Hand-Forged Flamberge Longsword, Slotted Blade

Less than the stories claim, and something more interesting than nothing. Two things get repeated constantly and neither stands up. The first is that a waved blade causes wounds that will not close: there is no evidence for it, and the mechanism people describe does not follow from the geometry. The second is that a flamberge "vibrates" against an opponent's blade in a bind and shivers the sword from their hands; that one seems to come from nineteenth-century romantic writing and it has no basis in period fencing sources. What a waved edge does do is real but modest. It fits more edge length into a given blade length, because a curve is longer than the straight line between its ends, which helps on a draw cut where the edge is being pulled through the target rather than pushed into it. And on a two-hander used against pike shafts, a waved section is thought to bite and hold where a straight edge would skid. Beyond that, the honest answer is that it looks extraordinary, and that has always been a large part of why these were made. Most surviving flame blades are ceremonial or parade pieces, which tells you something.

Real, and the confusion is understandable because fantasy has borrowed it so thoroughly. Flame-bladed swords were made in Germany and Switzerland from the sixteenth century, most notably as two-handed Flammenschwert carried by Landsknecht and Swiss troops, and the form continued for centuries afterward in ceremonial contexts: Masonic swords, officers' dress swords and civic regalia. Surviving examples sit in serious museum collections. Where the fantasy association comes from is that the surviving pieces skew heavily toward the ornamental end, so what most people picture is a display object rather than a battlefield weapon, and modern film and game design has amplified that. This sword is honest about which end it sits at: it is a striking display piece built on a historical form, not a reproduction of a documented fighting sword.

It is an opening cut clean through the steel, not a fuller, and the distinction matters. A fuller is a groove: it removes material from the surface while leaving the blade continuous, so the section is still solid. This is a hole, and you can see daylight through it. What it does is take weight off the forward part of the blade, and weight there costs more than weight anywhere else on a sword, because it sits at the end of the longest lever. Removing a few tens of grams near the point has a disproportionate effect on how quickly the sword changes direction. What it costs is strength in exactly the section it passes through: a blade with a hole in it will fail there before it fails anywhere else, so this is not a sword to thrust into anything resistant or to lever with. It is also, plainly, a decorative feature, and we would rather say so than dress it up entirely as engineering. If you want the blade solid we build it that way at no extra cost.

Because the second hand is not gripping alongside the first. On a longsword the leading hand holds the grip proper and the trailing hand takes the pommel or the very end of the grip, and it works as a lever rather than a second fist: pulling with the rear hand while pushing with the front is what rotates the sword, and the further apart they are the more leverage you have. That is why the hilt measurement includes the cross and the pommel and why the grip alone is a poor guide to whether a sword is a hand-and-a-half or a true two-hander. Six and a half inches of grip plus a pommel to work against is a genuine two-handed hilt. It also means the sword can be used one-handed at need, with the pommel counterweighting rather than being held, which is what "hand-and-a-half" describes.

It protects a finger. From the late medieval period onward, swordsmen frequently hooked the index finger over the cross and onto the ricasso, the unsharpened section at the base of the blade, because it gives far better control of the point than gripping behind the guard does. The obvious problem is that the finger is then outside the guard and exposed to anything sliding down the opponent's blade. The side ring is the answer: a loop of steel standing proud of the cross that shields the finger without preventing the grip. It is one of the first steps in the long development from a simple cross toward the complex hilts of the Renaissance, and finding one on a longsword rather than a rapier tells you the sword belongs to that transitional period. It is a functional feature rather than an ornament, which is not true of everything on this piece.

Because of how the distal taper and the furniture are proportioned rather than because of the length. Historical longswords in the 36 inch blade range generally weigh between about 1200 and 1600 grams, with plenty under 1400; this one is 1740. The difference sits in two places. Historical blades taper hard in thickness as well as width, so the last third of the blade is markedly thinner than the base, and the pommel is sized to balance that rather than to look substantial. A blade with a gentler distal taper carries more steel out toward the point, which is where it is felt most. The result is a sword that is slower to change direction and more tiring to hold in guard. For a wall piece none of that matters. If you want it to handle properly, ask for the historical weighting when you order: our smiths will take the taper down and lighten the pommel, and it costs nothing extra. It is the single most worthwhile thing you can specify on this page.

Not on a bench stone, which is the short version. A flat stone can only touch the outermost points of the convex sections and will never reach into the concave ones, so a few sharpenings on a flat surface will flatten the wave out of the blade entirely. You need a round or tapered ceramic rod or a slip stone narrow enough to follow the curves, worked section by section along the edge, and you have to be conscious of maintaining the profile rather than simply removing metal. It is slower than sharpening a straight sword and there is more of it. Our recurve knife page sets out the same problem on a smaller blade and explains the technique in more detail. If sharpening is a chore you would rather avoid, the straight-bladed build is a free option and is an easier sword to own.

No. It is sharpened on both edges and pointed, and no responsible club will let it on a floor. Blunting it yourself is not the answer either, and this is worth understanding rather than taking on trust: a training sword is a different build from the forge up, with edges left thick, a tip rolled or flared so it cannot pierce, and the blade tuned to flex on a thrust rather than stay rigid. Grinding the edge off a sharp sword gives you a rigid steel bar with a spike on the end, which is more dangerous rather than less. We will happily forge a proper trainer, waved or straight, built to whatever ruleset your club fences under. Plenty of people own both, one for the floor and one for the wall.

Sight along it edge-on. Every sword tapers in width toward the point, which is obvious; a good one also tapers in thickness, which you have to look for deliberately, and it is the thing that decides how a long blade handles. Lay the sword flat and look at it from the hilt end: the thickness should reduce steadily toward the tip without steps. On a waved blade this is harder to judge because the profile is doing something else at the same time, so sight along the spine of the wave rather than trying to read the whole silhouette. Our twin fuller bollock dagger page sets the test out in full. It is worth applying to any long blade from any maker, and on this sword it is directly connected to the weight question above.

We cannot answer that for you and you should be wary of any seller who claims they can. What is worth knowing is that sword legislation is a genuinely separate body of law from knife legislation, and the answers often surprise people: in a number of countries ownership at home is entirely unrestricted while carrying in public is a serious offence, and in others import requires paperwork that a knife of any size would never need. Some jurisdictions also name particular blade types, and curved or wave-bladed swords occasionally appear in those lists. Rules for owning, carrying and importing are three separate questions and you should check all three for your own address before ordering. If import is the obstacle rather than ownership, tell us and we will advise on what we can and cannot send where.

5160 high-carbon spring steel, forged down from leaf spring in the Nepali tradition, oil-quenched and then tempered back. On a blade this long toughness matters far more than outright hardness, because a four foot sword flexes along its whole length under any load that is not perfectly aligned, and a hard brittle blade in that situation snaps where a properly tempered one bends and returns. 5160 is chosen for exactly this: it is the alloy vehicle springs are made from, selected in that application for its ability to take repeated flexing without taking a set. It is not stainless and it will rust if left wet.

Less so than on almost anything else we make, and the waves are the reason. The serpentine profile is drawn out and ground by hand on both edges, and the two edges have to mirror each other along three feet of blade, so the exact position, depth and spacing of the waves varies from sword to sword. Two flamberges from the same bench in the same week will be recognisably the same design and visibly individual objects. The slot is cut and finished by hand, the cross and side ring are forged and filed individually, and the grip is wound one at a time. What does not vary is the specification: length, steel, construction, heat treatment and sharpness are held to the same standard on every piece.