Hand-Forged Parrying Dagger, Side Ring

A dagger made to be used in the left hand at the same time as a sword in the right, which is why it is also called a left-hand dagger. It belongs to the Renaissance, roughly 1550 to 1650, when civilian duelling with the rapier became widespread across Italy, Spain, France and eventually England. The rapier is long, fast and superb at attacking, and correspondingly poor at defending itself, so a second weapon in the off hand took over the defensive work. The dagger caught, deflected and trapped the opponent's blade while the rapier looked for an opening. Everything about the shape follows from that division of labour: the guard is large because it is what meets the incoming blade, and the blade itself is comparatively unimportant.

Yes. Main gauche is simply French for left hand, and in English it has come to mean exactly this weapon: the companion dagger to a rapier. The two terms are interchangeable in ordinary use, though if you want to be precise, some writers reserve main gauche for the heavier Spanish-style daggers with a wide triangular knuckle plate and use parrying dagger for the broader family that includes ring-guarded pieces like this one. Nobody will misunderstand you either way. You will also see left-hand dagger, and occasionally companion dagger.

It closes a gap. Long quillons protect the hand well from a blade arriving across them, but once two blades are in contact and sliding, an opposing point can travel down the length of your blade and pass the cross on the flat side, arriving at your fingers from a direction the quillons cannot cover. The ring sits in that plane, on the outer face of the guard, and stops it. That is also why it is on one side only. The outer face is the side exposed to the opponent when the hand is held in a natural guard; the inner face is turned toward your own body and does not need it, and a ring there would foul the dagger against your hip when worn. Some patterns do carry rings on both faces, and we build that version on request, but the single outer ring is the more common historical arrangement and the more practical one to wear.

Because this guard is genuinely for parrying, and almost no other dagger's is. On a medieval sidearm the cross has one job, which is stopping the hand sliding onto the blade when a thrust lands, so it can be short and shaped for looks; our fishtail guard dagger page goes into that in detail. Here the guard is the working part of the weapon. Length matters because a longer quillon covers more angles and gives you more chance of intercepting a blade that is not arriving exactly where you expected. Round rod section matters because a flat bar with corners tends to catch and bind against an incoming edge, where a round section lets it slide and be guided. And the slightly spread ends stop a caught blade running off the tip. It is a design solved by fencers rather than by decorators, which is why it looks so different from everything else in our dagger range.

The tang runs the full length of the dagger and is threaded at the butt, and the pommel is drawn down onto that thread to compress guard, grip core and pommel into one rigid assembly. It is a different method from the peened construction used on medieval hilts, where the tang end is hammered over into a solid block, and each has honest advantages. A peen cannot loosen but also cannot be undone: if the grip covering wears out, the hilt has to be destroyed to renew it. A threaded assembly can be taken apart, re-tightened years later, and rewrapped, which on a wire-wrapped grip is a real benefit because wire is the covering most likely to need attention. The trade is that a thread can back off over time if it is not properly secured, so check it occasionally and nip it up if it moves. If you would prefer a peened hilt, say so when you order.

It is a different kind of object, not a variation. Our quillon daggers and bollock daggers are sidearms: weapons carried alone, used alone, and shaped so that the blade does the work. This is a companion weapon whose guard does the work, which is why it has long rod quillons and a ring where they have short shaped crosses and none. There is a practical consequence too. At 840 grams it is lighter than most of the medieval pieces despite its length, because a parrying dagger does not need a heavy blade and benefits from being quick in the hand. Buy a medieval dagger if you want a sidearm. Buy this if you own or want a rapier, or if you are interested in how Renaissance fencing actually worked.

No, and please do not try. This is sharpened on both edges and pointed, and no responsible club will let it near a drill floor. It is not simply a question of the edge either, which is why blunting it yourself is not the answer: a training dagger 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 to stay rigid. Grinding the edge off a sharp blade gives you a rigid steel bar with a spike on the end, which is more dangerous than the sharp version rather than less. What we will happily do is forge you a proper trainer. Tell us your club's ruleset or the standard you fence to and we will build to that specification. Plenty of people own both, one for the floor and one for the wall.

Both edges as standard. The blade is broad at the forte with a stepped shoulder where the grind begins, and tapers evenly from there to a fine point. On a parrying dagger the blade is the less important half of the weapon, so it is ground for stiffness and a good point rather than for cutting power, and the width at the base is there to resist a blade sliding down onto the guard rather than to add mass. If a double edge is a problem where you live, we will sharpen one side and leave the other blunt at no extra cost, and the piece looks identical.

We cannot answer that for you, and you should be wary of any seller who claims they can. Two separate provisions tend to apply. A great many jurisdictions treat double-edged daggers as their own restricted category regardless of size, and blade length thresholds apply independently on top of that. At 15 inches this sits above the ordinary knife allowance in most places, which means it may be regulated as a sword or a bladed weapon rather than as a knife, and import rules are frequently different again from possession and carry rules. Check all three for your own address before ordering. If length is the obstacle, an 11 or 13 inch build costs no more and is a perfectly historical proportion for the type.

The form is, the ornament is ours. A side ring on the outer face, long rod quillons with spread terminals, a wire-wrapped grip, a faceted pommel and a leather scabbard with cast mounts are all correct for a late 16th to mid 17th century left-hand dagger, and the way the hilt goes together is the period arrangement rather than an imitation of its appearance. What is not documented is this exact piece: the foliate scrollwork chased into the brass locket and chape is our smiths' own vocabulary, not a European pattern copied from an original in a collection. If you need something defensible at a strict living history event, tell us the region and date you portray and we will build the mounts to suit, or leave them plain.

5160 high-carbon spring steel, the same stock our smiths use for kukris and swords, forged down from leaf spring in the Nepali tradition. It is oil-quenched and then tempered back, producing a blade that holds an edge but stays tough rather than brittle. Toughness is worth more than usual on a weapon of this kind, because a parrying dagger is designed to be struck as much as to strike, and a hard, brittle blade is exactly the wrong thing to put in the path of an incoming point. It is not stainless and it will take a patina with use.

Close, but not identical. The blade profile is drawn out by eye against a pattern and the taper is ground by hand, the quillons and ring are forged and filed individually so their sweep varies a little, the brass mounts are cast and then chased by hand so the foliate detail differs in its particulars, and the grip wire 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. Our kukri machete page sets out in more detail what can and cannot differ between two blades from the same bench.