#war rapier

So back when I was a kid I I first learned that double-edged broadswords swords with complex hand protection were a thing, I immediately wondered how a sword could be designed to allow both edges of the sword to be used. The resulting idea was a sword with twin knuckle-bows, and I’ve never quite let go of my efforts to design thus on a practical way.

The Original Design was incredibly simple—a broadsword with twin knuckle-guards, and that was all. I like this design only for nostalgic reasons, but still, it has a certain elegant simplicity to it. Kind of gives me a 17th century heavy cavalry vibe. I remember thinking it through and realizing the knuckle bows had to be canted out of the plane of the blade in other to hold it properly, but that was beyond my abilities to create physically as a kid, so when I went to make it out of wood, I ended up with something like a Keyblade guard from Kingdom Hearts (On the plus side, I know for a fact that KH’s Keyblade swords are perfectly serviceable weapons in terms of their hilt design). But I really don’t like it as a practical design anymore. I was in elementary school when I first conceived this design, and thought that a simple knuckle-bow was enough to actual protect your hand (you fool. You absolute buffoon), so there’s really nothing else there to keep those fingers from getting hacked off in a melee. In terms of a serviceable weapon, I wouldn’t choose to wield the Original Design without two considerations: 1) the addition of a thumb ring for a more secure grip and 2) I would only wield it while wearing armored gauntlets.

The Original Design required Modifications in order to create a sword that truly protects one’s hand, so I’ve toyed around with various designs over the years that preserved (or didn’t preserve) the underlying structure of the Original Design. Extra bars, plates, and a cross-guard have all made appearances over the years, but only two design criteria held—there had to be two opposing knuckle bows and the sword had to be able to be “flipped” to make both edges serviceable. As I kept looking up swords online, I began to become better acquainted with 17th-18th century continental European broadswords from the Eighty Years War, Thirty Years War, and the Franco-Dutch wars. Called houwdegen (Dutch, “hewing/cutting/slashing swords”—the Amsterdam Town Guard was armed with a particularly lovely model in the mid-17th century that was copied by the French as their first regulation cavalry sword), haudegen/felddegen (German, “hewing/cutting/slashing swords”/“field swords”), and êpées wallones (French, “Walloon Swords”), these swords were also popular in the British Isles, known in the early 18th century as “sheering/shearing swords” or “spadroons” (Many thanks to Stoccata School of Swordsmanship in Australia for their groundbreaking article on this subject)—a lighter-weight alternative to the British basket-hilted broadsword of Highland Scots fame (a note on terminology: some people say that a “spadroon” is a smallsword with a blade just substantial enough to cut. Those people are wrong. They can fight me What really happened was as the 18th century progressed, the shape of spadroons was simplified and the blade got smaller and narrower until by the Napoleonic Wars it had convergently evolved into a shape reminiscent of the more popular and prestigious Smallsword, but lacking all of its former virtues as a light cutter without being able to effectively match the Smallsword as a light thrusting weapon—the “perfect encumbrance”). My modifications have tended to stick with the early- to mid-17th century cavalry vibes, but eventually I couldn’t deny what this sword wanted to be…

I ended up conceiving a late 17th-century/early 18th century Walloon Sword/Sheering Sword/Spadroon (the time period roughly corresponding to the Golden Age of Piracy). Following the lead of the Amsterdam Town Guard’s model, I gave the sword a bilobate shell guard which does the heavy lifting of protecting the fingers. Most Walloon swords (though not the Amsterdam model) actually have two knuckle-bows—one is a regularly-placed knuckle-bow in the same plane as the cutting edge of the blade, and a second one mounted 90 degrees to the first one. I simply made both of them about 30 degrees off the plane of the blade. I still thought the user’s hand needed extra protection, so I added first one, then two cross-bars spanning the knuckle-bows—again, these bars (usually one) connecting the two knuckle bows are common features of Northern European military swords of the late 17th/early 18th century. The little bit of asymmetry makes it more aesthetically pleasing, in my opinion. The inside shell might be smaller than the outside shell, and may sport or curl into a thumb ring, although that feature is optional. The sword also features a vestigial, decorative cross guard.

One final variant I experimented with was designing a double-knuckle bow Sidesword or War Rapier that might be compatible with my main fencing system—Destreza. Sadly, my personal rapier fencing style would be encumbered by knuckle bows similar to the Original Design, which really force you to adopt a hammer-grip and emphasize heavy downward strokes (that thing really is a cavalry weapon). However, I managed to adapt the design by bending in the knuckle-bows to create a curve where my wrist can fit during some of the actions I prefer to use. The final guard ends up a variant of a two- or three-ring swept hilt (depending on if you consider the adapted knuckle-bows the third ring or not) with wide S-shaped quillons to trap an opponent’s blade and closed front rings to protect the fingers. The inner guard has two rings, braced against the cross-guard. Overall, I’m not terribly satisfied with this design—the double knuckle bow sword was always meant to be primarily a cutting weapon, and it’s design lends itself much more readily to cut-fencing, such as the British broadsword systems, which I’m also studying anyway.