Hand-Forged Medieval Dagger, Cord-Wrapped Grip

It is a quillon dagger, which is the medieval dagger built like a sword in miniature: a straight cross between blade and grip, a pommel at the end of the tang, and a symmetrical double-edged blade. The name simply comes from the quillons, the two arms of the cross. It is the type a knight would have worn alongside his sword, and it is usually the plainest of the medieval dagger forms because it takes its design language from the sword rather than developing one of its own. We have listed it as a medieval dagger rather than a quillon dagger because we build a second quillon dagger with a ring pommel and we did not want the two competing under the same name. If you are searching for a quillon dagger, you have found one.

Because medieval arms were coloured, and modern reproductions almost always are not. Surviving accounts, inventories and manuscript illustrations describe scabbards and grips in red, green, blue, white and black, and the dyes to do it were ordinary trade goods — weld and broom for yellows, woad for blue, and the two overdyed for green, which is why green appears so often. Colour also did work: it marked a livery, a household or a retinue, in the same way a uniform does now. The reason nearly every reproduction dagger you can buy is brown is that undyed vegetable-tanned leather is the cheapest thing to finish, not that brown is authentic. Ours is dyed green through the grip cord and the scabbard together so the piece reads as a dressed object rather than a bare blade with a cover.

Cord is the underlayer of a proper grip, and here it is left exposed. The historically common build is a wooden core, cord laid over it in a tight continuous winding, and then leather stretched over the whole thing while damp so it shrinks down and locks into the ridges the cord makes. That is why the grips on many surviving swords and daggers show a fine spiral texture through the leather. Leaving the cord bare gives you the grip and the texture without the outer layer, and it has one real practical advantage: when a wrap eventually wears, cord can be stripped and rewound in an evening with nothing more than a spool and a little glue at each end, whereas a fitted leather cover has to be cut and stretched again. If you want the full historical build, ask for leather over cord and we will do it that way.

That is the chape, and it is not decoration. The point of a blade sits at the narrowest part of the scabbard and every time the dagger is drawn or sheathed the tip drags across the same small area of leather. Without protection it wears through in a season of real use and then the point comes out of the bottom of your scabbard, which ruins the scabbard and is genuinely dangerous if you are wearing it. A metal chape takes that wear instead. It also stiffens the tip so the scabbard keeps its shape rather than collapsing, and on a piece worn at the hip it stops the point catching on things as you move. Surviving medieval chapes are found in brass, bronze, iron and silver, and they are one of the commonest metal finds from the period precisely because they outlast the leather they were fitted to.

It stops the blade flexing. A dagger blade is long, narrow and tapered, which is exactly the shape that wants to bend, and a flat-ground blade of this length would spring noticeably in the hand. Raising a ridge down the centre and grinding the bevels away from it puts the thickest steel along the spine of the blade, on the axis where bending stress is highest, and gives you the flattened diamond section this blade has. The result is a blade you can put weight behind without it whipping. It is also why the section is right for a dagger and wrong for a chopping knife: a diamond section is stiff but it wedges in a cut rather than slicing cleanly through, which is a fair trade on a weapon and a bad one on a tool.

5160 high-carbon spring steel, brought to temperature in the forge, quenched in oil and then tempered back so the edges are hard while the body of the blade stays springy. This steel is the traditional stock of Nepali forges because it is tough, it takes a good edge and it forgives a hand sharpening. It is not stainless. That is deliberate: stainless grades that genuinely resist rust tend to give up toughness, and on a long thin double-edged blade toughness is the property that matters most.

Both edges are put on by hand at the forge and it arrives sharp and ready. If you want it blunt — for display, for a gift, for stage work, or because of the rules where you live — say so in the order comments and we will ship it unsharpened at no extra cost. We can also rebate the point at the same time. What we cannot do is turn it into a sparring trainer, which needs a thicker rolled edge and a proper flared and blunted tip designed from the start.

They are the same family and worth comparing properly. The ring-pommel dagger has a 13 inch blade, a polished steel ring at the end of the tang, a leather-wrapped grip and a tooled brown scabbard with a laced throat. This one has a 14 inch blade, a faceted flaring pommel, a bare cord wrap and a green scabbard with a steel chape. Both are quillon daggers, both carry a raised medial ridge, and both come out at 20 inches overall. The practical difference is the pommel: a ring gives you somewhere to put a finger or a thong and is the more unusual fitting, while a faceted pommel is the plainer knightly form and sits more comfortably against the heel of the hand in a reverse grip. Choose on which pommel you want to look at and hold. If you want a matched sword-and-dagger set, this one is easier to match because its fittings are conventional.

The tang runs the full length of the hilt and the pommel is fitted over it at the end, which is through-tang construction rather than the slab-and-rivet full tang you see on a working knife. That is the correct build for this pattern — a cross, a wrapped grip and a fitted pommel all have to sit on a narrow tang for the hilt to look and handle the way it should. It is not a weaker arrangement when it is done properly, because the cross and pommel clamp the grip core between them and the whole hilt works as one piece under compression. If you would prefer a visible full tang with riveted scales, that is a different hilt design and we would build the dagger around it from the start.

Yes, and for a lot of buyers we would suggest it. Ten to eleven inches of blade is the sweet spot for a dagger you will actually wear: it hangs properly on a belt, it does not foul when you sit down, and it is closer to the middle of the historical range rather than the top of it. The hilt stays the same, the scabbard is cut to the new blade, and the price moves only a little. Fourteen inches is the right choice if the piece is going on a wall or into a kit where presence matters more than convenience.

Yes, and it is the order we most enjoy taking. The same cross profile, the same pommel form, the same colour and material of wrap, and both scabbards cut and dyed from the same hide, so the two pieces read as one set instead of two purchases. Historically that is how they were worn — the dagger was the sword's companion, hung on the same belt, and often dressed to match it. Tell us which sword you have or want, or send a photograph of one you already own, and we will quote the pair or quote the dagger dressed to match a sword you already have.

In our own workshop in Tokha-3 on the northern edge of Kathmandu, Nepal, by around ten smiths, most from families that have forged blades for generations. Everest Forge has operated since 2010. We forge, grind, heat treat, fit and do our own leatherwork in the same building — we do not buy in finished blades and put our name on them. It matters practically as well as commercially: when you ask for a green wrap and a fishtail pommel, the person reading your message can walk to the bench and ask whether it can be done this week.