HI Seax...

Just for the record, I was quite excited when I first read about HI making seaxes. Then I saw what they were going to sell and was sick with disappointment because the result was so very far from any seax that I had EVER seen. And, yes, I may be a bit insistent upon historicity. It goes with the territory of being involved in living history as a hobby. I suspect that Hawkwind and I are rather moderate compared to some that I have met. I know that i am.
 
Who cares if its historically accurate. I like the HI Seax as a good functional tool. And as a pretty knife too. Why do people insist that HI make pieces according to anything but what the Kamis do well, and the market will soak up. I appreciate the accuracy you are striving for, but I don't see it as HI's responsibility to limit their designs in any way. This version is the Kamis' version. You can get historically accurate seax. HI's version is a great blade. Why not appreciate it for what it is. Why not?
 
I guess it's all a matter of perspective.

If HI made a different "seax," some would buy an example even if they have the current style because - because it was different (= more income for kamis).

Having seen folks literally come to blows over the auithenticity of shoes worn at a Civil War reenactment, I guess I accept that some get "sick" over such matters, even if I am constuitutionally incapable of truly understanding why that would be so.
 
FullerH said:
Just for the record, I was quite excited when I first read about HI making seaxes. Then I saw what they were going to sell and was sick with disappointment because the result was so very far from any seax that I had EVER seen.
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Hugh how are the HI Scramsax different from the historically accurate?
From what I have seen, admittedly a small amount, they nailed the blade pretty well but goofed on the handles.
Again from what I saw the blades were slightly wider at the intersection of what would be considered a clip on other knives and tapered back to the handles.
The handles had a similar taper and were wider at the front than the back.
A handle with such a configuration would be much better for stabbing but didn't someone say these knives/swords were primarily slashing weapons even with being so admirably pointed? ;)

I've seen pix of several different configurations with some even approaching a Wharncliff type of blade.
Were the different configurations the result of the times, area, or other considerations?
I *was* pretty astounded when Hawkwind pulled up the pix of the old Scramsax with the riveted handles as that's something I thought was indeed written in stone from what I had read about the knives/swords.
From my understanding none were ever produced with riveted handles!!!! :eek:
 
Yvsa, the hilt is very clearly something from a Nepalese knife and it is something that would never have been designed by anyone in Northwestern Europe during the second half of the first millennium, CE. Look, I not only am involved in Living History, but I read and study and even, yes, live my history in all aspects of my life. It is so woven into my very being that I would not be me without it. It isn't pedantry or snobbery that leads me to the positions that I take, but a genuine love of history of its own sake. If you have any doubt of this, may I suggest that you check out some of the debates on anything from Normans vs. Anglo-Saxons vs. Celts to the War Between the States that I have had with Ken Cox over in the Political Forum. Some have gotten so esoteric that I suspect that both of us have lost track of what started them. And it is not from anger but from love of history on both our parts.
 
Kronckew: or maybe from the latin 'pedis', meaning one with smelly feet.

Which is by the way name of smartest man in mythical history. :D
 
Be at ease guys. I like HI product is O.K. its exactly the way I would expect with an indigenous ingenuity in approach. I m still thinking about sharking one in next batch of deals.

Our discussion is discussion amongst enthusiasists. The problem with Living history ro reenactment that it has among other the part where you present your work to general public and it doesnt lack educational purpose.
It is much easier to do things right, instead badly and then look for excuses, but many people dont do.
Sometimes picture of weekend reenactor event is quite horrid.

Its all the play as any other hoby, but this one more than any other depends on suspension of disbelief.

You must understand that we get agitated sometimes during the discussion, and its the part of the game. :)


Jaroslav

Regarding knives - I prefer accurate replica when dealing with historic knife rather than "inspired" piece.
"Inspired" knifes get often bought by reenactors and it looks odd.
 
I think Yvsa has made the telling observation here . I think the sophistication of the design of the SEax is a reflection of when where how and why the Seax was made . The most basic of Seax,s are not much more than a pointy piece of metal with the tang jammed into a hastily shaped piece of wood . Imagine some blacksmith being told " I need a hundred weapons and I need them in two days . What kind of weapon would you be likely to produce ? Give the same blacksmith a month and the same request , I have no doubt he would bang out a much better result .
 
