Here's some detail on the engraving. She will have some more leatherwork when she's done too , a nicer hanging rain-guard than this short practice one worked around the cross & ring & a sleeve betwween it & the engraved area on the lugs .
Damn do I have to get a decent digital camera . I used to have a fancy $1200 mavica with 30 times zoom & all kinda goodies , & got spoiled , now I'm using a buck-fifty cheapo & I can't get any kind of decent shots at all . You can barely see the color I got in the steel of the hilt . I used a couple diff. chemicals & played a torch on it to get the black/blueing which fades to a red in the middle then deep purple where it meets the blade , had no idea what I was doing but it turned out beautiful .
Besides one or two in my books I saw a couple of these mercenary swords in person at the museum downtown Chicago years ago when I was younger , they were almost hidden in a case in a dark corner which bugged me as they have the richest history of most all swords . I & fell in love with the story of them , the design of them & the use of them , as most any doppelsoldern & landesknechts who ever wielded one in war rarely lived to get payed ,to inherit their promised land or use their hands ever again . These ladies were almost always widows . But even most of the ones I have seen in museums have really ugly wroughtiron-railing looks to them , much less the only 1 or 2 'replicas' I've ever seen in catalogs . So realising I would never get a real one , no matter how ugly & not wanting an ugly one especially if it was only a replica , I decided I could only get a beautiful one if I made it myself & the designs are historically accurate & have much significance to me I'd never get elsewhere . Don't think I'll ever cheat on milady & set my hand to another one again tho .
Back to edit again,...I been playing around with this photopaint/draw program trying to learn how to do digital art & tweak crappy photos . Since I can't yet take decent pics w/my cheapo camera I tried to edit a photo to enhance some o' the details . Still looks like phllpphhh . I scribbled out some shadows & smudged a few lines to try & enhance . I can draw paint & airbrush my heiny off , but trying to draw or paint with a damn mouse & cursor just feels like bad sorcery & I need lotsa practice . You can kinda see the twist in the hilt a bit better.
Oh yeah , here's something some might find interesting .The blade is a nice quality carbon spring steel , & wanting to use a similar steel rather than cast some cheapo brass or bronze for the hilt etc. & having a definite design in mind to match the design for my handle , I wanted exactly the design you see above . If I got a slab of flat steel for it to start with I would've hammered on it for weeks ,grinded on it for weeks more & maybe still never got it as nice as above . I found the highest quality ,expensive tool steel , tempered 3 foot long hex shaped breaker-bar & hammered , twisted , drilled , filed & ground it to the shape I needed . It's now 18 inch across. The ring-guard I then hammerwelded onto the cross was also a high-quality tool-steel hex-key I slowly hammered into a perfect circle & then hammerwelded it to the cross .
Edited by PAINBRUSH, 10 August 2005 - 07:27 AM.
