It's not much...

Man, waiting for shipping from all the way over there must be killing you! Can't wait to see the Mandaus.

My other two sabers should be here Monday. Hopefully they won't be chewed up like this one. The other two are cavalry sabers so maybe they didn't participate in as many sword fights as this one.

It does make you wonder, though. Can these mid 1800's swords hold up to heavy use? It seems like they'd be ruined if they ever had to clash swords with the enemy.

Here's a few more markings. There's a big 0 on the guard.


And a bunch of markings on the end of the scabbard.



Two of the marks say UCI. One is on top of another mark I can't make out. There's also a 71 I assume is original. There's also a 14 on the ricasso below the makers mark.
 
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I know I do, right now they are just stacked in the corner with incense burning to calm the spirits, must build war shrine
 
Gehazi said:
yeah I agree more than likely prop use damage, still a decent find, later next month when my mandau arrive I will post them here , I decided to spring for some from the netherlands where most of the authentic pieces were gathered


http://www.trocadero.com/101antiques/items/1127472/en1.html

that one is from ontario, but it is the best one I have seen offered, after I pay it off i hope to have a shrine ready :D
Click to expand...

Now that is sweet Gahazi! Cant wait to see it!
Im liking this one too! The chiseled scrolls are cool! Supposedly many of these Mandaus are asymmetrical to prevent them from sticking in their subjects. Hard to tell by some of the pics?

http://www.trocadero.com/MikaelJaspers/items/1154312/en1.html

Blue: You might be able to have that damaged edge peened out to restore it close to what its supposed to be without losing much metal.

Yall keep it up! Im loving this thread:thumbup:
 
at least you have a space...I get a plastic bin underneath the extra dining table in the garage...:(
 
Bad news: my sabers arrived today, and the 1840 spanish one is definitely a fake.

Good news: I bought a nimcha!
 
what is that grip made out of blue?nimcha have a great design, you always get burned some if you try to get the real stuff, so much demand so much reason to fake , sad reality ! but cool on the nimcha, and cool on the civil war: fake swords make great gifts for young people :D
 
That's true, I can always regift it. I knew the second I pulled it out of the box that it was fake, it felt more like a wrought iron fire poker than a sword. Then when I saw "INDIA" on the ricasso I knew my goose was cooked. At least the 1889 degen turned out to be real. It's definitely private purchase rather than military issue, but I expected that.



Here's a closeup of the Prussian eagle on the guard.


It does feel a little light for a cavalry saber, but it's well made and certainly sturdy enough for dueling. I wouldn't want to do a cavalry charge with it, though. I read the Prussian king who designed these things was an avid hunter, and he decided that a boar hunting spear should be the cavalryman's primary weapon, relegating the sword as a close combat "last resort" weapon"

The blade has a nice flex to it which is always a good sign. The edge is totally blunt, which is expected since it's a stabbing sword, and there's no horrible damage to the blade like with the other one.

The Nimcha's hilt is made of wood as far as I can tell. Somebody put up a bunch of really nice Nimchas for auction and I managed to win the least nicest one. One Nimcha had what looked like European decorations on the blade, another had the dots and "eyelashes" you usually see on Indian or Geonese blades, and the last one had the markings of Queen Victoria on it! How did a military issue British blade end up mounted in a Barbary pirate's sword? I bet there's a good story there... mine appears to have no markings on it, but the pictures don't show much detail.

Closeups of the nimcha hilt. As you can see the blade is quite dirty so who knows what I might find after cleaning it up. Knowing my luck all I'll find is "MADE IN INDIA"


 
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looks very authentic to me, you should dust that bad boy off and wipe it down with some mineral oil
 
I've refined my cleaning process to the following:

1: spray with concentrated windex and wipe with paper towel. Repeat until no discoloration on towel

2: spray with WD-40 and wipe with paper towel. Repeat until no discoloration on towel.

3: coat with mineral oil or 3-in-1 and wipe with paper towel. Repeat until no discoloration on towel.

4: coat again with oil but let it sit over night. Wipe with paper towel in the morning and repeat blah blah blah

At this point I'm done if there's no active rust on the blade. If there's any black rust left I just have to live with it. Give it a final coat of lanolin and put it on the wall.

If there's brown rust then I have to break out the abrasives and acids and I almost always end up making it worse than when I started.
 
"The wall" is annexing a neighboring territory



Also I bought what's supposedly a 19th century French police sword. It doesn't look much like the examples I've seen on line of French police smallswords and it's missing the markings it ought to have if it was government issue, but the engravings on the blade look old. Plus the blade looks to be deeply fullered and "engineered" for stabbing, so I think it's an actual weapon rather than just a ceremonial piece. We'll see what it really is.


 
you wall of swords does not recognize the sovereignty of that other wall , because it has no weapons to defend itself, obviously its time to claim more territory with your superior arms

also I really dig stabbing small swords, lots of blades like that remind me of sword canes, or swagger stick swords


also meant to post this here


http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/318549

that is a museum mandau :D totally blows anything I have touched or seen out of the water, probably worth as much as all my other blades combined( mandaus)
 
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I've spent all day playing the "Identify why you just bought based off blurry auction pictures" game with my smallsword. The decoration on the pommel is a burning bomb - the symbol of a Grenadier unit. However, the same symbol is used for the French Foreign Legion and the National Police which is why the seller thought it was a police sword. But from what I read, on short swords from this era the burning bomb is just the symbol for an NCO in the Engineers and Artillery corps. So after looking at a bunch of pictures I think it's more likely that than a police sword.

