How much was this one?
hrm, would you beleive me if I told you that technically, about $10 - yes, that's not a type,
ten dollars...
It was specifically made for myself for fun on weekends, using spare bits of stock - the blade was an offcut section and originally done as a practice peice in hot-working steel and basic shaping, since I usually use stock removal techniques.
The bronze plates were offcuts from a 16th C rapier hangar project that I had gathering dust, the scabbard chape was a section of scrap from a customer's chape, which was *just* big enough to squeeze a chape out of.
The scabbard core, likewise, were the offcuts of limewood from a single-handed sword scabbard that was done, and the wool core was two spare bits that were too small for sword scabbard linings.
The grip was a spare length of ash from when I was making pollaxes, sawn to size and bored through.
Even the leather for the scabbard was a bit left over from other projects that I'd had lying around and was of an odd shape I'd never really use for anything else.
Once I started realising I had most of the bits lying around as offcuts, I really started specifically trying to do it as a challenge for myself to see how high a quality peice I could make just using up stuff I had in my bits box, for the hell of it.
Only things I bought for it specifically was a reel of linen thread, as I'd run out, and a load of emery paper for the polishing work.
For the ones I'd like to make its dependant on details of course, but I'm suspecting that I'd go for EN45 steel with stock removal if it were a commercial peice, as that way I could have them heat-treated by an outsourced contractor, same as I would with longswords - far better than doing it myself as my heat-treatment kit is rather crude, and ensures absolute quality.
and then well, I'm sort of split between the really long bladed early 15th C types, and the shorter ones of the early 16th C. I'm tempted by doing an english black horn handled dagger with slab-sides riveted to a wide hilt, with 3-layer laminate blackwood and either silver or steel hilt components, with the basic proportions based off this one in the wallace collection... I'm guessing an approximate pricetag for that of around £180-200 depending on complexity and materials used. I'm hoping for steel or silver, as I'm getting sick of making bronze hilted stuff... I want some stuff that is'nt yellow!
sorry, I'm geeking now, I'll shut up.
erm, here's a pic of the wallace collection #A726 and #A729 daggers from the 1400's and early 1500's respectively that I'd like to base the blades off.