Btw. - I found this elsewhere

Stunning replica of vimose seax

http://sweb.cz/RobertNowak/sax6.5.02.jpg

And big neetherland scramaseax from 8. century:

http://sweb.cz/RobertNowak/netherlands8century.jpg

specs :

That is a page from the article "Een aantal vroeg-middeleeuwse zwaarden uit Nederlandse musea" by J. Ypey, and you may be able to see the artifact in the Wijk bij Duurstede museum. Jaap Ypey x-rayed a lot of swords, spears and saxes and made really nice scaled 3-view drawings of the artifacts he conserved.
Blade length: 51.5 cm
Blade width, max. 4.1 cm
Blade thickness, max. 0.7 cm
Two bars of twisted damascus side-by-side along the back and a decorative profile between two grooves.

Nice aint it?
 
In all honesty, I had never heard of the seax until I joined this forum. I got the HI seax with a highly polished horn handle, and I absolutely love it. It is hefty, swift, fits my hand, and just feels "right." I frankly have no idea about historical accuracy, but I can't rightly imagine a better seax for me.

Chris
 
ditto, Chris
I have a couple of other ones but they don't match HI's in form or function. That's how I judge a knife.
--Dave
 
Kevin the grey said:
I think Yvsa has made the telling observation here . I think the sophistication of the design of the SEax is a reflection of when where how and why the Seax was made . The most basic of Seax,s are not much more than a pointy piece of metal with the tang jammed into a hastily shaped piece of wood . Imagine some blacksmith being told " I need a hundred weapons and I need them in two days . What kind of weapon would you be likely to produce ? Give the same blacksmith a month and the same request , I have no doubt he would bang out a much better result .
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While that is frequently correct, you need to remember that kings carried seaxes as well. There is a grave find of a sword pommel and scabbard fittings as well as a matching set of seax pommel and scabbard fittings from the grave of Childeric I of the Franks. They are hardly a simple piece of wood. Gild and jewels, mostly.

And Jaroslav has the gist of the matter when he says that you all had a look-in at a debate that is eternal in the Living History/Re-enactment community. Part of it is the result of spill-over from Renn Faire and SCA people who decide that what they have seen at SCA events and Renn Faires is accurate. I can assure you that it is not. I do not knock them, at ;lesat not much, but they should not confuse fun and fantasy with history.
 
FullerH said:
While that is frequently correct, you need to remember that kings carried seaxes as well. There is a grave find of a sword pommel and scabbard fittings as well as a matching set of seax pommel and scabbard fittings from the grave of Childeric I of the Franks. They are hardly a simple piece of wood. Gild and jewels, mostly.

And Jaroslav has the gist of the matter when he says that you all had a look-in at a debate that is eternal in the Living History/Re-enactment community. Part of it is the result of spill-over from Renn Faire and SCA people who decide that what they have seen at SCA events and Renn Faires is accurate. I can assure you that it is not. I do not knock them, at ;lesat not much, but they should not confuse fun and fantasy with history.
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When you get down to where the hammer meets the anvil it is the blacksmith of the period that decides the authenticity of that which he makes . A seax is simply a pointy piece of metal with a handle. It is the blacksmith , his skill level and what he is asked to produce that dictates the final outcome .It can be as basic or as fancy as he so decides and no-one else .
 
Kevin the grey said:
When you get down to where the hammer meets the anvil it is the blacksmith of the period that decides the authenticity of that which he makes . A seax is simply a pointy piece of metal with a handle. It is the blacksmith , his skill level and what he is asked to produce that dictates the final outcome .It can be as basic or as fancy as he so decides and no-one else .
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No, as it is today, a product was ans is only as simple or as fancy as the customer's pocketbook and desires can order it and afford it.
 
FullerH said:
No, as it is today, a product was ans is only as simple or as fancy as the customer's pocketbook and desires can order it and afford it.
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I can see we will have to "Agree to disagree" on this one .
 
