A Refurbished Windlass Chinquedea.
Jun 12, 2014 11:55:42 GMT
Post by Uhlan on Jun 12, 2014 11:55:42 GMT
Some time ago I bought a Windlass Chinquedea from Jussi Ekholm.
From his statements about this sword I knew there were problems, but when I got it , it was in a much worse state than I thought it to be.
Not that Jussi had been glossing things over. He told me somebody did heavy duty garden work with it at some point, it was just that there was so much more wrong with it than he thought. Due to lack of a camera at the time I cannot let you see the ,,before'' state it was in, but believe me, it was pretty bad.
So I explained the matter to him and he instantly dropped the already paid price and gave an generous refund to make it up to me.
A very correct and straightforward gentleman like he is, I can recommend him as trustworthy counter party in any deals.
So far, so good.
What was to be corrected to make this a sword again:
At first I thought the tang was bend. The blade was at a severe angle to the hilt.
I took the sword apart, which was easy, due to the screw on pommel and discovered that the tang was sound, but the guard blade slots were not even.
At one side the slot had to be grinded out much longer and deeper.
Secondly, the blade shoulders were uneven, so the problems with the blade slots were made much worse.
The problem was that I could not remove all excess material from the one faulty blade shoulder because than the tang would be at an angle and this being a sturdily build little sword, thick stock and fat tang, there was no way I could just bend it in shape. Blacksmith action was called for to correct that tang, but that would ruin the temper and re tempering this sword was not worth the outlay.
What to do?
I grind the guard blade slot and took a portion from the blade shoulder to make it sit better.
Not all, but a sort of compromise bit, so at first glance the sword would look okay.
An other factor to make this choice was the fact that the guard and the grip are pieces of, I believe, nickel steel and expertly slotted to make a tight fit with the tang and each other. To make an uncompromising correction, I would have had to build a new guard, but choose to file out the tang slot in the guard just a bit to accommodate the new angle the tang was to go in there and not to compromise the fit of the grip into the guard too much.
This was the main job and luckily all went well. Still not 100% lined accurately, it now rings like a bell and looks like it had to do some heavy chores in its time,which to me adds to its charm as an old relic ,, from Grandpa who chopped up all these thugs in the market square one day, like, totally, because, well, they majorly pissed him off by behaving in a rude manner towards his daughter, who is my mother by the way, you know, like, cooool. '' kinda way.
Like I said, the hilt seems to be made from some kind of nickel steel, which gave me the opportunity to easily silver plate it to give the sword a somewhat richer and subdued look. The nickel steel looked very hard and chromium like, too modern, though the hilt is a good copy of actual old pieces.
So I filed out some of the major nicks and straightened out some lines here and there, while retaining a hand made look and for good measure soldered a decoration to both faces of the pommel, parts of a set of silver ear clips I found at the local flea market. Stylisticly and qua proportion they fit in well.
The blade I polished up a bit to remove the most ugly scratches and lined the fullers a little better and while doing this, the decision was made to ,, antique '' it a bit with vinegar and salt solution.
I filled an old Glassex spray bottle with the stuff and took to the bathroom. First I sprayed straight onto the blade, but this gave big, ugly, runny splotches of grey, so I removed those and found that by spraying a cloud of fine solution particles into the air and moving the blade through that mist, the result, after I placed the damp blade on an ,, island '' in a big tub of water for a couple of days to keep it from drying, was much more even and authentic.
After a little polish it has a nice, very finely structured, lead grey finish with some tiny black spots here and there.
The scabbard.
The scabbard was the usual leather Windlass affair, but due to the refitting of the hilt I had to discard it.
I kept the drag though.
A new and reasonably good fitting scabbard was made from a left over piece of acid free 1.5 mm bookbinders board. This is very strong stuff, yet flexible.
It has all the good from 1.5 mm bending triplex, but without the acid and glue fume problems. This core was covered in thin leather over ribs that follow the fullers in the blade.
Painted an antique red, with brown glaze staining here and there to suggest dirt, the cleaning thereof and general discolouring through time and kitted out with two studs, silvered and antiqued again with liver of sulphur, making a nice complement to the package, it looks rather nice to me.
