The Writhen Rapier Returns!

Hey guys, I'm Nathan from Arms & Armor. Today I've got a special announcement. We are going to be bringing back our writhed, or riven, rapier that we had discontinued for several years. Stay tuned, I'll tell you all about it. So, this sword, I think you'll agree, is quite a beauty, and we had stopped production of this piece for several years because our head rapier maker who had initially figured out how to do this, Greg Benson, sadly was sick with cancer for several years and died last year. And I wasn't sure. My skills were up to snuff. But, luckily, he taught me enough about his process and his techniques that we can produce it again. So, the riven rapier will be for sale again. So, riven or riven or writhed refers to the twisted motif of all of the bars on this sword, which was highly, you know, kind of typical of a whole bunch of German Gothic Renaissance pieces, but was also popular in Italy. Now, the Italian pieces, I would argue, tend to have swells and be a little less organic, looks a little less like tree roots wrapping together, and more like a kind of, I don't know, like a screw or something like that. So, this piece is a replica of A602 in the Wallace Collection. So, that is an Italian rapier of Peterson type, 61, with curved quillins. The normal 61 typically has straight quillins, but three rings. So, I'm going to call this a 61. This is the thing about typologies. Few items fit exactly within typologies. They're guides. So, a more or less Peterson type 61 hilt. So, it has three rings, all of which are twisted all the way around with a sweep on the front. The back side, the inner guard consists of four bars, two of which come to the riser bars, and two of which come and meet the four ring on there. The pommel is an egg shape, more or less, that is also deeply spiraled with a quillin nut on there that is also writhed. Now, the grip is covered with wire. So, it's four wires, two of which are twisted towards each other and two of which are flat on there, if we can get it to focus, over a writhed grip. So, we carve the grip first into the spiral, then we apply the wire wrapping and then hammer the wire wrapping into the shape of the grip. It also has turks heads, which are these braided wire ends on the grip. So, it's a very fancy piece. We use our wide rapier blade on this piece, which weighs about 2 pounds 13 ounces or so. So, it's a substantial sword, like many rapiers were. It's functional in the cut and in the thrust. You can see the peen here. There's also a loop in the end of the knuckle guard, which there's probably some kind of decorative tassel or something attached on there so you could look even more bling while wearing this. Bless me. Yeah, it's a really beautiful sword and we are really happy to bring it back, along with all of our other rapiers. I've got probably an 18 to 24 month wait on orders right now, but when you put down, put in an order, you just pay a $150 deposit. That essentially gets your place in line and you pay the rest when the sword's done. So, we're not going to take all your money up front because these things are a little bit hard to predict how long they take. We've got a bunch of orders that we're working through, but we're finally in a position to offer you this beautiful piece once again, and I think you will totally love it. We're having a blast figuring these out and making them again. You can see the beauty of the join between these bars inside. Of course, they're finished inside and out, just like all of our pieces. The whole thing is beautiful. Thank you very much. Take care.