Pugio & Scabbard 1st attempt

[Crispvs]

Very nice work. Your friend Jimmy certainly is a talented man!

I do have several pointers to offer him though, for when he comes to making his next one.

Firstly, grip plates. Actual grip plates are almost always flat or virtually flat at the base of the guard and the top of the pommel expansion. The thickest point is generally at the medial expansion and the side profile is normally a gentle and shallow curve. This applies both to solid and thin embossed plates. Also, grip plates should really be iron. Although the Leeuven dagger is often cited as an example of a copper-alloy handle, in fact it is iron, covered with a thin coating of copper-alloy. Aside from this, off the top of my head, I cannot think of a single example of a copper-alloy grip plate - despite the prevalence of copper-alloy grip plate in reconstructions, the real ones are always iron.
He might also be interested to know that any recessed/engraved detail on the grip plates (normally only the front one) would normally be inlaid with silver wire (although some pugios from Chester were inlaid with tin).

Another point is that often there are constructional rivets on the inside of the handle which cannot be seen from the outside. Normally these fix the organic inner plates to the tang and usually pass through the tang just above and below the medial expansion. The iron grip plates are generally attached by the rivets which pass through the ends of the guard and through the pommel expansion, although in the cases of some with thin embossed grip plates, the two plates are made in one and pass over the top of the pommel expansion, eliminating the need for rivets in the pommel expansion. In these latter examples, normally any apparent rivets which can be seen in either the pommel expansion or the medial expansion are actually false rivets which are in reality decorative pins or nails.

Next to the sheath. First of all, I should say that the shape and proportions of the sheath Jimmy has made are excellent, as are the placement of the rivets and the form and placing of the suspension rings. Full marks here and very well done.

Pointers now.

There are indeed a very few copper-alloy sheaths (four which I am aware of), so no real problem there. However, of the four, the Leeuven sheath (a type 'A') was decorated with pearled strips soldered to its face; an unpublished copper-alloy type 'A' sheath is undecorated; a type 'B' sheath plate from Chester was undecorated and a type 'B' sheath from Nijmegen was decorated with rows of incised lines around its border and horizontally at the level of the suspension lugs. So none of the surviving copper-alloy sheaths were decorated in the same way that contemporary iron sheaths were. This is normal - it seems to have been quite usual for Roman craftsmen to associate a particular style of decoration with one material and a different decorative style with another material. It therefore behoves us to be very careful about transferring a decorative style from one material to another. The Velsen sheath plate is of course, like the vast majority of surviving sheaths, iron.

Having said that, let us move to the execution of the decoration. Acknowledging first that Jimmy has done a beautiful job with the decoration, it must then be acknowledged that Jimmy's method is not the one used by the Roman craftsmen who decorated the actual pieces. On actual type 'B' sheaths, inscribed lines are always inlaid with silver (or, in the case of the Chester examples, tin) wire, meaning that all of the border lines should be silver, as well as any cross hatching. The only exception to this is of course the copper-alloy example form Nijmegen, whose decorative lines are laid out very differently in any case (see my comment above about different materials). Larger spaces such as gamma shapes, flower petals, trees, peltas and lozenges are always inlaid with either silver, niello or coloured enamel. The Romans were not fond of the decorative elements being left in the colour of the underlying metal.

Lastly, in case you or anyone reading this is sure that copper-alloy was used to inlay first century AD pugio sheaths, you would be right. However, this only applies to type 'A' sheaths and yours is a type 'B', just before the question is asked.

So, given the fine effort Jimmy has made on his first attempt, I look forward to seeing his next piece.

I hope this is of use to him.

Crispvs