ANXII Cuirassier: A very well made (fake?)

Good catch; except for the junction part of the 3rd branch with pommel cap, upgraded grip leather color and the ferrule which is sometimes missing it is the same as the Indiamart swords.

Remember: when the tail of the Du crosses with the Klingenthal it is an absolute fake.

Give this to one of those shady seller in ebay and it will go for 1000$+...ugh...

The tarnish looks suspiciously universal, too. It's as if someone spray-painted it with a thin coat of German-grey paint, rather than natural corrosion (which would be somewhat uneven, you'd think?)

Hilt and grip are kinda nice though. What a shame...

I find this specimen very intriguing because of the third half moon like poinçon which is a copy(?)( more on this later) of a badly punched K for Krantz poinçon.
This one you'll never find on a Universal blade. The style of the spine etch is representative for the period, that is why Universal and Co used it of course. Where it goes wrong on all modern replicas is that the etch tends to be too large for the given space. It runs off the spine because of the insufficient thickness of replica blades.
So I would like to know the width and thickness of that blade, if possible, before I am going to make a judgment here.
Pinos rule of the DU crossing into the K is a sound one, but I have a replica from Empire Costume where the DU does NOT cross into the K. Of course it misses the third poinçon and the thickness of the spine or lack thereof makes for the etch to run off, so the situation is clear on first glance. But still.
The hilt on the sword in question here is quite crudely made, which is not problematic per se.
The junction of the bars with the pommel cap is a bit off, but the flat tear drops on the inside are a 100% sure indication that at least the hilt is spurious, ferrule or not.
The grip though looks okay to me. Compared to the Universal grip it shows some profile and I think that only with the nose on the leather one could say definitely that the grip is modern.
It just occurred to me that a younger mobile telephone carrying generation just sighs: ,, There's that old geezer Ulahn again, writing down the equivalent of the Bible in word count. Man, we got stuff to do ''. And merrily goes darting off after the next item of interest, but I happen to like doing forensics on stuff. It helps me to understand and learn and to construct my set of criteria.
So I found that in the case of these pallasche more often than not things are not so clear cut as some would make us believe. These swords are iconic, fetch a good price and so are replicated all over. That is clear fact. What is not often touched upon is that some originals were NOT made in accordance to the canon. Some do have the ferrule, some don't. Some have a small ricasso, some blades have a somewhat larger one. The grip plateau idem ditto. Blades and hilts got mixed up, not only blades and hilts in the period but also later on, so we can see M1816 blades hilted with old AN XI hilts, ANXI blades with M1854 hilts and so on. At least in Germany they had this excellent verification system that makes it easy to see whether the sword/sabre got rehilted or extensive work was done officially. Here the inspection stamp on the pommel is a sure sign. To make matters even worse, Universal is only the new kid on this block. Replicas were made in the 19th C (!) I learned somewhere and in the 50's and 60's this happened too. Since it financially does not make sense to limit production to a few, there must be quite a number of those younger, now vintage, repros out there. And probably much better made than the Indian ones. Maybe the one above is an example?
I say all this because I have a pallasch, for some years now, I keep coming back to. Even after I showed it at the time here on the forum and even after our grandees assured me the thing is good, I still have this uneasy feeling about it.
If you do not mind I would like to show it here.
The blade is wavy as all hell, but this may be caused by machine cleaning. There are signs this was done. It has the defective K for Krantz poinçon, but that does not say much anymore.
The Bisch poinçon is larger that the other two and both the Bisch and the Krantz poinçons are upside down, so the K poinçon half moon faces the other way.
The spine etch has the DU touching the K, but the etch fits the spine quite well. It is dated Octobre 1812. It is quite easy to remove the 3 of 1813, but removal would show itself. There would be a very slight dent. I cannot see a dent, nor a difference in the way the 2 was made compared to the rest of the inscription. The blade is just under 9.5 mm thick and a tad under 36 mm wide. Machine cleaning may or may have not taken off much or less material. Anyway as said before. all lines are shod in the Windlass molten look way. Also the poinçons are conveniently (?) washed out by the idiot who cleaned this blade. It has an M1816 scabbard that is a little too long. The blade is 94.3 cm long, with a ricasso of about 14mm.
The grip has a good profile, but rests directly on the guard plate. No plateau, nor a ferrule. The leather is old and according to the canon, there are way too many wire windings. The grip and wire could have been replaced with an M1816 grip at some later date though. The leather is crumbling here and there in a way that is hard to replicate, but if this is a replica from the 50's your on your own again. The side branches join the pommel cap in the right way, but the cap itself is slightly off. At least the tear drops are on the outside and inside. That's nice. What is not nice is that the hilt is different in seize from the AN XI or later hilts. It is smaller and the branches do not flare out as much. There are no signs that the hilt got stomped upon. It is not damaged in any way. That something is wrong with the hilt becomes obvious as one places the sword on a flat surface. The AN XI and all later models will lay stable and upright, supported as they are by the joint of the flaring branches of their hilts. Not this one. It keels over. So something is not right here. Also there are file marks between the tears and the tears themselves are quite crudely made. The guard plateau has hard sharpish sides and the beak is quite turned down compared to the others
What also irritates me is the crude V on the knuckle bow. It was done with a fine punch. This should indicate the hilt was from Versailles, which is nonsense since the Versailles V poinçon is stamped as V in roundel. Clearly someone thought it a good idea to hype this hilt up a bit, which action only makes me more nervous. The peen is nice and large, but not original, so there was work done on this pallasch at some point.
I made a lot of pictures to make things clear a bit.
Now, tell me once and for all what I have here. I need to stop this constant worrying every time I see this thing. If the sword is spurious, well, I payed years ago, so it is not such a problem anymore. Please do your worst.

