the material is very light in comparison to wood. Plus, the inside of the pommel and guard have a lot of empty space. You said you used sections of shank bone to fill the ends. How deep did you fill them? Or is it more like a cap? Did you fill the voids with any materials to increase the weight? I wonder because I think the sword would become very blade heavy.

[M. Demetrius]

I always thought about what specific bones would work

Editorial insert: No matter what kind of bone, use the best respiratory protection you can get. Bone dust is extremely toxic to lungs. Besides, it smells really offensive to most folks.

[Redguru]

I really like the scabbard technique, though. I was using 1"x4" pine for each half and then sanding it down. Using 3/8" lath to begin with sounds much easier and will end up in a less bulky scabbard.

[Crispvs]

As I said above, I filled the pommel with a piece of wood before fixing the caps in place. This was mainly to improve the fit of pommel on the tang. Weight played no part in my thinking. I am a bit surprised that you are finding bone light in comparison with wood. The bones I work with are generally quite heavy. I think some skeletal knowledge is useful when doing this sort of work.
I used shank bone for the plugs in the ends of the guard, mainly because the ends of my guard slope so I needed the depth of bone I knew I could get from shank bone. I didn't fill the guard with anything.

Looking at your parts I notice that your guard, while very nicely made, is narrower in section than mine, which might account for some of the lack of weight. If this is as far as you have got so far, I would suggest using a bigger piece for your pommel. Am I right in thinking that the piece you are using for the pommel is cut from the same bone as the grip? Sections of cow femur are usually quite easy quite easy to pick up in pet supply shops, often filled with a rather smelly substance which is apparently beloved by dogs. I normally have a good look through the box of these things until I find one that fits the bill for what I want. It isn't always there and I generally don't just buy another to make up for that. I come back on another occasion when their stock has changed and have another look for what I want, and keep doing this until I find the one I want.

Crispvs

[Redguru]

You are correct in your assumption that the pommel is made from the same section of bone that I made the grip from. i also pick my bones from a pet store and have had more luck in smaller stores finding sections of bone without that imitation marrow in them. However, that section I used for the grip and pommel did have that smelly stuff in it. Scraped it out and re-boiled the bone to remove it. I will look for another section of bone for my pommel and create a new one, will fill it with hardwood. On my previous gladius, I used some very heavy local water oak. The bones when together in my hand do have some heft, so maybe I am fretting over nothing. As always, your advice is greatly appreciated.

[brennivs - tony drake]

Redguru If you can get your hands on ball joints and join the two half together, or find as big a diameter section and put two flat pieces of bone to seal the open ends,

If you look at the centre hilt you can see how they plugged up the centre hole of the bone even though it is a later hilt ( D
Regards Brennivs

[brennivs - tony drake]

Dont know if this is any help
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Regards Brennivs

[Crispvs]

No problem.

Right now - back to the brasswork.

Having decided on quite a difficult locket plate I decided first to carefully copy the design onto paper. This presented an immediate problem due to the fact that portions of the original locket were missing. However, the missing portion of the field with the mounted figure was easy enough to reconstruct thanks to the detail around it. The bottom right corner was more problematic. That said however, it was obvious that the warrior's leg must have continued and it was equally obvious that the spear shaft must also have continued. The spear shaft was simple and the leg shape I decided on was informed by comparable figures on other pieces. That still left a space, which I decided to fill with vegetation which would compliment the other vegetation in the design on the locket.



I then carefully cut out the openwork sections of the design to create a stencil.



I then taped the stencil onto a piece of .5mm brass plate, in preparation for painting through it onto the plate to show where the openwork areas would be.



Crispvs

[Crispvs]

The next step was to paint through the stencil onto the brass plate. I took considerable care over this and it took me about half an hour to do. I left it a day to dry to make sure the paint was properly set before I stressed it with punching.



After leaving it overnight I removed the stencil to reveal the painted design.



I had originally been going to attempt to scratch the design onto the plate, but as the lines on the originals can be shown to have been made with small punches I decided instead to do this. I was advised by a number of people to punch out any openwork areas first and then to start on the rest of the design. I decided not to do this however, as it seemed to me that the large amount of openwork on the plate might make it difficult to execute some of the design without slipping into the punched out areas. Accordingly I decided on the method of painting on the openwork areas and then punching in the rest of the design between the paintd but otherwise unaffected 'openwork' areas.
Using punches made for me by Matt Lukes, I then (with close and constant reference to pictures of the original locket) punched in the rest of the design. My efforts are hardly the equal of the ancients but I was fairly pleased with what I had done. I spent the majority of one Saturday carefully punching in this detail.



More shortly.

Crispvs