Chatting about Swords with ‪@tods_workshop‬

Hi there everyone, my name is Zach and welcome to my channel. Todd, Todd's Workshop and Todd Cutler. Well Todd and I are here this weekend at Fight Camp which is produced by Matt and Lucy Easton and it was a great opportunity for me to talk to Todd about some of his swords that he's currently got for sale. They're in stock at the moment aren't they? Yep, everything's in stock. We almost always have everything in stock My background is in reenacting rather than HEMA so it's been really interesting coming here to this event and seeing some of the differences between reenactment and HEMA but one of the things that I always encourage reenactors to do is once they've got their reenactment sword that they can fight with safely to get a real weight sword that actually feels like a museum Exactly, it feels like a real sword because very often reenactment swords are just wider and therefore a lot heavier than originals and the weight distribution is very different as well so I mean basically if you take a sword like this which is Castillon, all my swords come with a scabbard because again historically it's part of the kit you can't own a sword without a scabbard it's just not possible so that whole thing where you've got a ring on your belt and you see the reenactors marching off to battle with the sword stuck in the belt through a ring it's just not plausible because that is basically razor sharp so really what we're talking about with balance is you've got a thickness here obviously on a reenactment blade it tends to be made cheaply and it tends to be made safely so you've got three mil thick edge and it's three mil thick all the way down what you end up with sorry we've got some armor walking past what you end up with is a sword which has got way too much weight out the front so the way to handle that is you put a big pommel on it and again with reenactment swords very often people are in gauntlets so they think that they need a massive handle on it and so everything is just different it's just a totally different beast to a real sword and so you end up with something like this which is about 1200 grams from memory something like that and it's it's not just the weight it's where the weight is and so effectively you end up with on a reenactment sword it's like this and it kills your wrist a real sword it's just a very different beast absolutely so you've got a range of different swords that you've obviously you've made some conscious choices about yeah which ones you're going to make most of the ones i just like that's as conscious as i get so this one that i'm holding is um is a hanger which many people would call a falchion or but um known as a wakefield hanger could you tell me anything about this so i'll just pop that one down so firstly i tend to do swords that i like just because they attract me and i saw this in my very early days of reproducing stuff where i just didn't have the skill to do it and so i made one it was more horrible than horrible yeah anyway and so i decided to do this one simply because i wanted to revisit it and make a decent copy so effectively wakefield hanger because there's a very famous one that was found after the battle of wakefield that's in the royal armories and wakefield hanger is without a shadow of doubt not what they would have called it yeah um it would have been a falchion a hanger whatever it was yeah what's interesting about this for me is it comes in at about 900 grams it's a really light really nimble single hander yeah um not at all what you'd expect a reenactment sword to be sure then the other thing with this of course is you've got the knuckle bow which again we feel comes most people assume comes in much later but actually this is about 1460 something like that 1460 1480 yeah and the royal armories have certainly got a few and there'll be others some of them clearly just had this nargle here if you like just this knuckle bow didn't exist actually i'll show this to camera properly so this knuckle bow stopped about here and quite clearly they were made like that other ones like there's a very famous one in the royal armories uh which this one was based on you can't be certain but i'm pretty sure it had the full bow yeah and then you find quite a few of them i mean there's not loads of them in existence anyway like eight or ten or something but you find quite a few of them which have got the full bow on and that's what i wanted to do basically it's it's one of the things for me which is really characteristic about this sword type so this to my mind speaks to a soldier who isn't wearing gauntlets yeah i agree and this is the protection that he's using so maybe an english archer um i know that that's my gut feeling yeah it's it's hard to draw a bow with gauntlets on and it's hard to switch to gauntlets when and that's why you'd want the extra protection yeah yeah no i'd basically agree with that i mean we'll never know but it doesn't feel knight to me at all no it could be man-at-arms but probably as you say not not way up there or they're going to be fully armored yeah and there are examples in art of fully armored men-at-arms leaving their gauntlets off so there's there's that broad spectrum but this is a hilt setup that is designed for someone who wants the hand protection on the sword rather than on the hand and again i might be making it up but it echoes a conversation i had with somebody earlier today actually about it can i just borrow that yeah and they were saying that they didn't like it okay and the reason they didn't like it is as it sits here you have to sort of find your way into the guard yeah sure to grip