It sounds like they made these swords from the early 1800's up until the 1930's. Fortunately the French put tons of stamps and marks on their military blades that will tell you where and when it was made. The only marking I can make out on this one is an L with a dot underneath it on the guard, but so far I haven't been able to determine what that means if anything.

I think I might get one of those cheapo katana racks off Amazon to put on the newly conquered wall. I don't know how well it's going to work with my thicker Kaskara scabbards though. I might have to do some modifications.
61-qtmkYmwL._SL1500_.jpg
 
yeah I need something like this for my mandau, i may cut it out of some cedar panels i have , or just buy a cheap one like that ! I had only seen like sword cabinets, this seems much more available
 
The ones from Amazon are super cheap, but according to the reviews they're super flimsy. But it sounds like if you're willing to reinforce the joints with glue and give it a new coat of paint, they'll do the job nicely. The only thing keeping me from pulling the trigger is concern that my kaskara and takouba scabbards are too wide to fit. These really look optimized for round scabbards like katanas.

My smallsword shipped out over the weekend so I should have it in a week or two. I'm still not sure what to expect when it arrives as it seems to be missing all the marks you'd expect on a French military sword. The nice thing about French military swords and bayonets is that they really marked the hell out of them. They wrote the name of the factory and the month and year it was manufactured on the blade. You can tell if it was made under Napoleon if it refers to an Imperial factory rather than a royal one, too. Plus they'd add stamps on both the blade and the hilt for the inspector, director of the factory, and sometimes a third one for the head craftsman or something like that. There's websites with databases of which person used which mark and when they used it. I assume of this was all done for quality control, but it's a nice change of pace being able to know with certainty so much history about an antique blade rather than trying to guess or extrapolate.

So the fact that my smallsword seems to be missing any of these marks implies that it isn't military. But the burning bomb on the pommel implies it's an NCO's sword so it is military. But I've looked at dozens of smallswords with burning bombs on them and they're always on the hand guard, I've never seen one on the pommel. The guard is weirdly shaped, too. One "shell" bends towards the blade and the other bends back towards the grip. Normally they both bend forward and are symmetrical, although sometimes one bends more than the other.

One possibility is that it's a private purchase sword. It was common for folks to buy their own swords either because the military didn't issue one (maybe only officers got swords so some NCO had one made on his own dime) or they wanted something fancier/lighter for show. This became an issue because the blades were purely decorative and couldn't stand up to real use, so at some point the government required you to use a military issued blade that you'd then take to some local craftsman to be engraved and put in a fancy hilt. So again you'd see government markings on the blade that mine's missing.

Another possibility is that it predates the whole "government issued" sword era of the 1800's. Before the government standardized it's equipment, you pretty much brought your own personal sword with you rather than being issued one. That would explain the lack of marks, but I have a hard time believing this sword is from the 1700's. It's hard to tell from the pictures, but the blade appears to have a hollowed out triangular shape which was invented in the late 1600's so it is possible, but it just doesn't look anywhere that old to me. I think I'll just have to wait until it arrives to figure this mystery out. As long as it doesn't say "MADE IN INDIA" I'll be happy.

I've been doing more research about smallswords and they're sort of a strange weapon. Even though they were issued to soldiers they were never intended to be used on the field, they were just part of the uniform. They had no use on the battlefield because while they're extremely deadly, they have no "stopping power." You could jab an enemy three or four times with one and it wouldn't put them down unless you hit a vital organ or their face/neck. In the heat of battle they probably wouldn't even notice and would keep on trying to kill you.

The flip side is that even minor wounds from a smallsword would cause internal bleeding, apparently because of the triangular shaped tip. So it'll kill you but it might be hours or days later. This led to situations where you could win a duel but still end up dead days later yourself. They eventually replaced the smallsword with thinner more flexible blades like the epee and foil. With these you could duel to "first blood" and both walk away still living.
 
I'd stick with your peg board. No wasted space, mix and match anyway you want. Get the long straight hooks and cut and bend to fit your needs. I just wrapped a little tape around to prevent metal to metal. Spread em out and tighten up as the wall becomes populated.
 
I think you're right... I don't have the space to waste and pegboard gives me more flexibility. I've been wrapping thick electricians tape on my hooks when I noticed they were scratching the leather. I might just dunk them all in plasti dip and be done with it.
 
Plasti-dip would be a great choice and probably last better than the tape, but you might even want to dip it a couple times to build up the thickness to pad them a little bit. I like the more formal hanger if you have space and want everything sort of uniform looking, but if you need to get the most out of the space available the way you are going now offers a lot more flexibility to arrange for maximum advantage.
 
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