The counterweight to the blade: it moves the balance towards the hand, so the sword guides a cut instead of just swinging. On the Baldwin it is stainless steel and screws onto the tang — take it off and the sword comes apart for maintenance or a new grip wrap.
22.5 cm leaves room for both hands — the full longsword grip of the Liechtenauer treatises. The wrap is cord, with no leather: the hand does not slip on it, and it can be replaced once the pommel is off.
The part of the blade you never see. It runs through the whole grip up to the pommel, which screws onto it, and it carries every impact from the edge to your hand. Only swords whose tang runs the full length of the grip make it into our offer.
The bar that protects the hand from a blade sliding down your own. On the Baldwin it is 21 cm wide and carries the same cross motif as the pommel. It is stainless steel, so unlike the blade it needs no oiling.
9260 carries about two per cent silicon and is among the most forgiving grades used for swords: it survives bends that would leave carbon steel crooked for good. The declared 55–58 HRC is high for it, so the edge holds longer. It comes sharpened — for collections and cutting mats, not for sparring.
The armoury · Anno Domini
The counterweight to the blade: it moves the balance towards the hand, so the sword guides a cut instead of just swinging. On the Baldwin it is stainless steel and screws onto the tang — take it off and the sword comes apart for maintenance or a new grip wrap.
22.5 cm leaves room for both hands — the full longsword grip of the Liechtenauer treatises. The wrap is cord, with no leather: the hand does not slip on it, and it can be replaced once the pommel is off.
The part of the blade you never see. It runs through the whole grip up to the pommel, which screws onto it, and it carries every impact from the edge to your hand. Only swords whose tang runs the full length of the grip make it into our offer.
The bar that protects the hand from a blade sliding down your own. On the Baldwin it is 21 cm wide and carries the same cross motif as the pommel. It is stainless steel, so unlike the blade it needs no oiling.
9260 carries about two per cent silicon and is among the most forgiving grades used for swords: it survives bends that would leave carbon steel crooked for good. The declared 55–58 HRC is high for it, so the edge holds longer. It comes sharpened — for collections and cutting mats, not for sparring.
A handful of swords at a time, each one examined and measured before it ships. For collectors, reenactors and anyone who wants something real in their hands — full specifications, no marketing haze.
The armoury
Categories
The split comes from the length of the grip, not the blade: an arming sword is used with a shield, a longsword lets you add a second hand, a two-hander demands both.
Cutting from behind the shield, in the shield wall. A broad, flat blade with a wide fuller that takes mass out of it.
We have no sword of this type in stock right now. Tell us what you are after and we will source it as an individual commission.
A sword for fighting with a shield — a kite shield on horseback, a buckler on foot. Above all a cutting weapon, mounted or on foot.
We have no sword of this type in stock right now. Tell us what you are after and we will source it as an individual commission.
The all-round knightly sword of the Liechtenauer and Fiore dei Liberi treatises: fluid cuts and stiff thrusts that look for gaps in armour.
Templar Longsword “Baldwin”
A professional’s weapon: Doppelsöldner fought with it in the front rank and beside the colours. Parrying hooks and the ricasso let them grip the blade and work on a shorter lever.
We have no sword of this type in stock right now. Tell us what you are after and we will source it as an individual commission.
Single-edged cutting blades. The falchion and the messer are medieval choppers; the sabre was the weapon of the Polish hussars and nobility, handled with fluid cuts from the wrist and elbow.
We have no sword of this type in stock right now. Tell us what you are after and we will source it as an individual commission.
Thrusting into the gaps of plate armour — the visor, the armpit, the joints. Reverse grip, hand braced against the rondel disc.
We have no sword of this type in stock right now. Tell us what you are after and we will source it as an individual commission.
Anatomy
A sword is not a piece of metal with a handle. It is an arrangement of levers where every element has a job. Touch a point to see which.
Thrust
The thrusting end of the blade. The later the type, the sharper its taper — an answer to plate armour, where fighters looked for gaps instead of cutting.
The tapering point concentrates the thrust on a small area.
Cutting zone
The forward third. Fast, but without leverage in a bind — this is where cuts and thrusts land, not where you stop a blow.
This is where the blade moves fastest in a swing.
Less mass
The long groove forged or ground into the blade. Not a blood groove — it takes mass from the centre of the section and leaves stiffness at the edges. The sword gets lighter, not weaker.
It removes metal where it adds little to stiffness.
Binding and parrying
The part nearest the guard. Slow, but strongest in a bind — this is what takes a blow and pushes the other blade aside.
