A smallsword from Armlann Gàidhealach

From long before the 1745 Uprising, O'Shaughnessy embraced the notion of the smallsword, but not its normal form and function.  Among the stock left over from Armlann Gàidhealach were only four normal smallswords with triangular blades of 32 inches, and a dozen more that resembled scaled-down rapiers with blades that had diamond cross sections and sharp edges.  Hawkins identifies them as the "wee claybegs" mentioned in inventories (although O'Shaughnessy moved to Edinburgh from western Ireland and her personal documents are in some undecipherable non-Irish script, her letters in Britain and Armlann Gàidhealach's records were all written in Scots) and asserts that O'Shaughnessy's and her daughter Ciara's personal swords were of this type.

They strongly resemble the so-called pillow or scarf swords of the previous century, with very short blades (as little as 24 inches) and no knucklebows or finger rings.  They were made with a pattern of lightweight rapier blade called a smalle Doljch, which O'Shaughnessy and MacNeill imported from Solingen, where they were made by the small workshop of Hoffmann Schwieets.  In Edinburgh, they were shortened from the point and tang end to eliminate the long ricasso and produce a delicate little blade.

I am currently saving up for a standard-pattern "wee claybeg," but I wanted to first get ahold of this absolutely unique variant.  It was created in January 1746 along with a dagger and miniature targe for Andrew Aldridge of Beinn Sgleatach, who, however, did not accept or pay for them.  This is a good thing, since I wouldn't want to own anything he had owned, for reasons that will become clear.

The blade is a kort Doljch, a shortened version of Hoffmann's earlier heavy rapier pattern, which was also used in pillow swords.  O'Shaughnessy seems to have produced this sword as a more battle-worthy version of the wee claybeg, as not only the blade but also the fittings are more massive and sturdier.  Hawkins tells me that the matching targe is only 11-1/2 inches wide, which I would normally consider too small for a strapped shield unless the wielder's forearm with closed fist is itself less than 11-1/2 inches from elbow to knuckles.  I've usually read that targes were at least 16 inches wide at the smallest; the last one I obtained is this size and feels barely wide enough for me.  A strapped shield smaller than that not only provides less protection in general, but, if shorter than the wielder's forearm, would run the risk of allowing blows that strike between the 6 to 8 or 10 to 12 o'clock positions to skate around and strike the elbow or upper arm, and give no protection at all to a sideways blow in line with the elbow.  That's why usually the only shields this small are center-gripped, like bucklers or dhals.  A tiny strapped shield and short sword only make sense in the hands of someone who was fast enough to get close to an opponent while avoiding their attacks or receiving them in such a way as to avoid being injured.

This actually appears to have been the case.  O'Shaughnessy described Aldridge to the Hawkinses as "five fit lang yet unco bonnie an' byous swith."  (O'Shaughnessy seems to have been a secret admirer of his, perhaps because she was very short as well.)  This letter seems to have been the source of James McKay's description of him in "The children of Ailpean" as "Five feet tall and swift of foot."  A popular joke about Aldridge was that his mother, whose identity isn't known, was of the Unseelie.  McKay himself was present at Culloden as a lieutenant under Colonel Cornelius Ridge, Aldridge's English cousin.  Near the end of the battle Aldridge, who had been saving his last bullet for Ridge, shot at him but only hit his horse.  The two then charged at each other with swords, with Ridge very nearly losing the duel due to Aldridge's terrifying speed.  Aldridge was only defeated when half a dozen soldiers under Lieutenant Paul Hurt (later a Captain and later still husband of Sylvia Hawkins) surrounded and fired on him all at once.  An infuriated Ridge then took McKay's pistol and finished off his injured cousin.  In describing the incident to Ridge's nephew Corporal Robert Ridge (who joined the regiment after Cornelius' "suicide" in 1755) McKay claimed that he saw two shadowy little phantoms appear above Aldridge's body, one a woman with long hair who dragged the other away by the hand, and what he described as the laughter of many thin voices like tin whistles heard far away.  It was the terror of this experience, as much as the moral repugnance of the Duke's orders, that made McKay and Hurt refuse to participate in the execution of wounded Jacobites after the battle.  For this they were both dismissed, though their commissions were reinstated several months later.

