Targe from Armlann Gàidhealach

Armlann Gàidhealach was formed in Edinburgh at the end of August 1745, in anticipation of the return of Charles Stuart.  Its owners were Màiri MacNeil of Edinburgh and Caitlin O'Shaughnessy of Kilmacduagh, who temporarily moved to Scotland for the venture.  They officially began production three days after Stuart entered the city on September 17.  The factory produced targes, furnished German broadsword and dirk blades in the usual fashion, imported French firearms and swords, and stored and distributed captured government arms.  When government troops reoccupied Edinburgh in January, the workshop was hastily moved to a barn outside the city, where they continued production right up until the disaster at Culloden on April 16 of the following year.

Last year, I was able to obtain a beautifully-preserved targe through my connections with the Hawkins family of Gloucestershire.  They weren't Jacobites, but some were friends with O'Shaughnessy and MacNeil, and bought out the remaining stock to help the venture recoup some of their investment and dispose of/launder the evidence, since the Hawkinses had ties with the shipping industry down in Bristol, and the middle class in their own hometown would purchase swords.

The vast majority of Armlann Gàidhealach's stock has been sold, auctioned off or given away over the centuries, but I hope to put aside enough money next year to get a sword and dirk.

Learning curve

Last year, I found a 1/4-inch maple plank at Lowe's that had a wonderful amount of curl to it.  I didn't want to use it until I had a project that could do it justice.  For me, that typically means knife scales, since they show off a broad section of the thin cut.

I selected some modern "patch" blades because they're inexpensive (being made in Pakistan), stainless (thus low-maintenance), heavy and sturdy, pocket-sized, and have a neat rustic look to them.

The blades themselves required a bit of cleanup.  They came with a machined finish which I polished up as best I could (removing the PAKISTAN etching in the process).  The "Spanish notches" had a very mechanical, straight-sided appearance with a small round hole drilled at the top of the middle notch, giving them a profile like a lollipop; either they were produced with a minimum of effort or the smiths had never seen a Spanish notch in person and didn't know what one should look like.

Additionally, both blades had very sharp, square edges everywhere.  Along with the notches, the shoulders required a bit of rounding, to make them comfortable against the index finger.  The spines, thankfully, were already smoothed enough to not feel ragged against the fingers, although they are still square.  Some but not all of the holes had to be filed to accept the 3/32-inch brass pins.

My Orapik skated over the surface while I was attempting to feel the etching.  I think therefore that the steel is hard enough.  However, my overall impression of quality, and most of all consistency, was rather poor.  I am aware that Pakistan has a poor reputation with regards to blademaking.  These ones are okay for my purpose but I might choose a different project next time, though the small blade does make a fun little project for showcasing various scale materials.

The seller's specifications are as follows:

Overall length:  6-3/4 inches (medium blade), 5-1/2 inches (small)
Blade length:  3-1/2 inches (medium), 2-1/2 inches (small)
Thickness:  5/32 inch (i.e. a hair under 4mm)
Tang holes:  3/32 inch

In fact the medium is the advertised length, but its cutting edge is just under 3 inches and the blade only reaches 3-1/2 inches if you count the ricasso.  The smaller one, meanwhile, is 5-11/16 inches and has a blade of 2-11/16 counting the ricasso with a cutting edge of about 2-1/8 inches.

I didn't do anything special with these in furnishing.

Lesson one:  Use the section of the wood with the tightest curl for the smallest scales, and looser curl for larger ones.

Lesson two:  A knife with an un-flanged slab tang requires scales shaped to fit with extreme precision.  As you can see, the slightest imperfection is obvious in the finished object.  They may also slide a bit when epoxied on.

Lesson three, the real challenge this time around, was the stain.  I originally wanted to obtain or make some "magic maple," a noxious mixture of acid and iron which reacts with the wood when heated to produce a rich brown.  I've seen people speak highly of magic maple for bringing out the depth and contrast of figured wood, but it's costly and using it is complex and dangerous.  Also, since the scales were very thin, I worried that heating them might cause them to warp, as a sample piece did when subjected to a heat gun.

After sitting on my hands about it for months, I recently decided to just go ahead and use the Minwax red mahogany I already had on hand.  This was a very bad idea.

My Minwax was about 12 years old and had become a thick, molasses-like blob that a brush bounced off of.  I just scooped up dabs of it and rubbed it into the surface.  The first application looked great, producing a deep reddish-brown with almost black bands that rippled wonderfully when turned under bright light.  But it never dried.  When I went to apply some oil varnish, the stain wiped right off.

