European Swords

In this sign you shall conquer

This sword has always been of great interest to me. I first saw the picture and description of this sword in the "Archeology of weapons; arms and armour from prehistory to the Age of Chivalry" by Ewart Oakeshott. I must admit that I've always had a fascination for the Knights Templar. I tried to find out as much as I could about this order over the years. What I have come to understand through my research over the years is that Pope Clement issued the bill 'Pastoralis Praeeminentiae' on November 22, 1307, which instructed all Christian monarchs in Europe to arrest all Templars and seize their assets. The subsequent seizure, torture and systemized destruction of templar property, assets and written documentation has left us with very inaccurate sources of information. There is no doubt about it, the Knights Templar were the first multinational conglomerate the world has ever known. At their time even more powerfull than the Pope in Rome with the ability to back it up with military force if necessary.Thus passed the Poor knights of christ to myth and hear say. There is a a reason why for almost 200 year's the Knights Templar military order was the most revered fighting force in Christendom.

Oakeshott describes this sword in Records of the medieval sword (p. 99) "This is an enormous sword, very nearly of two-handed proportions, and rather heavy. The point of balance is well down towards the point, ideal for a sword designed to deal slow powerfull slashing blows."

I recognize the great work Oakeshott did in categorizing European swords and sharing his knowledge about them. His categorizing process has helped many scholars and bladesmiths utilize information from the many sources of swords spread all over Europe.

All be it for me to disagree with Oakeshott's rather poor description of this one sword in the London Museum Templar Sword. I would like to represent this sword more accurately than he did in his books.

Dimensions of the sword
Blade length: 1 meter 2 mm
Handle length:
Total length of sword:
Width of cross:
Total weight:
Point of balance above cross:
Point of percussion from cross:

I would say that this sword is a large type XIIIa, one of the largest I have found in it's type. This sword has a two handed grip. When I picked this sword up in the London Museum. The sword was one of the most magical blades I have had the pleasure to handle. If there was ever a sword made for me to use, this is the one. In my hands it felt every bit the deadly fighting weapon, having the right balance, proportions and weight needed for a sword to be used in battle.

So I found myself in the Spring of 2000 in the London Museum with the sword laying on a table for me to gather all relevant information to make the reproduction. My aim was to reproduce this sword as accurately as possible, using relevant data taken directly from the original.

The measurements were directly taken by me from the original sword and written on the white paper background. You can see the pencil line drawing with relevant information on the pictures above. It is my belief that the European sword goes through a very similar construction method as the Japanese sword. Using the data gathered from the original sword, I was able to calculate the right mass at specific sections of the blade. When you forge a blade there has to be the right amount of metal left when finished allowing for grinding to reveal the proper dimensions of the original. So after calculating the mass of steel necessary to obtain the final result I went ahead and started to forge.

I use the board with the drawing of the sword on it with the relevant widths and thicknesses written on the specific sections to allow me to forge accurately. See picture below.

As you can see from the above picture the sword is almost finished to the exact proportions for the fullering.

The steel I am using to recreate this sword is a water quench steel. I chose a water quench steel as I believe that the swords from this period were made with a high carbon steel. So this reproduction will be made using high carbon steel. The blade is forged using a charcoal fire.

The blade first starts out as a round bar of 45mm. The sword is then hammered from a flat bar which is forged from the round. First of all the tang is forged and then after many hours of hand hammering the blade is then forged into the fullering blank.

As I don't have an apprentice I do my fullering with my Kick Ass drop forge hammer. I have had a special set of dies machined made to the shape of the Templar Sword fuller. That is one of the main problems of the reproductions of Medieval swords: they use a half round fuller. After using a putty in the original fuller I found out that although it looks like a semi circular shape it actually is a flat bottomed fuller with rounded sides coming up to the edges!

As you can see from this picture the blade now has had the relevant fuller work done on the blade. This takes many hours of fine chisel, scraper and file work. For more background information and importance of a fuller for a sword have a look at the Fuller page.

After this the blade is ready for hardening and tempering. I am using a high carbon water quenching steel. The blade was heated to the required to retain full authensite and then quenched into water to harden the blade. The blade then was tempered three times at the relevant temperature to retain a blade hardness of Rockwell 54-55. See below the picture taken after hardening and tempering.

After the hardening and tempering there was a lot of work to be done in removing small imperfections caused by the hardening process. For final grinding and polishing work I used hand stones. Hand finishing a sword to exact measurements taken from the original takes a long time and is very precise work. But I managed to get the dimension to within 0.2 mm accuracy all over the sword.

The sword in itself is a very beautiful and elegant object. But to make the object into its real function it needs the cross and pommel added to bring the weight exactly into the right points. Only after this is done, will the sword be a sword ready for use.

The pommel and cross guard were made from C45 which means it has .45 of carbon in the steel. Also C45 is a nice steel to polish and work with. In the making of the pommel I had to hot forge the shape using two dies which I hammered into a round bar to form the two conical points on both sides of the pommel. After this I heated the pommel to be able to drive the tang and the pommel spike through the pommel. See pictures below. One is of the finished pommel and you can see the tang and pommel spike driver in the fore front.

Suprisingly the guard when finished weighted 345 grams and the pommel weight 550 grams. so when they were placed on the sword it brought al the points of balance and blade resonance back into the blade.

Then the pommel was worked on both sides with engraving tools to inlay a Knights Templar cross into the pommel.

The cross guard was fitted to be a very tight drive fit. This means the cross had to be driven onto the tang down to seat on top of the blade. There is a 5 mm deep recess driven into the bottom of the guard allowing the blade to sit in a recess which in reality will stop the guard becoming a propeller if struck laterally. Two ferrels were placed were on top of the handle material of cherry wood. The ferrels strengthen the handle construction. All this construction was epoxied on the tang.

Then the pommel was driven onto the top of the tang, with the spike coming up through the top of the pommel. Then a small piece of shaped metal was placed around the tang spike and then rivetted over. See picture below.

The handle was prepared for wrapping. I used a hand tanned black calves leather. This was glued onto the handle with cowhide glue. The leather was then dampened with water and then whipped with a hemp cord and allowed to dry. When dry the whipped cord was removed, leaving a non-slip pattern in the leather.

Below some pictures of the finished sword. High resolution images are available when you click on the pictures.