It was also this experience that inspired "The children of Ailpean," which described how Ailpean Aldridge and all his descendants were cursed due to a fight between him and the Unseelie princess Cornelia.  It is a matter of historical record that all his descendants on both sides of the border died before the age of 50 and violently.  The sole possible exception is Andrew's father Geoffrey, who dropped dead shortly after Culloden, and even this McKay attributed to being slain by fairy-shot by Cornelia herself, whom his poem casts as the mother of Andrew and the phantom who dragged Andrew's soul away to join the Unseelie.  Cornelius Ridge's "suicide" was rumored to have been murder at the hands of his lieutenant colonel and successor, Sir Laurence Pemberton.  Even Robert Ridge would die in the French and Indian War at the age of 25 when his company was ambushed in the woods west of Cayuga Lake.  What became of Andrew's possessions is unknown, but "The children of Ailpean" ends with O'Shaughnessy burning Andrew's body, sword and shield on a pyre and burying the remains in an old mound in Beinn Sgleatach to break the curse.

So how do I have these?  Armlann Gàidhealach actually made two swords, and a number of other weapons, for Aldridge.  These were listed in invoices as "1 short claybeg or 1 wee claybeg," "1 short claymore w. half-basket" "1 wee targaid w. strap," "1 wee targaid w. nae strap," "1 wee dirk w. chip knife," "1 wee dagger" and "2 belts."  (What O'Shaughnessy calls a "chip" knife is what we'd call a by-knife, a miniature version of a general-purpose belt knife with a curved cutting edge, carried in a side pocket of a larger blade's sheath or scabbard.  Don't ask me where she got the word "chip" from.  Although "chib" is a modern Scottish word related to "shiv," these are borrowings from Romani and not attested before the 20th century, so they're unlikely to be related to O'Shaughnessy's "chip."  There's also a modern style called a chip knife or chip carving knife, but it has a specialized woodcarving blade with a straight cutting edge and curved spine, so, again, it's probably not related.)  The ones he actually bought were the claymore, the targe with no strap, the dirk and its by-knife, and one of the belts.  I can only guess what the claymore looked like, but I suspect the targe without a strap was identical to the remaining one except with a central, probably rigid grip, and that he chose it in order to give himself greater freedom to use it like a center-gripped buckler, eliminating the aforementioned problems with a small strapped shield.  The short claybeg with its matching belt, small targe with strap and small dagger comprise the part of the assemblage that he didn't buy.  I have them reserved but they won't join my collection until I can pay for them.  The dirk, on the other hand, was a unique piece that I'm working on reproducing from drawings; you'll see it shortly.

The blade for this sword was custom made for me by Darkwood Armory.  For process pics and other information on this project, click here.

A 16th-century peasant's sword belt

Last year I bought a secondhand Tod Cutler 16thC Bruegel Messer on myArmoury.  After a few modifications, including dyeing the sheath, I set about trying to figure out how to wear it.

The belts in Pieter Bruegel's (the 16th-century Low Country painter whom this sword is named after) paintings are generally narrow (maybe one inch/2.54cm), dark or black, have D-shaped buckles (though spectacle buckles are also occasionally seen) rendered in grey, and no keeper loop.  They're apparently worn a bit loose and low for comfort and ease of movement since the belt appears to attach directly to the back of the messer's sheath.  The Bruegel messer sheath has a pair of 1-inch slits in the back for this purpose.  While possible, there's no indication that the opposite side of the belt is fixed to the clothing or another belt hidden under the outerwear — the parsimonious explanation, supported by Mikko Kuusirati when I raised the subject on myArmoury, is that the friction of the belt against the wearer's clothing is enough to hold it up.

To replicate this style, I chose a Lord of Battles small antiqued D-ring buckle from Kult of Athena and polished it to a shiny grey.  Unfortunately, the one I received is narrower than advertised, only 7/8 inch on the inside.  Since I couldn't find a 7/8-inch strap in the right weight, I ordered a 3/4-inch lightweight strap from Tandy and waited several more days for it to arrive.  I beveled and burnished the edges (somewhat difficult with such a thin, narrow strap), dyed with Fiebings Pro and finished with dilute Resolene, then oiled and waxed as usual, and stitched with heavy linen thread.

