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Post by Deleted on Jul 4, 2019 17:05:22 GMT
I have a Viking age sword blade coming my way from China tomorrow afternoon, and I am getting close to buying some hilt components. A forumite directed me to Raymond's Quiet Press. He offers a few sword hilt sets and this one caught my eye:
He offers this set with one guard and one pommel, or two guards and one pommel. I assume that the set with two guards and one pommel is meant to be assembled with the following configuration: guard, handle, guard, pommel.
Now, sitting a guard onto a blade and making a wood handle is easy enough. My question is, how do I assemble the lower guard and the pommel? My guess is that the lower guard is peened and the pommel is secured with pins or rivets to the lower guard, but I have seen some historical examples where the twisted wire is used to tie both pieces together. It must be a mistake to fuse the wire and pommel together when the piece is fabricated. So how would I assemble these pieces? Stack both of them and peen at the pommel? Drill holes into the lower guard and pommel, peen the lower guard, and then use pins or rivets to secure the pommel and lower guard together?
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stormmaster
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Post by stormmaster on Jul 4, 2019 17:23:15 GMT
Riveted together
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Post by babarossa on Jul 6, 2019 2:58:26 GMT
You may very well find yourself dissapointed with raymonds.
Not to disparage, but raymonds qc is very poor.
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Post by MOK on Jul 6, 2019 5:04:09 GMT
Rivets, indeed. You can see the rivet heads on the grip side in this photo of the original:  If the pommel is solid, it would be riveted through with two straight rivets; if it's hollow, it would be filled with pitch (you could use epoxy) and fixed thus to a single U-shaped rivet that goes through the guard twice. |
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stormmaster
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Post by stormmaster on Jul 6, 2019 5:08:59 GMT
funny enough I am also having a reproduction of this sword made
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Post by MOK on Jul 6, 2019 5:13:19 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Jul 6, 2019 13:29:09 GMT
You may very well find yourself dissapointed with raymonds. Not to disparage, but raymonds qc is very poor. One can share negative experiences with a vendor without disparaging them. Can you be more specific. MOK, I went looking for pictures of that archaeological find and had no luck. You're a paragon of research, once again. |
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Post by babarossa on Jul 6, 2019 14:11:12 GMT
My wife got me the sountuka? Style set from raymonds for Christmas.
The castings have many flaws. They are offset, off center, tilted, clocked, pitted and have flash leftover from a previous cast(or a cold pour?).
One pit in the pommel is 4-5mm diameter and about 20mm deep at about the 1 o'clock angle(it could have been a pilot hole for the tang if I wanted a really crooked pommel)
Over all it is as if the molds were poorly made, and poorly fitted together. Worst of all, they don't seem to care or they wouldn't ship such poor work.
Also, the guard is very wide/thick(28mm) and heavy at some 15oz. About 22oz for the set.
I would post pictures but I dont know how and they wouldn't show the issues like holding the parts and being able to see all the variations at once.
They do look nice on the mantle next to my random tsuba's tho. If you dont look too close.
Perhaps the set that you are looking at will be better. Just be prepared to do a ton of work to make the parts useable.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 6, 2019 14:17:07 GMT
That's really interesting. I read that most people thought the Suontaka fittings were too small. In any case, that is a bad experience and I thank you for sharing.
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stormmaster
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I like viking/migration era swords
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Post by stormmaster on Jul 6, 2019 14:53:36 GMT
The original steinvik viking was iron with silver and copper inlays with bronze or copper plaques of anamorphic figures, deities maybe, quiet press fittings are usually really on the small side and mediocre, i can recommend some better production viking fittings
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Post by Deleted on Jul 6, 2019 15:20:47 GMT
The original steinvik viking was iron with silver and copper inlays with bronze or copper plaques of anamorphic figures, deities maybe, quiet press fittings are usually really on the small side and mediocre, i can recommend some better production viking fittings Who is selling fittings exclusively, or rather, independently of sword blades? |
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stormmaster
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Post by stormmaster on Jul 6, 2019 16:05:47 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Jul 6, 2019 16:19:04 GMT
That's an excellent source, storm. Thanks very much. I think I must have seen this some time ago, but I totally forgot.
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Post by MOK on Jul 6, 2019 22:04:44 GMT
You may very well find yourself dissapointed with raymonds. Not to disparage, but raymonds qc is very poor. One can share negative experiences with a vendor without disparaging them. Can you be more specific. MOK, I went looking for pictures of that archaeological find and had no luck. You're a paragon of research, once again. Aw, shucks.  It's featured in Ian Pierce's Swords of the Viking Age, color plate IV and pages 32-33. Another IMO major discrepancy with the Quiet Press fittings is that the originals are roughly lenticular or boat-shaped in cross-section, like most viking hilt fittings, not squarish like these, which can't help but affect their weight and ergonomics. |
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stormmaster
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I like viking/migration era swords
Posts: 7,714
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Post by stormmaster on Jul 6, 2019 22:07:31 GMT
if u need some close ups of the steinvik sword tho pm me i got some high def extreme close ups i prepared for my own commission, my smith actually did a 1 for 1 cutout to ensure that the final product will be almost exact to the original lol
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