Posts: 5,981 Location: Birmingham, Alabama
Wed 04 Feb, 2009 8:42 am
This sword has long-since gone on to the great armoury in the sky--cannibalized by its fickle maker. :D Only the guard remains, possibly to be mated to a pommel cap and short, broad blade if the opportunity arises.
But a fellow myArmoury.com member has asked about the guard patterning process so I'll revive the thread long enough to post some of the relevant images and answer any questions he or anyone else might have.
Here are all of my patterns, showing the degree to which I was able to refine them as I worked. Note the very long sidebar on the early patterns (paper). That's tough to determine until you have something that can be mounted on the blade and bent to roughly the right shape (matt board or thin foam sheet). Notice, too, that I saved the final shaping of the guard terminals for the absolute last task to make sure they fit perfectly on the pommel (see earlier photo).
I'm also showing you the process I used to draw the of the scalloped guard. One of the things I'd do differently is to draw the lines of the scallop shells freehand and curved. I measured the lines carefully and drew them straight, which isn't very elegant and makes the shell on the knucklebow especially crude. But these photos at least provide some idea how I made the basic measures that I'd need no matter how I drew the lines.
The last photo shows the shaping of the guard in-progress (a view of the anvil side of the piece,) as described in early text and photos in this thread.
I could do a much better job now, but maybe at least one of you will try this and show me up :D
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