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Historical Inspiration This forum is dedicated to the discussion of historical knife design and its influence on modern custom knife work.

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  #1  
Old 04-01-2011, 11:53 PM
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GHEzell GHEzell is offline
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lots of seaxes (pic heavy)

I've become obsessed with these...


Deer bone handle and buggy spring for the blade.


A medium-sized one (just over 20" overall) in oak burl and 1080.


Three in oak with 1084 and buggy spring blades.

The buggy spring is some nice stuff, if you look close it has some banding. I'm working on a broadsax, a langsax, and a patternwelded brokeback...

And, just for the fun of it, a damascus sgian in oak burl, brass, and stabilized ebony...



Thanks for looking!


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  #2  
Old 04-02-2011, 07:07 AM
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cbr900son cbr900son is offline
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Never heard of this style blade but its very appealing. Simple yet elegant.


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  #3  
Old 04-04-2011, 09:57 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by cbr900son View Post
Never heard of this style blade but its very appealing. Simple yet elegant.
I'm glad you like them. This type of knife was popular in Britain and Germany, and fell out of favor around 900 years ago or so. All the originals are in fairly bad condition, as far as I know there is only one with the handle still intact. So, the handles are educated guesses for the most part, based off of similar knives from Scandinavia from the same time period. Guards do not seem to have been part of the design, none have survived.

I find them fascinating, I've often wondered if some English cutler, when requested to make "a knife like Jim Bowie's" recalled a knife from a much earlier time that a friend had found in the river Thames...


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A good friend told me one time about forging "What is there not to like, you get to break all the rules you were told as a kid, don't play with that it is sharp, don't play with fire, and don't beat on that"
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Old 05-14-2011, 07:22 PM
grant grant is offline
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I love these blades.

What is the purpose of the multiple fullers (sorry, I'm a newbie)?
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Old 05-14-2011, 09:14 PM
Doug Lester Doug Lester is offline
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It could well be seeing how no one knows what that knife James Bowie used as the Sandbar Fight looked like. Some cutler being told to design something wicked that looked like a big butcher knife. What else would he have had to fall back on but something in his cultural memory? You can even find broken back style seaxes that have a long concave clip ugly as they are. Shorten the handle and give it a crossguard for a more modern look and-ta da-a bowie knife. Or it could be that form follow funtion and that was the form that the funtion led him to.

Doug


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Old 05-16-2011, 05:32 PM
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GHEzell GHEzell is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by grant View Post
I love these blades.

What is the purpose of the multiple fullers (sorry, I'm a newbie)?
I love them too, making them is addictive...

From looking at the originals, the fullers were rarely deep enough or wide enough to have a serious effect on the balance and weight of the blade, so I suspect they were primarily decorative.

Doug, I've often wondered about that, too. The only real difference between a Honeylane type seax and a clip point bowie (other than 800 years between the two) is the lack of a false edge on the seax... this is one of the things that drew me to this type of blade. Staying with the facts, clip points have been around as long as metal blades, it is a quick and effective way to put a point on one, so it is only logical they will crop up in different cultures at different times with no connection between them. However, I cannot help but think that an 18th century English cutler, when asked to "make a knife like Jim Bowie's", having never seen Jim Bowie's knife, only knowing that it was large and fearsome, would make one based on a seax blade pulled from the Thames that he had seen. He simply added the false edge of a dirk and the crossguard of a dagger and a new trend in cutlery was born...

I cannot prove it, but it sounds right to me...


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A good friend told me one time about forging "What is there not to like, you get to break all the rules you were told as a kid, don't play with that it is sharp, don't play with fire, and don't beat on that"
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Old 05-16-2011, 08:59 PM
Doug Lester Doug Lester is offline
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Personally, I think that it makes a lot of sense. The bowie as we know it is more English than American. What was carried as bowies in the mid to late 19th century were mainly knives made in England and imported to the US. You can site all the American smiths that you want to atribute the desighn to them, the vast majority of bowies, and maybe knives sold in America were of English make.

Doug


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Old 07-18-2011, 04:09 AM
seved seved is offline
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Very nice knives GHEzell. I like them a lot

Was seaxes different in legnth and thicknes and did they get wider and wider against the point.

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Old 07-18-2011, 10:13 AM
Doug Lester Doug Lester is offline
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Yes, seaxes were of different lengths, widths, thicknesses and point types depending on geography, time period, and purpose. Some, such as Ewart Oakshott, even concidered the single edged, sword hilted weapons popular in Norway during the early Viking age to be seax. Others disagree. Search the site for other discussions on seaxes; quite a bit has been posted on the subject.

Doug


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Old 07-18-2011, 11:48 PM
seved seved is offline
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Thank you Dough I will search for more information.

Okey it was as i thought about the thicknes and legnth.
Oh so maybe they were in use as late as early viking period.
Thanks again Dough.

Seved


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Old 07-20-2011, 10:59 AM
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GHEzell GHEzell is offline
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Hi Seved,
To get a brief overview of the seax I cannot recommend highly enough a ZIP file put together by Jeroen Zuiderwijk on the subject... http://1501bc.com/files/information_about_saxes.zip


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A good friend told me one time about forging "What is there not to like, you get to break all the rules you were told as a kid, don't play with that it is sharp, don't play with fire, and don't beat on that"
Wade Holloway


See some of my work.
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  #12  
Old 08-05-2011, 04:10 PM
seved seved is offline
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Originally Posted by GHEzell View Post
Hi Seved,
To get a brief overview of the seax I cannot recommend highly enough a ZIP file put together by Jeroen Zuiderwijk on the subject... http://1501bc.com/files/information_about_saxes.zip
Than you . Thats exactly what i was looking for . It looks like the Swedish ones had more rounded lines from those pics

Seved


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