Peened langets on period swords?
Hello all,
I was browsing Kult of Athena's website recently and saw a Kingston Arms Scottish Claymore for sale. One of the pics appears to show a rivet through the langets, which I assume goes through the blade and is riveted over the langet on the opposite side. I assume this because I saw that being done years ago on a Hanwei branded Scottish two-hander. :)

[ Linked Image ]

Any period example that show this? I don't recall seeing any in the books I have, but they rarely have close-ups that would make that detail visible.
I can't say for Scottish, but for Turkish, Persian, Mamluk, Arab, etc. this would be unthinkable because there is supposed to be a gap there that the scabbard fits under - but I think this in part to keep the sword securely in the scabbard due to the shape of the curved blades and of course that wouldn't be an issue in this case...
Dan Kary wrote:
I can't say for Scottish, but for Turkish, Persian, Mamluk, Arab, etc. this would be unthinkable because there is supposed to be a gap there that the scabbard fits under - but I think this in part to keep the sword securely in the scabbard due to the shape of the curved blades and of course that wouldn't be an issue in this case...


Reinforced swords like this are semi common in India.
[ Linked Image ]
Note that the scabbard now has to swell slightly for the raised hilt, and if you look closely you can see where the decorative brass/ gold work covers the other two smaller rivets.
I've seen the Claymores in the major UK museums (Edinburgh, Glasgow, RA, BM) and I didn't see rivets in the langets. I have the older Hanwei model and the rivet does go all the way through.

Most of the langets I have side photos of are pretty tight next to the blade (BM, Edinburgh) with the exception of the Whitelaw Claymore. Its langets start about a half the blade's thickness out from the blade on either side. About half way out they start to bend outward, with the tips ending about a full blade's thickness from the blade on either side.
Graham Shearlaw wrote:
Dan Kary wrote:
I can't say for Scottish, but for Turkish, Persian, Mamluk, Arab, etc. this would be unthinkable because there is supposed to be a gap there that the scabbard fits under - but I think this in part to keep the sword securely in the scabbard due to the shape of the curved blades and of course that wouldn't be an issue in this case...


Reinforced swords like this are semi common in India.
[ Linked Image ]
Note that the scabbard now has to swell slightly for the raised hilt, and if you look closely you can see where the decorative brass/ gold work covers the other two smaller rivets.


Oh! That's interesting! Thanks for sharing that. I intentionally left out India because, even though they have similar guards, I don't know enough about them (not that I do about anything really!). It looks like that's a newer Indian sword? Maybe its something they started doing after dealing with Europeans (If I am not mistaken, sometimes later Indian swords used European saber blades?) and if that's the case, maybe there's something of a clue? I don't know.

I also wonder what the purpose of having langets like this is (in either the Indian, and possibly Scottish, case). Is it just as obvious as decoration? I mentioned that in the other cases (middle east, basically) there is a purpose of helping secure the blade in the scabbard but I don't think that's what's going on here.

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