An Argentinian M1910 Officers Dress Sword.
Aug 25, 2018 16:35:10 GMT
Post by Uhlan on Aug 25, 2018 16:35:10 GMT
This sword seems to be some kind of design icon, it being one of the first and maybe the only sword ever to be inspired in its hilt design by the Art Deco style.
That Art Deco thing was the only reason I bought it.
I just liked that hilt. It looked like a prop from that movie ,, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow '' to me.
Only later on I found out what this glorified cocktail pricker really was.
It is far from the cocktail pricker I thought it to be.
Information online is scarce, but there seem to be some variants on the 1910 model.
The military swords have the Argentinian State Emblem on the back strap it is said and swords for the Officers for the Guardia National have instead of the National Emblem a Medusa head there.
This sword has the emblem but also the Medusa head, so what it was for I do not know.
Further more it seems that blade length says something about whether the sword is for Cavalry Officers, Artillery Officers or Infantry Officers.
Is this true? Again I do not know.
My sword might be an early one, because of the blade etch. This is depicting this lady ( Athena in revolutionary garb? ) in a certain position. After 1950 there was a change of some kind here. (See the notes) My lady is holding a spear with the right hand.
With a blade length of 79.5 cm (31.29") it is not clear to me though which service this sword was intended for.
Hopefully Pino is able and willing to tell us some more.
Probably it said Krupp Stahl or Rhein Stahl above the Solingen stamp. The blade number is 178.
The Clemen&Jung forge stamp. The stamp slipped.
Work.
I got it for not many peanuts and rightly so, because it was in a junker state.
The rust bucket of rusty buckets in Ulahns Galaxy Of Rust. And this here sword was the black hole at its center.
I did not care at the time because, as I said, I was only interested in the Art Deco hilt anyway.
Only about three weeks ago I regained my interest in the thing.
Parts had been discarded and exiled to dark corners of the workshop and I could not find the scabbard at first. The blade was amongst a bunch of left overs in another corner. Anyway, after inspection and very reluctantly, I started working on the little blade.
As bad as it looked, surprisingly the rust was not very deep and the etching had only minor damage. That was encouraging.
The scabbard was missing the mouth piece and I could not remember whether I had taken it off or not and if so, what had happened with it. Luckily I had a junker M1822/82 French Cavalry private order scabbard and lo and behold, after some filing the M1822 piece fitted really well into the M1910 scabbard. It almost slotted right in. Also lucky, the M1910 liners were still in place and intact. I had to file down the outside of the new mouth piece to make it fit between the langets and drill holes and make two little screws from some larger screws from my old screw box.
That done the scabbard had to be blued and I decided to blue right over the rusty skin and to polish into the wet blue with some steel wool.
I did not have the heart to polish first and go by the book here.
Too much work. I did not even degrease the scabbard. It turned out rather well actually. The sword retained much of its ,, used, but cared for antique '' vibe this way.
Much earlier I had brought the cleaned hilt parts to the neighbourhood jeweller to be hard gilded, so after polishing the blade and bluing the scabbard I now had to find the box where I had stored them.
Yes, Ulahn has lots and lots of boxes and does not know what's in them.
But everything what's in them is mine! All mine!
The Bakelite grip had to be restored since two ribs were missing.
So, out came the old Playdo and the super glue and my little Chinese diamond tipped rat tails. Lastly a new felt washer was made.
In the raw.
The results are quite nice.
The entire exercise felt like exporting mams old clunker car to Mexico, going on a holiday there years later, finding the darn thing in the back yard of some remote village cantina, importing it again and against all better judgment start working on it, screaming wives and divorce lawyers be damned.
Why I do these idiot things I do not know. Must be karma or some stuff.
But, when I look at it now, with its nice gild, the polished blade and blued scabbard and feeling how solid it still is and how nicely balanced, it was well worth the exercise.
It comes quite close to the IOD 89 qua feel, though this one has the stiffer blade.
I am starting to like this thing.
Cheers.
Notes.
I had a link to Antique Swords..EU here who has a nice M1910 in store, but it got censored. WTF?
www.militariarg.com/swords--bayonets.html
elespecialista-acp.blogspot.com/2011/09/sables-de-mando-de-las-ffaa-argentinas.html