Have Sword, Will Travel

I bought a sword yesterday. I bought it from a friend of mine, who got it as a gift from somebody else. Some might say that makes the sword "used." I like to think it means that the sword has a history.

It's a nice looking sword. It's a rapier with an Italian-style swept hilt and curved quillons, and a heavy Schlager blade. For those of you who are not up on your sword-speak, a swept hilt means that the part of the sword that protects your hand is made up of these pretty, swirling lines of steel, rather than a solid cup or plate. And quillons are the parts that stick out from the sides, just above the grip, that give swords their distinctive cross-shape. The quillons on my rapier are curved in sort of an S-shape, so that the quillon pointed at me curves up and the one pointed away curves down. And a Schlager blade is wide and flat, as opposed to a musketeer or epee blade, which, when you look straight at the point, is shaped like a triangle. The particular blade on my sword is pretty heavy, and I might look into getting a heavier pommel (which is the round part at the bottom of the grip) to balance it better.

The grip on the sword has a black wire-wrap, which looks pretty sweet but means I pretty much always need to wear gloves when I use it (which one should do anyway, right Woolley?).

My one complaint is that somebody went and painted the whole hilt black. I have no problem with the hilt being black, and if it were in fact darkened metal that would be awesome. But this is not the case, as the minute scratches in the paint will attest. I think I am going to make a trip to Home Depot at some point and find out the best way to remove the paint.

Also, I'm going to want to get a dagger to go along with the sword. They don't call it "Rapier-and-Dagger" for nothing.

The next question, of course, is, "What the hell am I going to do with a sword?" Well, quite frankly, not too much just yet. But if the fight choreography gigs keep coming my way then at some point soon it's going to come in handy. In the meantime, the upkeep will serve as a nice relaxing hobby.

And I know at least one or two friends who will be totally jealous. Sweet!