I then put some of the Minwax in a disposable bowl and thinned it down with varnish.  Again it went on beautifully and never dried.  At this point, I realized the Minwax was a lost cause.  I wiped the old finish off with mineral spirits and got a new can.

The new can was "red sedona," and while it was nice and liquidy and seemed to stain the wood, it looked...  well, awful.  Too light, almost pink on top of the pale maple, and opaque.  I hoped a layer of linseed oil would darken it, but no such luck.

Finally I went out and got another can of the red mahogany, sanded the sedona finish off and started over.  Again I followed the directions for the darkest possible finish.  This time the result was acceptable; not fantastic, but not bad-looking either.  I finished it with a couple applications of linseed oil and then tung oil varnish for a semi-gloss finish.

I only wanted the small one, so I gave the larger one to my mom.  The sheaths are made from 4-ounce veg-tan, incised, stitched with imitation sinew, wet-molded and tooled, and finished with Fiebing's dyes and "leather sheen" acrylic, which is a very watery liquid that actually doesn't look as glossy as it appears in the photo.

I wanted to go for an "early American" frontier-esque look on mine, with the understanding that this is not really a historical knife design and so I didn't feel obligated to stick with only documented embellishments.  Thus, the brown dye, whipstitching, spots, and carved wooden beads.  The thin Greek leather cords holding the beads in place are simply looped through the stitch holes and knotted on the other ends of the beads, a method used by several commercially-finished versions of this knife.  I secured the knots and stopped the ends of the cords from sticking apart by slipping each pair of ends through another bead temporarily and applying a drop of epoxy to the knot.  The thicker leather cord braided under the belt loop will allow the knife to be tied to a belt if desired without having to take the belt off first.

I consulted with my mom about how she wanted her knife sheath done; she chose to keep most of the same details I used on mine, but with red dye and no beads or additional belt cord.  She also chose a necklace charm from a craft store to attach near the top; I sewed it on with heavy brown button thread.

A pewter lapel pin II

A remake of a pin I created last December.  Just last week, I came across several pages which cleared up the real-world identity of this emblem and provided some better views of how it should be proportioned.

In comparing my first pin and subsequently the one in the film's promotional photos with the actual Soviet ones, I noticed several discrepancies which, unlike the frontwise proportions, can't be put down to the odd camera angle.  First, the one in the film clearly has the hammer's handle protruding out the top of its head; second, the angled ends of the wrench's jaws are pointing the wrong way; and third, it appears to be much too thick - likely cast, while the originals look to me to have been stamped.

Another source of cognitive dissonance is the fact that in the movie, Courtenay wears the emblem in what is supposed to be 1913, forty years before it seems to have been made part of the official Soviet railway uniform, and five years before the Bolsheviks even took power in Russia.  In the book, Pasha Antipov's father was a railway worker, and I take it that the same is supposed to be true of Pasha in the film, although I can't recall whether he mentions it (in the book he's a schoolteacher).  The cap he wears strongly resembles a Soviet railway staffer's cap from the 1955-63 period, shortly before the film was made, but it's missing its chin cord and has a number of other minor differences from those shown at Under the Red Star.

I have yet to discover whether a version of the hammer and monkey wrench symbol was used prior to the Revolution.  But my theory is that the film's costume department simply produced a crude replica of a near-contemporary Soviet railway badge and cap.

In creating a new version of the pin, I incorporated the oddities of the film version while correcting the mistakes of my first attempt and being careful to avoid the mass of flash that my first pin had around the hammer's head.  Otherwise, the process was almost exactly the same, except that I sunk a piece of heavy paper clip into the pewter running down the hammer's handle to strengthen it.

I also let the plaster sit longer before prying the wax out, in the hopes of not damaging the plaster.  In hindsight, I should've let it sit until it was cold, because the heat of the plaster as it cured softened the wax and made it more difficult to extract.

Like the first time around, I had to do a lot of cleanup with files, and there's still some more left.  The bevels on the wrench jaws should be at a shallower angle and some of the meat between the jaws still needs to be ground out.  I had no hope of recreating the threading there, but I don't think the movie version did either.

I managed one other improvement this time around:  Rather than polishing with a wire Dremel brush, I rubbed the surfaces with a fine file and then burnished them with the round back of a steel nail scissor handle.  Since the solder/pewter is much softer than steel, this resulted in a near mirror finish.