Hand-Forged Quillon Dagger, Ball Pommel

Because the pommel is often the only part with anything to say. On a medieval dagger the blade is a taper and the guard is usually a straight bar, and those two components vary far less between one piece and the next than you might expect: a fifteenth century cross looks much like a fourteenth century one. The pommel is where a maker had free rein, and where the fashion of a decade showed itself, so it became the classifying feature almost by default. The same happened in sword studies, where Oakeshott's typology numbers blades but letters pommels precisely because the pommel is the more diagnostic component. We should be straightforward about the consequence, though: pommel shape tells you almost nothing about how a dagger performs. It tells you about date, region and taste. If you are choosing between ours, the differences that will actually matter to you are weight, blade section and guard thickness, and those are set out in the next answer rather than in the names.

Ignore the pommel names and choose on weight and decoration, in that order. This one is the lightest at 640 grams, with a slender fullered blade and a very thin cross; it handles better than any of them and is the least robust. Our Barrel Pommel is the plain one at 12 inches, undecorated throughout and the best of the four for reenactment or for judging workmanship. Our Wheel Pommel is the longest at 17 inches with an etched blade panel and a leather grip over a core. Our Fishtail Guard is the decorated one, with notched quillons, a wire-wrapped grip and cast brass scabbard mounts, and at nearly twice this dagger's weight it is the most substantial. Take this one if you want something quick and quiet in the hand; take the fishtail if you want an object that announces itself.

Its distinguishing property is that it has no orientation. Every other pommel form has a right way up: a wheel presents faces, a fishtail points, a barrel has an axis, a disc has a rim. A true sphere presents the same surface to your palm whichever way the dagger has rotated in your hand, which makes it the most forgiving pommel there is and part of why the form appears across so many centuries and regions. It also does the ordinary pommel work of giving the heel of your hand something to bear against and holding the hilt together under compression. Judging one is unusually easy, and it is worth doing on any seller's photographs. Look at the highlight, the bright reflection on the polished surface. On a true sphere it is a clean round spot with a soft edge. On a pommel that has been ground slightly out of round, the highlight stretches, kinks or breaks into two, and once you have seen it you cannot unsee it. A sphere is the shape with nowhere to hide a flaw, which is exactly why it is a good test of a workshop.

Because mass at the ends of a hilt is the most expensive weight on the whole piece. Anything you add out at the tips of the quillons sits at the end of a lever and works against you every time the dagger changes direction, so taking section out of the cross does far more for how the piece feels than the same weight removed from the blade would. A dagger guard can afford it in a way a sword's cannot: a sword guard meets other blades and takes edge strikes, while a dagger guard has one job, which is stopping the hand travelling forward when a thrust lands. That load runs along the line of the blade, not sideways, so a thin flat cross carries it perfectly well. The honest limit is that it will not tolerate loads it was never meant to take. Lever with it, or drop the dagger so it lands across the guard, and it will bend rather than spring back. If you would rather have the robustness, we will forge a heavier cross at no extra cost and the piece will simply feel less lively.

Three decisions compounding, none of them dramatic on its own. The fuller takes a channel out of the middle of the blade's thickness, where the steel does least for stiffness. The thin cross removes mass from the worst possible place to carry it, at the ends of the hilt. And the blade itself is ground finer than any of its siblings, with a slenderer section from the outset. Together they bring it to 640 grams over 15 inches, which is 42.7 grams per inch of blade against 45 to 62 across the rest of our dagger range. What that buys is real: it is noticeably quicker in the hand, comfortable to hold out at arm's length, and the least tiring piece we make in this size. What it costs is authority and robustness. It will not cut with the weight of our heavier daggers and it will not forgive being used roughly. If you are buying to hold and handle rather than to hang, this is the one.

It removes steel from the middle of the blade's thickness, where the material contributes least to stiffness, so the blade loses weight without losing much rigidity. On a slender dagger the effect is modest in absolute terms but noticeable in the hand, and it is one of the three things making this the lightest piece in the range. Our deep-fullered kukri page sets out the structural argument properly, our fullered bowie page explains how to tell a forged fuller from a ground one, and our twin fuller bollock dagger covers why some fullers stop short at the forte while others run the length as this one does.

Both edges as standard. The blade is slender from the shoulder and tapers evenly in both width and thickness to a fine point, with a narrow fuller running most of its length. It is ground for thrusting first and cutting second, which is what the type was for, and it is the finest section in our dagger range. If a double edge is a problem where you live, we will sharpen one side and leave the other as a blunt false edge at no extra cost, and the piece looks identical.

Leather over a shaped wooden core, with raised risers worked into the covering so the hand finds the same position every time without looking. The core is the structural part and the leather is a wearing surface that can be renewed decades later without disturbing the hilt. Our wheel pommel dagger page sets out core-and-covering construction in detail, including why it is the standard arrangement for a sword-style grip and how it differs from a solid one-piece handle.

The form is entirely orthodox. A straight cross of thin flat section, a leather grip over a shaped core with risers, and a spherical pommel are all correct for a medieval quillon dagger, and spherical pommels appear on daggers and swords across several centuries precisely because the shape is simple, forgiving and easy to make well. The construction follows the period method rather than imitating its appearance. What we cannot claim is that it reproduces a specific documented find; it is built to the type rather than copied from an example. The 15 inch blade is at the long end but well within what survives. If you portray a particular region and date, tell us and we will adjust the cross and pommel proportions to suit at no extra cost.

We cannot answer that for you and you should be wary of any seller who claims they can. Two provisions tend to apply. Many jurisdictions treat double-edged daggers as their own restricted category regardless of size, and blade length thresholds apply independently on top. 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, a 10 or 12 inch build costs no more and is a commoner historical proportion anyway.

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, giving a blade that holds an edge but stays tough rather than brittle. Toughness matters particularly here because this is the slenderest blade in our dagger range: a thrust that lands off-line loads it sideways, and that is exactly where a hard, brittle steel snaps and a properly tempered one flexes and returns. 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, the taper is ground by hand in both width and thickness, and the fuller is cut individually. The cross is forged and filed one at a time. The pommel is the most demanding component and the one where hand work shows most, since a sphere has no flat surface to reference against; expect it to be round to the eye rather than to a gauge. The grip is built to its own core and leather varies in colour and grain. What does not vary is the specification: length, steel, construction, heat treatment and sharpness are held to the same standard on every piece.