Saberites: Question abt blued Civil War sabres:

As no Boker imports to cover the need for 1860s I have ever seen (quite a few) have been blued, I have to think that the example you have seen was blued after the fact.

There is a tendedncy for some to do this to old blades in a preservative fashion.

Although there was never really a loss of decoratively blue and gilt blades, doing so on service swords was never a common practice I am aware of, either from the source, or by the end user.

Cheers

Hotspur; easier and subjectively better to darken than polish a blade sometimes

I know I have shared this with you before but the contracted numbers of Boker cavalry sabres was in the tens of thousands
www.angelfire.com/wa/swordcollector/marks/page1.html

Unless the blade shows other embellishment, such as etching or engraving that would indicate it was an officer's sword; the likelyhood it was blued before delivery is virtually nill.

Without the sword in hand, I would be foolish to even speculate as to what type of finish you are seeing but I can assure you it is quite unlikely that your firearm analogy bears any relationship, aside from a means to protect metal from undue corrosion. When the blade was darkened after import is anyones guess.

Although there were some nickel plated scabbards appearing in that decade, most were simply polished bright. This is also true of the blades. As the century wore on, Germay was nickle plating a lot of blades and one starts seeing dark scabbards. This is simply not the case with the imported 1860s from Boker.

It is interesting to muse about a sword's history but important to keep it all in context, as to what evidence and appearance really means.

Cheers

Hotspur; I've blued working knife blades myself, they didn't come that way