Hand-Forged Quillon Dagger, Ring Pommel

Five names cover most of what survives, and they are distinguished by the hilt rather than the blade. The QUILLON DAGGER, as here, has a straight cross guard — essentially a sword hilt at dagger scale — and it is the type most often shown paired with a sword in period art. The RONDEL has flat discs at both ends of the grip instead of a cross, which lets you put the heel of your hand on the top disc and drive the point with your bodyweight; it is the armour-fighting dagger. The BOLLOCK dagger, politely catalogued as a kidney dagger by Victorian curators, has two rounded lobes at the base of the grip in place of a guard, and it was the everyday civilian sidearm across northern Europe for centuries. The BASELARD has a distinctive capital-I hilt, with a bar at the top and bottom of the grip. The CINQUEDEA is Italian and immediately recognisable by a very broad triangular blade, sometimes five fingers wide at the ricasso, which is where the name comes from. A MISERICORDE is not a shape at all but a role — any narrow dagger used to finish a downed opponent through a visor or a gap in plate. We build all of these to order.

Because they solve opposite problems. A fuller is a groove that removes material from the middle of a blade's section, and it is a weight-saving device: on a long sword blade every gram out at the end of a long lever costs you control, so you take steel out of the place it contributes least. A dagger has no weight problem — it is already short and light — but it has a stiffness problem, because a thrust puts the entire force of your arm and bodyweight down the blade's long axis, and a flat blade under that load wants to buckle sideways. A diamond section solves it by putting a raised ridge down the centre, which is structurally the same trick as an I-beam turned on its side: material concentrated along the axis of bending resists deflection far better than the same material spread flat. That is why thrusting daggers, estocs and armour-piercing blades are diamond or triangular in section while cutting swords are fullered. Look at any blade's cross-section and you can usually tell what it was made to do.

It is at the upper end, and it is legitimate. Surviving medieval quillon daggers run from around 10 inches of blade up to about 16, and pieces at the longer end blur into the category of the short sword or the "hand-and-a-half dagger" that period inventories sometimes list separately. At 13 inches this sits comfortably inside the range. Where the line genuinely falls is around 16 to 18 inches: past that the proportions stop working as a dagger — the grip becomes too short to control the length, and it wants a sword hilt instead. If you order a custom build much longer than this one, we will tell you that rather than take the order quietly.

5160 high-carbon spring steel, oil-quenched and then tempered back. On a thrusting blade the heat treatment matters in a particular way: too soft and the point rolls or takes a set on a hard thrust, too hard and it snaps rather than flexing. Correctly tempered 5160 sits well in that band, holding a point while bending and returning. It is also the steel family Nepali smiths have traditionally drawn from vehicle leaf spring, so our forge reads it by colour and by sound at the anvil. Every blade is inspected before it is packed, and if a piece reaches you with a fault in the forging or the heat treatment we will replace it or refund you.

Yes. It ships with a working edge on both sides and a sharpened point, finished by hand. It is not a blunt wall-hanger with a dagger-shaped profile ground into it. If it is going into a display case, a costume, or a HEMA or reenactment context whose rules require blunt kit, ask for it blunted in the order note before we ship and we will finish it that way at no extra cost.

Yes. The tang runs the full length of the hilt with the cross, grip and ring pommel fitted to it, so the assembly is held by steel rather than by adhesive. On a thrusting weapon this matters in a specific direction: a thrust loads the hilt in compression straight back along the blade's axis, driving the whole assembly toward your hand, and that is precisely the direction a badly built hilt fails in. A full-length tang with a properly seated pommel puts that load through steel rather than through a glue line.

Because it was the one weapon that was simultaneously a tool, a status marker and a sidearm, and because it was affordable. A sword was expensive and in many towns its carry was regulated; a dagger was cheap, small enough to wear all day without thinking about it, and nobody questioned it. It cut your food at table, which is a use people forget — forks were not yet common and diners brought their own blade. It was the fallback when a sword or a polearm was lost or too long for the distance. And in armoured fighting it was the finisher, because a dagger point could find the gaps a sword could not. Period art shows daggers hanging from the belts of soldiers, merchants, farmers and clergy alike, and they turn up in wills and inventories more often than any other weapon.

Yes, and if you are after the historical mainstream you probably should. The three common medieval quillon-dagger pommels are the WHEEL, a flat disc seen edge-on, which is the same form that dominates arming swords of the period; the DISC, broader and flatter; and the SCENT-STOPPER, so called because it resembles a perfume-bottle stopper, tapering and faceted. The ring fitted here is a less usual choice, and while annular pommels do appear on surviving pieces they are not the first thing a curator would expect. All three alternatives are available on a custom build, and any of them will move this dagger closer to the standard type.

Yes, and it is worth doing, because a sword and dagger worn together is how these were actually carried — the dagger on the right hip, the sword on the left, and both visible in most period depictions of an armed man. Our smiths will match the fittings, the grip wrap colour and the scabbard tooling between this dagger and any sword we build, so the two read as a set rather than as two separate purchases. Order both and put a note on the order asking for them to be matched, and we will build them together.

Yes. A tooled brown leather scabbard with a laced throat and a belt fitting comes with the dagger, cut around this specific blade profile. If you change the blade length on a custom build the scabbard is made to the new dimensions. A different tooling pattern, a plain finish or a belt frog can be specified, and if you are having a matching sword built we will tool both to the same pattern.

Wipe the blade dry after handling, since fingerprints are acidic enough to etch a satin finish within days, and keep a thin film of camellia, mineral or light gun oil on it in storage. The detail people miss on a diamond-section blade is the two shallow valleys either side of the medial ridge: a cloth passed across the blade bridges over them, so work along the ridge rather than across it. The leather grip wrap and the tooled scabbard want conditioning once or twice a year and no direct sunlight, which fades and dries dyed leather faster than anything else. Do not store the blade sheathed for long periods.

No, and that is inherent to hand forging. Every blade is drawn out under a hammer, so the exact line of the medial ridge and the width at the ricasso carry small differences from piece to piece. The ring is formed and polished by hand, so no two are identical. Leather is dyed, wrapped and tooled by hand, so the wrap spacing and the tooling vary. Weights and dimensions vary by a few percent either way. What is consistent is the steel, the heat treatment, the construction and the edge. We build these as handmade objects and a small amount of cosmetic variation is part of that rather than a fault.