Closest to the hand, so it gives the most leverage in a bind.
Hand protection
The bar that protects the hand and lets you control an opponent's blade. Viking swords and Roman spathae already had a guard; what changed in the 11th century is that it grew into a cross — and the hand could finally work in front of the shield line.
It stops a blade sliding down yours towards the hand.
Grip
A wooden core over the tang, covered in leather and wrapped with cord or wire. Its length decides whether a sword is one-handed, a longsword or a two-hander.
The length of the grip tells you how many hands the sword takes.
Counterweight
The counterweight peened onto the end of the tang. It pulls the balance back towards the hand — without it even a light sword would drag forward.
It moves the centre of mass towards the hand.
Material
A medieval smith did not choose his alloy — he worked with whatever the bloomery gave him. Today the choice is deliberate: one steel for a sword that lives in a display case, another for one that takes a blunt blade to the head three times a minute.
0,6%
carbon in 1060
815°C
hardening temperature
200°C
tempering
Chromium-vanadium spring steel
The Polish chromium-vanadium spring steel, equivalent to 51CrV4 in EN 10089 — a standardised composition, available with a mill certificate. Chromium (~1%) lets even thicker sections harden right through, and vanadium (~0.15%) refines the grain: the blade copes well with impacts and repeated flexing, and the edge chips less. It gives a little ground to 9260 in resistance to bending, but hardens more evenly in thick sections.
Silicon-manganese spring steel
Around 2% silicon buys the springiness this grade is known for: it takes bends that would leave plain carbon steel crooked. The showroom “90° and back” is a seller's line rather than a measured standard — but in its class 9260 really is the most forgiving.
Chromium spring steel
Chromium added to a spring steel. The most widely used training-sword material in the world: the trade-off between hardness and impact resistance is about as good as it gets.
Carbon steel
Plain carbon steel with no alloying additions. Cheap to work, hardens well in oil, forgives small mistakes at the forge. It deforms permanently under serious contact — which makes it a steel for display pieces and light reenactment.
Polish sabres, historical combat swords, reenactment
Test cutting, tatami
HEMA, training gear
Display replicas, first swords
Weapons history and pop culture
Which blades from games and film could actually be forged and carried, and which would wreck your wrist on the first cut? Mass, balance, geometry and steel — no legends.
Geralt carries steel for men and silver for monsters. In reality solid silver is too soft for a blade — 2.5 on the Mohs scale — and too heavy at 10.49 g/cm³ against steel's 7.85. A silver sword would bend on the first bone and lose its edge before it cut anything.
How it is actually done: a forged spring steel blade, silvered fittings, and runes etched into the fuller.
The witcher sword's silhouette is a textbook late medieval hand-and-a-half. A grip of roughly 23 cm lets the second hand join without changing the hold, and the stiff diamond section at the point is exactly what the fifteenth century used to find the gaps in plate.
Daedric blades carry asymmetric spikes and hooks. On the first cut into a gambeson or a shield rim the hook catches and stays — and a weapon you cannot pull back out of the target is worse in a bind than no weapon at all.
No distal taper and a massive point push the balance roughly 30 cm past the guard. With that leverage, stopping a cut loads the wrist several times harder than a historical sword does, and in steel such a blade would weigh well over 5 kg.
Forged from the shards of Narsil — Elendil's sword, whose broken blade Isildur used to cut the Ring from Sauron's hand — Andúril is routinely named the most historically sound sword in cinema. The design came out of Weta Workshop's art department and the blades were forged by Peter Lyon. The proportions match Oakeshott's hand-and-a-half types XIIa and XIIIa: a broad, evenly tapering blade, a long fuller, a grip for a hand and a half.
Mass: 1.45 kg · Balance: 8 cm from the guard
A leaf-shaped blade, widening around the percussion node — a solution known from Celtic swords and the Roman spatha. Broadening the blade there puts mass where it does the work in a cut, while a heavy pommel damps the vibration coming back into the hand.
Blade profile: leaf-shaped · Closest type: spatha / Oakeshott X
A dark, smoky tone, a rippling pattern, an edge that never dulls and a surprisingly low mass — George R.R. Martin's description of Valyrian steel reads like a description of wootz, the crucible damascus of India and Persia. The resemblance is deliberate, down to the secret of the melt being considered lost.
With a blade as wide as a palm and close to 170 cm long, Ned Stark's ancestral sword is the size of a two-handed bidenhänder, not an executioner's sword: those ran about 90–120 cm and ended blunt and rounded, because a beheading needs no point. As a weapon for the corridors of Winterfell it would be useless, but as a sword of justice carried before a feudal lord it is entirely in place.