it properly and actually of course if it doesn't have the knuckle bow you can just put your hand straight on yeah there's got to be a certain truth in that you know i can't deny that but again that fits for me almost with the the archer concept that an archer when they're required to hand fight generally they've got a reasonable bit of notice about it yeah the arrows have run out so they pull another weapon or they're told to go forward so they drop the bows but equally it's not that suddenly something has happened and they have to grab it then they've had that preparation time so any delay of finding the grip point yeah it's not that relevant to that sort of person yeah well thanks very much todd so this is a wakefield hanger very appropriate for late 15th century english archers or uh lower status men at arms yeah so i'm not sure if it's just associated with northern england um or if it was like pan-english i don't know were they seen on the continent i can't think of any examples but there's so many links between you know england and burgundy and brittany and all that yeah sure some of them would have found their way there you know for sure but yeah i'd love it really like it it's very nice it's one that you can fence with because it is so light yes it is and it comes again down to that whole falchion thing that they're not crude choppers they were never crude choppers they were absolutely specialized at what they did you know and and that's for that i think you know a bit more of a point on it because the guys they're going to be facing they're a bit more likely to have holes that you want to pay yeah absolutely yeah works both ways with thank you very much right well let's have a look at another one hi there guys i hope you're enjoying watching this conversation as much as i enjoyed having it if you want to support me in doing more of this sort of thing then you can find a link to my patreon in the description down below big thanks to all of my current and past patreons and especially my knight patrons whose names are appearing on the screen right now let's get back to chatting with todd um so this one again it's a castillon sword a bit of an all-rounder um and classically what you'd think of a late medieval 15th century yeah i think that's fair to say i mean it's an absolutely iconic shape yeah you know we're all familiar with those little downturns on the end and the big wheel pommel you know um so yeah basically battle of castillon 1451 i think it was yeah um in the late 60s early 70s there was a whole tranche of swords pulled out the dordogne river i think um the origin of them is slightly shrouded in mystery a little bit and there's lots of speculation about how they came to be there and all this yeah uh and they followed two particular types and this is type a um and that's really about it so it's probably english you see a lot of um similar kind of things in in both effigies and artwork at the time very characteristic sort of downturns to the quillings so we can say that it's dated around about let's say 1420 30 through to about 1460 sure uh although i again i had a customer who sent me a picture from some spanish artwork of about 1380 90 i think yeah with a very similar sword but i think different enough that you might question it but yeah but you know it could be it could be similar uh coming in at around 1200 grams i think yeah so and how does it handle compared to the um the falchion well in many respects not that different actually it's again it hasn't got that much blade presence it's not an absolute chopper it's stiff enough that you know you can still poke holes through mail and cloth armor a bit of hollow grounding here to relieve some of the weight um clearly pointy so the you know the cut days are passing by and we're more into the poking holes days okay the point is very maneuverable which with the reenactment blade it just doesn't move that swiftly through the air but they just are different things you know it's it it's a truck and it's a car yeah you know they're superficially similar but they're not yes absolutely and you can really feel that of that um just over a kilo a lot of it is behind the hand rather than in front um yeah so this would be a um a sidearm still but probably well maybe for an archer you certainly see archers wearing proper swords you know um archer man arms even possibly a knight you know it could really be any of it yeah and i think um in my experience from riding going much longer than your arm's length actually can cause problems when riding if it's strapped to your side like this right yeah um because it can start moving around and uh yeah poking the horse next to you or yeah and they they you know the longer it is the more it bounces as well yeah absolutely you know which is not a good thing when you're cantering across the field not something you want yeah i think what's what's becoming slightly unusual for that is the particular pointiness of the blade you know very often we're used to blades which just have a bit more meat before the tip whereas that's really coming down to a needle yeah so if we i mean typical of the type yeah but uh not necessarily typical of medieval swords as a whole yeah so this is really kind of taking into account that at this point there is plate all over yeah for sure i mean you can see that's written all over it is that it's no longer about cutting yeah yes the sword has moved on from that yeah well thank you very much todd um like i said i absolutely a hundred percent think that reenactors should be looking at blades like this um and um having you know if you're educating people about medieval times getting good replicas