The A&A Dresden Rapier and Main Gauche Set Revisited.
Mar 13, 2016 15:06:20 GMT
Post by Uhlan on Mar 13, 2016 15:06:20 GMT
Background.
I ordered the set somewhere in 2015 after reading the review of same by Mr. Dave Kelly: sbg-sword-forum.forums.net/thread/30728
A&A was glad to take my order, though there were some problems with the hilt molds, since this model had been out of the catalogue for quite some time.They found the molds, cleaned and repaired them and after a while I got an email saying they were set to go.
I ordered the Main Gauche with a longer blade of 38 cm or 15", after Dave's complaint the standard dagger was too short in the blade, paid 50% up front and waited for the call that the set was ready. That came about 2 months later. I pluncked down the other 50% and they shipped the set.
Everything was hunky dory, communication was excellent, no problems at all.
I tracked the shipment of course and saw that the plane was diverted to Turkey. Okay, I mean, what can you do?
I changed my mind when I saw what the poor Postman litterally dragged in.
I freed the set from the debris and emailed Graig. The pack had been sitting on the tarmac in Ankara in the rain for God knows how long and inadequate packing resulted in rust spots on the blades and the box desintegrating. Graig asked whether I wanted to ship the lot back, I said no, I'll handle the rust myself. I asked him to think about better packing, since the heavy sword was just stuck on a carton board with the help of some plastic bands, ditto for the the dagger and the remainder of the space inside the carton only half filled with the plastic nugget stuff.
There was no protecting coat on the set, no plastic wrap, nothing. Had the carton board with the sword gone the way of the box, the results would have been even worse. As it was, the tip of the blade was already scraping the street. Graig said he was going to look into who was responsible for the boxing. And that was it. The first thing to piss me off bigtime. As soon as Graig understood I was cleaning ,,house'' myself and would not lay a claim on the insurance money and make his live difficult, all communication stopped. No aftersales feelgood emails whatever. No interest into how I was doing cleaning up and polishing the blades. Nada. That struck me quite deep. Afterall, I got better aftersale service from guys selling me a mere $200 Windlass.
So,as to get a clair head and not wanting to do a review on the spot that could land me accusations of being partial and negative because of this, I just cleaned and oiled the lot, stuck it in a rack, handled it every now and then, until my mood would change and I could do a review without bias. And that is now.
The review.
Let us begin to say that the sword is not a rapier. It is a Reit Schwert, a Cavalry sword, plain and simple. As such there is no need whatsoever to have a parrying dagger or Main Gauche included in the package. A dagger as such, would have been used as a back up weapon of last resort, after the saddle guns. It is nice to have a dagger of the same design as the sword, but these Main Gauche would have been used in a mainly civillian context, in a rapier duel. There they make sense and in this civilian context rapier and Main Gauche were often of the same design.
The hilts.
The hilts on the sword and dagger are very well done. The lines are very good. The casting is immaculate, the patination also. The latter is a sort of antique purple brown musket barrel colour, though not as tough. It scratches quite easely. I think I will take it off when I have the time. It is nice but also makes the hilts look very new, while I go for a more ,, lived in'' feel. The grip wire is also done very well. Everything is tight, nothing rattles.
That the hilts are cast says nothing against them. They seem to be sturdy and strong. What bugs me though is precisely that clean, faultless and perfect look. It makes them unreal, plastic looking and as such far removed from hilt work on antiques. There the detail would have been chased and chisseled. Handwork, that would give that human accent, with all of the little faults and imperfections. It was the first thing that put me off when I held the set in my hands. That replica feel. I know chasing is not done anymore because it is very time consuming and expensive, so I do not hold that against A&A. Let's say that for instance Del Tin hilts can be overly raw and unfinished looking, but they are quite close to the medium quality hilts of the time. Those were not much better done. A&A tries to immulate higher class workmanship of old, but fails because it is too perfect. To me it looks cold, impersonal and shouts ,,replica'' to a high degree.
The blades.
This sword has a quite broad blade in a diamond section. Nothing bad about that. What is very wrong is that the stock is way too thin, as usual I might add. The blade starts out at 4.5 mm, is still 4 mm half way and tapers down to 2.5 mm at 1" from the tip.