Tell us what sword you have in mind, or put a design together in the configurator: pick the blade type, the fuller, the fittings and the engraving, and we will price the commission with the maker and answer by email.
Legal note: this article is a weapons-history and cultural analysis published under the right of quotation (art. 29 of the Polish Copyright Act). The names of the universes and characters — The Witcher (CD PROJEKT S.A.), The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (ZeniMax / Bethesda), The Lord of the Rings (Middle-earth Enterprises), A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones (George R.R. Martin, HBO) — are cited for educational and comparative purposes only. Swords Vault sells historical swords and brokers individual commissions; we do not offer replicas of protected designs or trademarks.
Timeline
The first swords were cast in bronze — short, because a long bronze blade bent and stayed bent. A dagger that grew up.
At first mostly the thrust — a riveted hilt could not take hard cuts. Cutting came with swords whose hilt was cast in one piece with the blade.
Grip plates of wood, bone or ivory, held with rivets.
The long straight blade of Roman cavalry, taken up by Germanic peoples. Ancestor of the Viking sword.
One-handed cuts from behind a shield, on foot and on horseback. Longer than the gladius, so it gave reach.
A short guard and a small pommel. In elite graves: gold and garnets in cloisonné.
A broad blade with a wide fuller, short guard and heavy pommel. ULFBERHT blades travelled the whole continent.
One-handed cuts paired with a round shield. The wide fuller takes weight out of the flat blade.
A short guard and a pommel with an upper guard — often three- or five-lobed, not rarely inlaid with silver and copper.
A longer crossguard, a disc pommel, a tapering blade. Types X–XIV in Oakeshott's typology.
A one-handed sword used with a shield, mounted and on foot. The longer cross guards the hand better.
A brazil-nut pommel, later a disc; a straight cross and a grip for one hand.
A grip for two hands, a stiff diamond section, a sharp point. The answer to plate armour.
Thrusts into the gaps of plate armour, half-swording, a blow with the pommel. Both hands on the grip, sometimes one on the blade.
A long grip for one and a half or two hands; a wheel or pear-shaped pommel.
Craft
Forging, normalising, oil quenching and tempering — the same bar of steel can come out a springy blade or a rod that snaps on the first blow. See what happens to the steel at each stage.
The bar heated to bright red. The smith draws out the taper and sets the fuller — mass first, shape second.
Austenite — plastic steel
At this heat the steel is austenite and moves under the hammer like hard wax. The hammer draws out the length and the taper of the blade.
Orange heat · forging
Several heating and cooling cycles even out the grain after forging and release the stresses that would later warp the blade.
Finer, even grain
Heating to the transformation point and cooling in air evens out the grain stretched by forging and relieves the stresses that would later warp the blade.
Cherry red · normalising
The steel passes its transformation point. A violent quench turns austenite into martensite — hard, but brittle as glass.
Martensite — about 60 HRC
Fast cooling in oil traps the carbon in the iron lattice. The result is martensite: very hard but brittle as glass — in this state the blade could crack on impact.
Oil bath · quenching
Controlled reheating gives the springiness back. This is the moment that decides whether a sword snaps or bends and returns.
Tempered martensite — usually 48–56 HRC
Reheating trades part of the hardness for resistance to cracking. After tempering the blade bends and returns instead of breaking.
Straw colour · tempering
Edge profiling, polishing, fitting the guard and grip, peening the pommel over the tang. Last of all — the scabbard.
Edge and fittings
Grinding gives the edge its profile. Then the guard, the grip and the pommel on the tang — peened or screwed on — and finally the scabbard.
Cold steel · grinding
Care
Spring and carbon steel — what serious swords are made of — rusts. That is not a defect but the price of the hardness and springiness stainless cannot give. All of maintenance comes down to three things: keep it dry, keep a thin film of oil on it, keep it out of the scabbard.
Horizontal under the blade or vertical under the grip. What matters is that the sword rests on something soft and touches no metal.
Microfibre or cotton without dressing. Keep one cloth for oil and another for wiping — the second picks up filings fast.
They solve the fingerprint problem at source. Particularly useful when guests want to look at the sword.
For carrying, not for storage. A well-fitted one holds the blade by friction at the throat, with no catches.
Sourced to order
The range is small on purpose — we source single pieces against specific orders. Send us a type, a period or a photograph of what you have in mind and we will tell you within 1 business day whether it can be had, and for how much.
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