How to - My new bone handled sword and scabbard

[brennivs - tony drake]

Excelllent, Well done Crispvs D
Regards Brennivs

[LUCIUS ALFENUS AVITIANUS]

Hello

Very nice work!!

About the stripes, proably was easier to solder/rivet them in place before bending the plate. I think one of the functions of this pieces was give strenght to the front of the plate, so the side parts were prone to bending over the back of the piece.

[pmel018]

I just have to say ...WOW. Excellent work in all respects
Could i ask who made the blade for you? I am a Kiwi currently living in the UK and was associated with a Roman re enactment group in Auckland
Phil

[Crispvs]

Thanks Phil.

Would I be right in thinking you were with Leg II Augusta over in NZ? If so, I was in touch with them early on in 1995 and gave them quite a lot of the Latin terminology they needed. I seem to recall meeting a few of them at the NAAMA conference near Palmerston North in late 1997 (where I was present in late Anglo-Saxon guise as part of the Otago Medieval Society).

The blade was made for me by Peter Laing in Wellington. I daresay you will know his name already as he was the one who made most of original blades for Leg II Augusta and had some involvement I believe with the armouring for the Lord of the Rings film.

Crispvs

[pmel018]

don't particularly want to derail your most excellent thread, but its a very small world isn't it. I probably met you at that NAAMA camp. I was very impressed with the work the Otago group had done, compared to where the rest of us were in terms of authenticity etc.
And yes it was Leg II Augusta, it is still going and improving, I still have occasional contact with their leader.
As for your sword, Peter Lyons perhaps??? He was the principal sword maker for LOTR.
Regards
Phil

[Crispvs]

Now you mention it, yes, it was Peter Lyons (who used to trade under the name Lyoness Armourey). You weren't the one with the Agen type helmet were you?

Crispvs

[Medicus matt]

Hello

Very nice work!!

About the stripes, proably was easier to solder/rivet them in place before bending the plate.

They'd have just come off when bending the plate. The solder would have cracked because the strips would have had further to stretch than the base.
In the past, I've made the ribbed strips longer than needed, annealed them and bent them to fit the curve of the base plate, then trimmed them to the right length.

[Crispvs]

Right - time for some more.

As promised - the chape.

Two points to make first.
Firstly, as with the locket, the assembly detailed here is only temporary, as I will have to take it all apart again to tin the parts, which would otherwise fall apart due to the heat required to melt tin being higher than the heat required to melt solder. I will however, be re-assembling it in the same way, having learned how in the process of this assembly.
Secondly, I must apologise here for the poor quality of the photographs. I have been doing most of the work after dark and thus the photos have been taken under electric light rather than natural light and the only working camera I presently have is my mobile phone, which is far from ideal for the purpose.

OK, on we go.

The chape plate has already appeared in this thread as it was made from the same plate as the locket and thus their decoration was punched out at the same time. I cut the chape plate from the main brass plate with tin snips, before then tidying up the plate so as to leave it in the correct shape for the locket plate (sorry for the 'flashback' here). I then annealed it and bent the edges back slightly to allow it to more or less conform to the curve of the guttering.



Thanks to careful measuring and positioning, the guttering was also cut from the same plate as the locket and chape plates. I bent the guttering to shape using the same method I had used for the locket, excepting that this time I bent the guttering fully, rather than forming it around the scabbard. I then adjusted the curvature by fitting them onto the scabbard and making any necessary adjustments (I had to anneal them again a couple of times in order to do this).
I then fitted each gutter separately to its correct position at the bottom of the scabbard and marked a line on each side corresponding to the overall centre line of the scabbard. I then cut close to these lines with tin snips (due to the curvature of the gutters I could not get the tin snips properly into position) and then finished off to the lines with a file. I then held the two gutter pieces together and held them against the chape terminal in order to check that they would fit into it.
Having made the necessary adjustments to each gutter with the file, I placed them both into their correct positions at the base of the scabbard and measured the gap between their upper ends. I then cut a strip of brass somewhat longer than this gap and then, having punched holes in the upper ends of the backs of the gutters and corresponding holes in the new brass strip, I riveted them together to form the retaining band at the back of the chape. I should note here that every hole I have made in the various pieces of brass has been punched rather than drilled, as all of the evidence I have seen shows punching, rather than drilling, to have been the normal method the Romans themselves used to make small holes in metal.
Following this I soldered the terminal into position. This sounds simple but I actually found it to be the most frustrating part of the whole project. Despite having received very good advice from Matt Lukes, David Hare and Celer, it took me no less than fifteen attempts to solder the terminal into position. Now, I should point out here that my lack of a proper vice has worked against me. A large part of my trouble came from not being able to hold the pieces firmly in place without movement, which a vice would have allowed. However, eventually I was able to get a very strong soldered bond by attaching a ring of solder to the inside edges of the terminal and, pressing the terminal against the piece of right angle steel using the gutters themselves, whose ends had been liberally coated in flux, playing the torch over the join until I could see the solder melting and the ends of the gutters sank into the terminal.

Unfortunately the following photograph is very poor and the retaining band cannot be seen. As can be seen, the edges of the guttering look rather rough. This is because when I placed the chape plate over the gutter/terminal assembly I found that some of the openwork was obscured due to the width of the gutters so I cut them back in the appropriate places so that the leather would not be prevented from showing through the openwork.



Following this, I spread flux along the underside edges of the chape plate and attached strips of solder to them. I then spread flux along the front edges of the gutters and soldered the chape plate on.



I then took the appliquee pieces and attached solder to their underside. Then, using the same method I had used for the locket appliquees, I soldered the appliquees on, first the horizontal one and then the diagonal ones.



Crispvs

[Medicus matt]

Ahhh, now that looks excellent. Good work Paul!

Just a thought. You talk about the difficulty of not having a vice and of things moving during soldering. Don't you wire your pieces together? I use twists of steel wire (or sometimes even copper wire if I'm feeling lazy) to hold components together when soldering or brazing.

[Crispvs]

Thanks Matt.

Next bit.

I decided that now the locket and chape were assembled (albeit only temporarily), it was about time I took out the brasso and polished them up again, the brass having become quite discoloured thanks to repeatedly being exposed to the heat of the torch.
Here they are in their unpolished form:


And a few minutes later, after a spot of polishing:


Next came the cross hangers.

Having successfully made the appliquee pieces using the formers I had made, I found the cross hangers more difficult as they required slightly thicker brass, which I found much more difficult to press into shape. The profiles of the formers for the cross hangers were also a bit more complex and so required a more even pressure than had been necessary for the appliquees. While I was sorting these problems out, I decided to make a pair of dummy cross hangers in order to know how big to make the actual ones when I came to making them.
I bent two lengths of brass strip in the appropriate places with pliers and then formed the two ends by bending them around the top of the screw on the larger of my G-cramps. I then punched holes in the right places and fitted them around the locket. I then inserted four nails and by tapping them with a hammer I marked the right places for the holes on the rear of the cross hangers. Taking them off again I punched holes through the brass where it had been marked by the nails and then fitted the hangers back onto the locket and inserted pins to allow me to bring everything into alignment. This proved to have been a useful exercise, as I discovered that the upper cross hanger had to be slightly longer than the lower one, to allow for it to pass over the vertical appliquee pieces. These do not extend all the way down the plate, and end immediately above the lower cross hanger, meaning that the lower cross hanger needed to be slightly shorter then the upper one.



More coming soon.

Crispvs

[Pointer]

Beautiful work!

DId i miss the thickness of the brass you used for your Lockets? ANd did you use a specific grade of brass?

--PAtrick