So you got a wide blade, in a flat diamond section, without any fullers. No wonder the blade sags when held horizontal. The tang is also way too slender in width to accomodate this wide blade. I have the feeling the tang will bend or break during heavy, or, real use. The thin stock and slender width combined do not bode very well.
As usual the thin untapered blade needs to get balanced by the hilt and that is why there is this overbuild contraption on top of it.
I like that there are hammer marks on the blades. Though polished away as much as possible, in the right light one can still see some. Nice. The sharpening job is well done too, with only a very small secondairy bevel and all lines are straight to a tee. The polish is satin, like Hanwei puts on their blades, but much more refined.
Handling.
Yeah right.
The dagger handles very well since it is almost weightless. Which is precisely what is wrong with it. Though it has that much longer blade, it does not pack a punch whatsoever. That is why it fails as a parrying dagger. There is nothing there to counter the other blade with. The too thin blade here also ruins what could have been a very good weapon. Antique dagger blades were quite a bit thicker, with lots of distal taper. That said it is very well constructed.
The Reit Schwert.
This sword does not handle at all. The too thin untapered blade refuses to do what you want. The overbuild hilt does not make the experience any better and the thin and too short grips on both the sword and the dagger finish off any semblance of control. It is way too heavy to use and as such has nothing of the qualities a sword or Cavalry sword should have. Being the wrist breaker it is, it is as bad when on a horse as on the ground. This thing will have you killed.
The POB is 12 cm or 4.7" from the guard, width is 4.5 cm or 1.8" and the length is 99 cm or 39", including the ricasso.
Conclusion.
This set cost me a bucket. That shows in the way the set is constructed and detailed. The workmanship is very good. All metal work is flawless. The set makes a great show piece.
As for this set being weapons, I might have just as well have stuck with Windlass. For the price paid this set is, qua functionallity, a bummer of the first degree.
I do not know about the other offerings of A&A. This one is a nono. If they use the same too thin stock on the other blades also, things look quite dismal. At least their German Bastard starts out at a little under 7 mm, which is quite thin for such a big blade, but would have been fitting on this Reit Schwert.
Cheers.
I ordered the set somewhere in 2015 after reading the review of same by Mr. Dave Kelly: sbg-sword-forum.forums.net/thread/30728
A&A was glad to take my order, though there were some problems with the hilt molds, since this model had been out of the catalogue for quite some time.They found the molds, cleaned and repaired them and after a while I got an email saying they were set to go.
I ordered the Main Gauche with a longer blade of 38 cm or 15", after Dave's complaint the standard dagger was too short in the blade, paid 50% up front and waited for the call that the set was ready. That came about 2 months later. I pluncked down the other 50% and they shipped the set.
Everything was hunky dory, communication was excellent, no problems at all.
I tracked the shipment of course and saw that the plane was diverted to Turkey. Okay, I mean, what can you do?
I changed my mind when I saw what the poor Postman litterally dragged in.
I freed the set from the debris and emailed Graig. The pack had been sitting on the tarmac in Ankara in the rain for God knows how long and inadequate packing resulted in rust spots on the blades and the box desintegrating. Graig asked whether I wanted to ship the lot back, I said no, I'll handle the rust myself. I asked him to think about better packing, since the heavy sword was just stuck on a carton board with the help of some plastic bands, ditto for the the dagger and the remainder of the space inside the carton only half filled with the plastic nugget stuff.
There was no protecting coat on the set, no plastic wrap, nothing. Had the carton board with the sword gone the way of the box, the results would have been even worse. As it was, the tip of the blade was already scraping the street. Graig said he was going to look into who was responsible for the boxing. And that was it. The first thing to piss me off bigtime. As soon as Graig understood I was cleaning ,,house'' myself and would not lay a claim on the insurance money and make his live difficult, all communication stopped. No aftersales feelgood emails whatever. No interest into how I was doing cleaning up and polishing the blades. Nada. That struck me quite deep. Afterall, I got better aftersale service from guys selling me a mere $200 Windlass.
