Actually, I bet I'm not wrong. Evidence of arms manufactories go back all the way to the Egyptians and the Romans of the Imperium certainly mass produced both arms (including swords) and armor. Of course by mass production, I don't mean in the modern machine made sense. Think teams of guys producing so many rough blade blanks a day, a second team grinding and finishing, a third team applying the hilts, a fourth team fitting the scabbards, etc. Naturally, some of the people in each of these groups is going to be better than others at their jobs and so some finished products are going to be substantially better than others although everything will meet a minimum standard. Even though a lot of this organizational knowhow was lost during the dark and middle ages, not all was. Even though the levee en mass may have been a mob of farmers equipped with nothing but scythes and spears, feudal landholders were still required to supply a certain number of men at arms - not knights, but professional soldiers that they would be responsible for training and equipping. Even though the resulting "mass production" would have been very small scale it would still have been the only affordable way.