I guess it's just like anything else that has a fan following. the more educated a person is about the history and uses of a particular thing, the more tooth and nail he/she is willing to defend its purity. I can totally understand that.To me, the HI seax is great. Whatever you call it. Heck, they could call it the the Himalayan Imports Sunshine Sissy Blade and I'd still happily tote it around:)
I can understand that there are some that would want an HI seax to be more authentic, or else called something different. It's along the same line of flack that the Everest Kat got when it first came out. Even though, like the seax, it never ever claimed to be accurate to the Japanese model that was sent over as the model. No big deal and nothin' new:)
They aren't wrong, and it's not falling on deaf ears really. However, most around here just don't care one way or the other. The long and short of it is that we will never get even an 80% historically accurate model from the kamis. Most can neither read nor write in their own language, let alone know the history of how the seax came to be. They just copy as much of the design as they see useful, improvise on some of it, throw out the rest. It's frustrating but charming:)

Jake
 
I know little about history. I have to preface my remarks by that.

I know a few blacksmiths though. And we all in a sense "know" the HI kamis and their work. Most smiths let their creativity play a little in their work. Do we really think this is a new feature of human nature, unique to 21rst century man?

I a reminded of some debates I read sometime back about the Roman gladius. For a while there weren't any good examples. Then one got dug up in Pompeii, and published about. After that everyone knew exactly what the Roman gladius looked like. The Roman empire obviously produced lots of them, just like that one. Then someone went to the museum and saw another gladius that was dug up in Pompeii. It looked different! Well maybe the Romans had two big facotries, one producing authentic model "A," and the other producing authentic model "B."

At least until a third one is dug up.

We've heard previous debates about "real" khukuris. When we get tired of that we could debate "real" Bowie knives.

For me, its sufficient to find knives that I like, understanding that we have been inspired by the past but are traveling forward into the future. The re-enactors may like a knife based on a particular historical model, and that is fine and good. They are probably more convinced than I am that the "acceptable" acoutrements in the reinactment community are the only historically accurate models, especially in regions where such implements from the period in question are most likely to have rusted completely away.
 
What Howard said, and I'll add:

What would happen if the naval base at Bangor was suddenly buried in lava, then dug up two thousand years later by archeologists interested in how the American military functioned during the twenty first century?

We have at least two branches always there (navy and marines) and most likely, there are folks there from the other three branches at any given time as well.

Not counting various dress uniforms, the marines will be wearing two different colors of MARPAT and there are also the old BDU's still in circulation, both woodland and desert, and two different styles of boots.

The navy? I won't go into how many non-working uniforms there are for various occasions. For working uniforms, you'll see either working blues or whites, utilities, coveralls (both blue and green), BDU's, two different styles of jackets for the BDU's, and five different jackets for utilities/coveralls/blues/whites, depending on the command, the location, and just what the individual felt like wearing that day. Two different hats for blues/whites, two styles of ballcaps for coveralls/utilities, watchcaps, cammie hats for BDU's, and females have another hat or two depending on the uniform. And I haven't even E-7 and above; they have a completely different set of uniforms, usually. (But not always, and it varies by unit.)

And then things get trickier with nonstandard equipment. Things are sometimes not done by the book in the interests of expediency. I wore a base layer under my uniform through the winter because the gear I was issued wasn't adequate; some other folks did as well. There's no written record of this. Same with my Goretex boots, which were issued but aren't standard. Two thousand years pass and I've got a mummy wearing cammies who's not a Seabee and has Pepperskins on under his uniform, and weird boots. What conclusions do I draw from this?

Now, if documentation were lacking and you dug all this stuff up, what kinds of conclusions would you draw from it? And that's assuming you dug up everything. If you found only half of it, or a quarter, you might come to some very incorrect conclusions. Even if you found it all, you'd probably wind up making some bad guesses; they'd be the best guesses that you could make, but they'd still be wrong.

To make matters worse, the examples of equipment (specifically weapons) that survive to this day may not be the best examples. What's more likely to survive two millenia? A sword that was taken out and used, or a sword that was made for decoration and stored indoors? An old military camp is excavated and some swords are found in the trash pit that look different from any previous examples. Before we draw any conclusions, we must ask the question: "What were those swords doing in a trash pit?"

When I read about recovered artifacts, I try to keep this in mind. I'm seeing some of the picture - maybe even a lot of the picture - but I'm probably not seeing the whole picture, and even if I was, I might be coming to the wrong conclusions based on what I've seen.

We can make guesses, and we can make informed guesses, but at the end of the day, we're still just guessing.
 
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