This little sword took a little work to shine, but I like the results very much and hope Jussi does so too.
From his statements about this sword I knew there were problems, but when I got it , it was in a much worse state than I thought it to be.
Not that Jussi had been glossing things over. He told me somebody did heavy duty garden work with it at some point, it was just that there was so much more wrong with it than he thought. Due to lack of a camera at the time I cannot let you see the ,,before'' state it was in, but believe me, it was pretty bad.
So I explained the matter to him and he instantly dropped the already paid price and gave an generous refund to make it up to me.
A very correct and straightforward gentleman like he is, I can recommend him as trustworthy counter party in any deals.
So far, so good.
What was to be corrected to make this a sword again:
At first I thought the tang was bend. The blade was at a severe angle to the hilt.
I took the sword apart, which was easy, due to the screw on pommel and discovered that the tang was sound, but the guard blade slots were not even.
At one side the slot had to be grinded out much longer and deeper.
Secondly, the blade shoulders were uneven, so the problems with the blade slots were made much worse.
The problem was that I could not remove all excess material from the one faulty blade shoulder because than the tang would be at an angle and this being a sturdily build little sword, thick stock and fat tang, there was no way I could just bend it in shape. Blacksmith action was called for to correct that tang, but that would ruin the temper and re tempering this sword was not worth the outlay.
What to do?
I grind the guard blade slot and took a portion from the blade shoulder to make it sit better.
Not all, but a sort of compromise bit, so at first glance the sword would look okay.
An other factor to make this choice was the fact that the guard and the grip are pieces of, I believe, nickel steel and expertly slotted to make a tight fit with the tang and each other. To make an uncompromising correction, I would have had to build a new guard, but choose to file out the tang slot in the guard just a bit to accommodate the new angle the tang was to go in there and not to compromise the fit of the grip into the guard too much.
This was the main job and luckily all went well. Still not 100% lined accurately, it now rings like a bell and looks like it had to do some heavy chores in its time,which to me adds to its charm as an old relic ,, from Grandpa who chopped up all these thugs in the market square one day, like, totally, because, well, they majorly pissed him off by behaving in a rude manner towards his daughter, who is my mother by the way, you know, like, cooool. '' kinda way.
Like I said, the hilt seems to be made from some kind of nickel steel, which gave me the opportunity to easily silver plate it to give the sword a somewhat richer and subdued look. The nickel steel looked very hard and chromium like, too modern, though the hilt is a good copy of actual old pieces.
So I filed out some of the major nicks and straightened out some lines here and there, while retaining a hand made look and for good measure soldered a decoration to both faces of the pommel, parts of a set of silver ear clips I found at the local flea market. Stylisticly and qua proportion they fit in well.
The blade I polished up a bit to remove the most ugly scratches and lined the fullers a little better and while doing this, the decision was made to ,, antique '' it a bit with vinegar and salt solution.
I filled an old Glassex spray bottle with the stuff and took to the bathroom. First I sprayed straight onto the blade, but this gave big, ugly, runny splotches of grey, so I removed those and found that by spraying a cloud of fine solution particles into the air and moving the blade through that mist, the result, after I placed the damp blade on an ,, island '' in a big tub of water for a couple of days to keep it from drying, was much more even and authentic.
After a little polish it has a nice, very finely structured, lead grey finish with some tiny black spots here and there.
The scabbard.
The scabbard was the usual leather Windlass affair, but due to the refitting of the hilt I had to discard it.
I kept the drag though.
A new and reasonably good fitting scabbard was made from a left over piece of acid free 1.5 mm bookbinders board. This is very strong stuff, yet flexible.
It has all the good from 1.5 mm bending triplex, but without the acid and glue fume problems. This core was covered in thin leather over ribs that follow the fullers in the blade.
Painted an antique red, with brown glaze staining here and there to suggest dirt, the cleaning thereof and general discolouring through time and kitted out with two studs, silvered and antiqued again with liver of sulphur, making a nice complement to the package, it looks rather nice to me.
This little sword took a little work to shine, but I like the results very much and hope Jussi does so too.