The Armour Archive

I am hoping to set up my forge come spring. And I know I will have access to one that is set up. The only thing is that I want to make knives of a period design. Basically any period or culture is fine. I will be focusing on a few cultures of interest to myself such as norse and mid 16th century french and italian. Also with the designs what they were made out of would be most appreciated so I can try and make them as close as possible.

Any advice from other bladesmiths about which knives are funniest or most challenging to make would be wonderful as well.

Bjorn Swiftaxe

I don't know anything about period knives, but I know a very good source. The MOL book "Knives and Scabbards". It's a book of extant blades dating from 1150 to 1450. I don't have this book, but I have the MOL books on textiles and dress accessories and they are excellent. The information in them is from the London excavations.

You can buy it here.

Kass

Here is something that might be of interest:

http://www.arkeodok.com/Viking%20KnivesCD.html

It does not really get more authentic than this. There is also a paper in swedish about the supposedly correct welding procedure for these knives. I dont know of any translation as of yet.

Since you weren't all that specific about the period, here are pictures of a few of them from different periods:

http://www.allenantiques.com/Knives-Collection.html

Wade

If you're interested in Viking age knives, I strongly recommend getting a copy of Anglo-Scandinavian Ironwork from Coppergate by Patrick Ottaway (ISBN 1 872414 29 X). Over 100 different blades.

One of the interesting things about migration era blades, besides being consistently single-edged and rat-tailed tanged, is their incredible variety. I was just looking at an illustration of grave goods from a 6-7th century Anglo-Saxon burial, and there's a smaller version of a clip-point bowie style.

On the other claw, double-edged daggers are scarcer than unicorns (I've seen one (1) in 34 years) in this period and I've never seen any full-tanged knives from an archeological context. (Tomorrow, who knows?) Beyond those parameters, generally there was lots of variation in forms, backs and points, and even some folding knives.

Hope this helps.

Thanks all for all the information and links your providing. Keep it coming if you would. I'm gathering it all together so I can go through one big forge fest of making some of these. Don't know which ones yet.

Bjorn Swiftaxe

I got the MOL knives/scabbards book recently. If you want to make authentic knives from the period/locale this book covers, you can't do better for a paper reference. It shows hundreds of period blades, including cross-sectional shapes at different points along the blade. I mostly build armor, but next time I get a yin to make some period blades, I'm going to turn straight to this book.