is is an important part of that yeah i believe that as well really it's you know people aren't stupid and they come around to your camp or whatever and they see your lovely three mil thick edge sword with a rounded tip on it and you go here's my sword and they're like well not really no yeah yeah did they fight with it no yeah and they'll often pick up i've seen having so many times picking up a reenactment blade and saying oh it's so heavy and you just think well yeah that's because yeah it's not like an original blade and um in many ways that helps to perpetuate myths and the physical nature of the object takes away from anything that you might say to to dissuade them of that case you know so i've actually stopped handing out my reenactment sword to members of the public because um someone will remember the feel of an object far more than anything that you will tell them about it yeah i mean it removes the authenticity of what you're saying as well if you're if you're saying you know this is really maneuverable and i can do this and that and the other yeah and they're going really yeah you know it begins to shatter that illusion of what you're trying to show and explain no i agree with it and then going back i've got a thing about scabbards but going back to the whole scabbard thing as well is it's just part of the kit it's part of the whole thing and for me it's just very important that that feels real looks real behaves real yeah and do you think um the scabbard would be worn all throughout battle because they're wooden cord and they they break they can break once the sword isn't in there they can and they do so so my gut feeling with this is no because simply if you've got i'll just step back a little bit here but you know if you've got this sitting by your side and you're fighting and you're swinging around yes it's all strapped up so it doesn't move that much but it still swings and you know if you end up tangling yourself in your scabbards or it catches on something it's just a ridiculous thing that you would be prepared for that when your armor has cost in a modern equivalent a hundred thousand pounds and your sword in a modern equivalent has cost five thousand pounds and you own three villages back at home the cost of a scabbard yeah it's just nothing and if it breaks it's not even your problem you don't even have to negotiate with the maker you just ask your squire to go and sort it out yeah and it's done the money is just not relevant so you you just ditch the scabbard beforehand if it does break and you're caught in a street fight or something it's just not important yeah so if you can choose to not wear it you don't wear it yeah uh when you're actually parading on to battle but don't just have a sharp sword sitting in your belt because that you can't do either yeah um but if you could not wear it going into battle you just wouldn't yeah um if it does get broken it just doesn't matter and as zach says the wood cord scabbards do break and you know any any idea that um you can bend them or anything it's just preposterous you know they're brittle they're thin wood they will snap you know but you can also mend them and i've got this personal belief with reenactment kits you know i bought some um new costume last year actually and i hate it and i don't hate it because the costume's bad i hate it because i got fat and i needed to change everything and my favorite jacket was washed and shrunk but anyway that aside i had to change everything so now i'm mr shiny and new yeah and all my kit is shiny and new and i don't like it and they mended everything yeah and so you know you can if it does break you can undo the stitching splice in a new bit of wood stitch it back up again and yeah the stitching might be a different color and you might get a bit of a lump under the leather and it just doesn't matter yeah just doesn't matter um you know your kit can live you know it's not a fashion parade of who's got the newest yeah and it we in the modern day because it's a hobby we tend to want things to last for a really long time but in a life or death situation if you come out of it with a broken scabbard that's actually well done that it's just relevant you know that's such a small thing exactly um but interestingly i did um uh i don't know if you've seen the king netflix yeah film the king yeah and i did um daggers belts and sword scabbards on that not the swords yeah uh but i was talking to the armor about that and in the last fight scene there's a brilliant bit where they're having a fight in a scam he's wearing a scabbard he falls over scabbard breaks he gets back up and he carries on the fight and the scabbards flopping around yeah and i said to nick the armor it's just brilliant you know you've actually yeah you've done it real if you like yeah and he said well not actually because we had three scabbards two had already broken during the fight scene and then we broke the third one and we didn't have another so we just had to finish the film with that one so the one opportunity to actually accidentally correct accidentally correct um but it looked great so i think it was the last fight scene in the king yeah and the scabbards flopping everywhere yeah and uh it was a pure accident but it looked brilliant great um thank you so much todd absolute pleasure chatting yeah indeed and uh i'm looking forward to the next load of swords that you bring out i've got uh i've got a couple of long swords coming and uh a slightly fantasy weird thing but okay we like fantasy yeah but now i've got a couple of proper long swords coming as well um two months three months i don't know something like that bye guys thank you