Here we go, the Empire Costume Universal as an exception on Pinos very sensible rule first:

Yo Uhlan, the pics of the pallasch, is it the one you are unsure of or is it an Empire Costume model and is it the one dated 1812 or the other?

Arg, uhm...ok look it’s not going to be pretty to hear but that sword is a repro…here’s why:

1. Lack of ferule and the hole you see for the grip wire looks drilled/modern
2. Wavy fullers/ricasso
3. Quality of the stamps; the V mark is not even a stamp but something made with a pointy object, it is so crude it cannot pass as a genuine stamp

Might be my eyes deceiving me but it looks as:

4. the triangle spacing of the pommel looks very crude
5. the outer face of the knucklebow is flat, like Indiamart kind of flat.

Added pics with identification of the faulty details btw.
As you pointed out the fact that it doesn’t stay put and keels over in contrast with the others is another clue as to its overall quality. All cuirassiers/dragoon swords, either made in Klingenthal, Solingen or Italy followed the same manufacturing process and specs varied very lightly so a real one shouldn’t stand-out like that.


And of course the cherry on the cake is the Du Klingenthal meeting at the tails: it doesn’t matter if it is dated 1807 or 1815, the moment you see that mark, it is the mark of Doom.
For the blade at least there's no escape...sorry.

I remember that on this thread you announced a cuirassier sword coming up;
the biggest pallasch
So that’s a better example of a cuirassier sword! Do you still have it to compare better?

Hello

Slightly unrelated question for those of us without the financial means to reasonably expect to purchase one of these.

I am aware of the Universal sword repros, and I have a good idea of what they look and feel like (I got one as a freebie years ago, and in terms of handling, it was pure elongated disappointment and anger). I don't mind the shoddy handling, but the waxy and molten blade geometry never quite captured the "look" of the original. 

I'm just wondering: how do the Empire Costume repros match up in terms of quality of build, finish, and handling? I always assumed the EC ones came from Universal with some minor cosmetic reworking, but having read the above posts, I'm not quite so sure. 

Popped back to a big discussion, nice...

The better quality of this repro was exactly why i was so impressed in the first place. The poincons alone are of miles superior to the current range of indiamart offerings.

However, the Bick poincon was what really killed it on the blade for me. Below is a comparison of Bick poincons that I made awhile back. Its main purpose was to discuss the “heart-shaped” leaf variant that isnt that well represented in French books vs the typical laurel leaf type. But as you can see, the definition of the leaves on the Laurel type are not as regular as compared to the repro and much skinnier. And the right branch is almost always shrivelled.



Laurel variant of Bick seen in most French books



Compared to the better repro


Current standard of Indiamart

Good work and a good idea!
I will take pictures of the repro and the fake thing too and post them later in the day.

The teardrops are full.

You speak of ,, Romel '' replicas.
Never heard of those. Could you elaborate please?

1812 fake:



This one is larger than the other stamps on this blade.
Leaves too detailed.

Empire Costume Dragoon:



Too detailed leaves touch the B.

The two twigs should be intertwined at the base of the crown like in No. 9.
In both stamps here presented the base of the crown is a kind of rectangle, like some box where the twigs come out off. Anyway the differences with the original stamp are quite obvious now. Like the detailed leaves on the fakes. And with the ,, Indiamart'' stamps, they're not even trying anymore.
Looking at this I'd say beware of blades with damage to the stamps and the half moon K stamp too.