So,as to get a clair head and not wanting to do a review on the spot that could land me accusations of being partial and negative because of this, I just cleaned and oiled the lot, stuck it in a rack, handled it every now and then, until my mood would change and I could do a review without bias. And that is now.
The review.
Let us begin to say that the sword is not a rapier. It is a Reit Schwert, a Cavalry sword, plain and simple. As such there is no need whatsoever to have a parrying dagger or Main Gauche included in the package. A dagger as such, would have been used as a back up weapon of last resort, after the saddle guns. It is nice to have a dagger of the same design as the sword, but these Main Gauche would have been used in a mainly civillian context, in a rapier duel. There they make sense and in this civilian context rapier and Main Gauche were often of the same design.
The hilts.
The hilts on the sword and dagger are very well done. The lines are very good. The casting is immaculate, the patination also. The latter is a sort of antique purple brown musket barrel colour, though not as tough. It scratches quite easely. I think I will take it off when I have the time. It is nice but also makes the hilts look very new, while I go for a more ,, lived in'' feel. The grip wire is also done very well. Everything is tight, nothing rattles.
That the hilts are cast says nothing against them. They seem to be sturdy and strong. What bugs me though is precisely that clean, faultless and perfect look. It makes them unreal, plastic looking and as such far removed from hilt work on antiques. There the detail would have been chased and chisseled. Handwork, that would give that human accent, with all of the little faults and imperfections. It was the first thing that put me off when I held the set in my hands. That replica feel. I know chasing is not done anymore because it is very time consuming and expensive, so I do not hold that against A&A. Let's say that for instance Del Tin hilts can be overly raw and unfinished looking, but they are quite close to the medium quality hilts of the time. Those were not much better done. A&A tries to immulate higher class workmanship of old, but fails because it is too perfect. To me it looks cold, impersonal and shouts ,,replica'' to a high degree.
The blades.
This sword has a quite broad blade in a diamond section. Nothing bad about that. What is very wrong is that the stock is way too thin, as usual I might add. The blade starts out at 4.5 mm, is still 4 mm half way and tapers down to 2.5 mm at 1" from the tip.
So you got a wide blade, in a flat diamond section, without any fullers. No wonder the blade sags when held horizontal. The tang is also way too slender in width to accomodate this wide blade. I have the feeling the tang will bend or break during heavy, or, real use. The thin stock and slender width combined do not bode very well.
As usual the thin untapered blade needs to get balanced by the hilt and that is why there is this overbuild contraption on top of it.
I like that there are hammer marks on the blades. Though polished away as much as possible, in the right light one can still see some. Nice. The sharpening job is well done too, with only a very small secondairy bevel and all lines are straight to a tee. The polish is satin, like Hanwei puts on their blades, but much more refined.
Handling.
Yeah right.
The dagger handles very well since it is almost weightless. Which is precisely what is wrong with it. Though it has that much longer blade, it does not pack a punch whatsoever. That is why it fails as a parrying dagger. There is nothing there to counter the other blade with. The too thin blade here also ruins what could have been a very good weapon. Antique dagger blades were quite a bit thicker, with lots of distal taper. That said it is very well constructed.
The Reit Schwert.
This sword does not handle at all. The too thin untapered blade refuses to do what you want. The overbuild hilt does not make the experience any better and the thin and too short grips on both the sword and the dagger finish off any semblance of control. It is way too heavy to use and as such has nothing of the qualities a sword or Cavalry sword should have. Being the wrist breaker it is, it is as bad when on a horse as on the ground. This thing will have you killed.
The POB is 12 cm or 4.7" from the guard, width is 4.5 cm or 1.8" and the length is 99 cm or 39", including the ricasso.
Conclusion.
This set cost me a bucket. That shows in the way the set is constructed and detailed. The workmanship is very good. All metal work is flawless. The set makes a great show piece.
As for this set being weapons, I might have just as well have stuck with Windlass. For the price paid this set is, qua functionallity, a bummer of the first degree.
I do not know about the other offerings of A&A. This one is a nono. If they use the same too thin stock on the other blades also, things look quite dismal. At least their German Bastard starts out at a little under 7 mm, which is quite thin for such a big blade, but would have been fitting on this Reit Schwert.
Cheers.