Unfortunately, I worked a little too quickly and in an awkward position on the floor because the work table I usually use is occupied at the moment.  This may be why the back wound up a bit sloppy with spots of dye and finish on it.

For the moment, the belt seems to do its job, although I wonder if it would work as well if I weren't wearing a belt with my trousers for it to catch on.

"Spare parts" hunting sword

A mid-18th-century hunting sword built around a Medieval Fightclub mini sabre blade.  The blade and the ground-down M8 hex nut are the only parts I bought for this project; everything else is either spare material or bought for other projects and left behind when the specs changed.

As such, the fuller has a round start where it should be square.  Also the hardware is a bit less ornate than would be normal on this type of sword.  The belt buckle is from Bucklecastings.  The crossguard is a Crazy Crow Bowie guard, hammered into a slight S-curve and with a pair of cold-forged volute finials silver-soldered on.  The finials and all other brass hardware (except for the escutcheon pin added to prevent the pommel plate from rotating) are fabricated from various pieces of sheet and bar stock from Ace, with most detailing hand-filed.  The difference between the Crazy Crow and Ace brasses are noticeable where the finials are attached to the quillon block because Crazy Crow's brass is more reddish.  It's also softer yet more prone to cracking when cold-forged, even after annealing.  I'm very lucky this guard didn't, but another one I tried to use for this project did when I attempted to "unroll" it a little.  If it weren't for the prospect of cracking, I would have re-flattened the current guard, since I am finding that the finial bumps annoyingly against my index finger if I hold the grip wrong, which is why I tried to straighten the one that broke.  The hilt is assembled with pitch glue.

All leather is veg-tan, stitched with linen cord and finished with homemade walnut hull dye, olive oil and beeswax.  I did only two applications of dye.  The second time, I stirred up the sediment from the bottom of the jar and painted it on evenly to produce a very dark brown, let it dry, re-moistened it with a wet brush and wiped it all off, leaving the leather a pecan shell color which is darker than its natural state, but not as much as the initial dye applications seem to promise.  The oil and wax darken the leather further and bring out its natural orange color, which combines with the walnut dye to produce this orange-brown (without the walnut, the natural result would be what's commonly known as saddle tan).  By the way, I think the near 17-inch length is about the most that a single-layer scabbard of unhardened leather can be and still be useable.  It's already more flexible than I'd like; any longer and it would need a wooden core or for the leather to be baked or otherwise stiffened.

The grip is American walnut with linseed oil and oil-rosin varnish.  I designed it to match my belt knife from 2017, and originally I planned to give the sword a wooden scabbard core with a sheath for the knife.  However, I made a mistake when I tried to put the core halves together with pitch glue to make it water-resistant.  It turns out that while pitch glue is good for joining leather to wood, it's not so good for joining wood to wood — which makes sense, otherwise it would've been more commonly used for that historically.  The seams kept cracking even with light handling and finally broke apart completely when it fell off a desk, and with its edges saturated in pitch, I couldn't just reassemble it with hide glue, nor did I have the patience to make a new one.  This isn't entirely a bad outcome.  As is, the vertical carriage makes the hilt stick up uncomfortably close to my ribcage (I'll probably just use angled frogs from now on).  Adding a side pocket for the knife would have required the locket to be even lower on the scabbard so that the knife could clear the frog, in turn requiring the hilt to be even higher relative to the frog and belt unless I wanted the frog to hang down even lower than it does, which would make drawing awkward — it already almost requires one hand to hold the frog down when drawing.  I plan to eventually make a separate sheath for the knife that can just be tied to the belt, as the original is finished with modern dye and acrylic, and doesn't match the new leather in appearance.

The locket is soldered to the throat instead of being stapled directly to the scabbard.  The chape is a rolled cone closed at the tip with a soldered 1/4-inch brass tack.  Both the throat and chape are epoxied — I would normally want to staple the throat and use pitch glue, but in this case the scabbard fit the blade so tight when the throat was in place that there wasn't room to spare inside the scabbard for the method of stapling I've been using on other projects.  So I used epoxy to hold the hardware on as best as possible.  If I had known ahead of time that I was going to wind up with a single-layer leather scabbard, it would've made sense back when I made the locket to attach a staple to it, obviating the need for a throat and leaving the scabbard loose enough for the staple as well as allowing me to dispense with the only modern material this sword uses.

I had to remove a lot of the 1mm edge to get this blade cutting sharp, and it's still not a great cutter.  It can chop into an old Halloween pumpkin, but just bounces off water-filled plastic bottles.  Someone more skilled than me could probably make it sharper; however, the steep primary bevel resulting from the relatively thick, narrow blade would place a limit on how sharp it can be, unless you reprofiled it with a shallower grind.  Also, the entire sword is less than two feet and weighs under one pound, so there's not much momentum or leverage behind blows.  I can see this in the role of an informal town sword with some defensive use, which was common for the little hunting swords of this period.  As such, this is probably a good representation of Resenter I.

Resenter II

In the style of a Colonial American hunting sword from the 1760s-1770s, after William Moulton or John Bailey.  It uses the blade and scabbard from a replica British 1742 infantry sword via Dixie Gun Works, with pommel (#27) and belt buckle (EA) by Roy Najecki, and grip, S-guard and frog fabricated by myself.  The counterguard is an oval knife guard also from Dixie Gun Works, which I soldered a flange onto.

Other parts come from various sources which I will elaborate if anyone wants to know.  I filled the pommel with lead to provide more counterweight, then drilled holes for the tang and eyebolt.  The maple grip is stained with Minwax mahogany and finished with boiled linseed oil, and the hilt is held together with pitch glue as well as the ground-down hex nut.  Belt is stained with tea and vinegaroon, finished with neatsfoot oil and beeswax, and stitched with waxed linen cord.

Algernon de Pangim's second hunting sword (thus Resenter II) may very well have been a standard-issue infantry sword remounted by a Colonial cutler, as it's clearly lower-end as far as hunting swords go, with the brass furniture and common wood grip.

18th-century cutlass belt

This is the first complete sword belt of any kind that I've made.  I intended to do it on the cheap but still stick to period materials as best as possible.

The buckle is by Roy Najecki (item EA here).  You can order it with or without a tongue; I ordered mine with one.  The tongue is iron and rather sharp.

The leather is all vegetable-tanned.  It's stained with double-strength, heavily steeped black tea and vinegaroon; the tea supposedly enriches the leather with extra tannins for the vinegaroon to react with so that the leather's own tannins won't be depleted, which would result in degradation and cracking over the years.  The vinegaroon itself is iron (in this case fine steel wool) dissolved in vinegar.  This is not a dye, but a reagent; it looks like pond water or tea, but turns tannins black.  After staining the leather, I neutralized the vinegaroon in a mild baking soda solution until it stopped fizzing.  It's finished with neatsfoot oil and beeswax.

The stitching is coarse waxed linen cord, since I wasn't sure fine stitching would be strong enough.  To keep the end knots from chafing against clothing, they're on the outside, which gives it a rather sloppy appearance.

The frog fits the scabbard in the same way as my Bowie knife frog:  The sleeve is slightly oversized for the scabbard and pops open when pressed from the sides so it becomes tall enough to slide over the button, allowing the button to be pressed through a round buttonhole, which is just wide enough for the button's neck but has a slit to either side to let the button through.  While I was test-fitting it after stitching, I found that the sleeve was a little too tight for me to easily get the scabbard back out.  So I had to finish attaching the frog to the belt itself with the scabbard encumbering it.

Most replica sword belts of this kind that I've seen are upwards of two inches wide.  This one is only 1-1/4 inches, in accordance with guidelines at Gentlemen of Fortune.  It chafes a lot when worn over only a shirt, but on top of a waistcoat or justaucorps it would probably be okay.  It's also a very functional design, in that when buckled tight enough, it allows you to draw the sword one-handed.

This sword is a Dixie Gun Works 1742 British infantry sword.  It's a nice sword for the money, but I'll soon be attempting to replace the hilt.  You'll see whether or not that turns out in another month or two.