Hand-Forged Quillon Dagger, Wheel Pommel

The quillons are the two arms of a cross guard, and a quillon dagger is simply a dagger built with one, in the manner of a sword rather than a knife. That sounds like a small distinction and it is not. Where a bollock dagger, a rondel or a baselard each have their own idiosyncratic hilt, the quillon dagger uses ordinary knightly sword furniture at reduced scale: a cross, a grip over a core, and a pommel peened onto the tang. It was the natural sidearm for anyone who already owned an arming sword, and matching pairs were made deliberately, with the same cross profile and pommel shape on both so they read as a set on the belt. The form runs from roughly the 13th century through to the end of the Middle Ages.

No, and it is worth being clear about it because the name gets attached to daggers of this shape fairly often. Geoffrey de Mandeville was the 1st Earl of Essex, a genuinely notorious figure of the English civil war of the 1140s known as the Anarchy, who sacked Ramsey Abbey and was excommunicated for it. He died in 1144 and, being ineligible for burial in consecrated ground, his corpse was sheathed in lead and hung from a tree until the Templars interred him in the new Temple Church in London, where his effigy still lies among the knights. He is a superb story and no connection to this piece. His arms would have been mid 12th century: a broad blade of even width and a brazil-nut pommel, not a wheel pommel and an acute taper, which are features of the two centuries after him. We use the correct name for the type instead.

Three long medieval daggers, separated by hilt rather than by blade. The Bollock Dagger, Fluted Pommel is the period piece: 13 inches, guarded by two lobes carved from the same block of timber as the grip, no cross and no pommel cap. The Bollock Dagger, Steel Lobed Hilt is the fantasy build of the same form at 17 inches, with the lobes forged in polished steel. This one is the knightly alternative: a true cross guard, a leather grip over a core and a wheel pommel, which is a completely different tradition of hilt rather than a variation on the same one. Choose by what you want it to sit beside. If it is going next to a sword, take this. If you want the distinctively medieval civilian dagger, take a bollock. If accuracy is the priority, take the period bollock.

Structurally, the pommel is the most important component in the whole hilt, and most buyers assume it is ornament. The tang runs the full length of the dagger, passes through the guard, through the grip core and then through a hole in the pommel, and the last portion is heated and hammered over at the butt to form a peen. That peen draws every component down tight against the shoulders of the blade and locks guard, grip and pommel into a single rigid unit under compression. Nothing is glued and nothing relies on friction. It is also why a loose pommel is the classic failure on a sword-hilted piece: once the peen slackens the whole hilt begins to rattle, and it cannot be fixed with adhesive. The buyer's test is to look at the top of the pommel in any seller's photograph. You should be able to see the peen block, a small button of hammered steel sitting proud. If the butt is perfectly smooth with no peen visible, the tang probably stops short and the pommel is threaded, pinned or glued on.

It is not solid leather. Underneath there is a wooden core, cut in two halves, hollowed to fit the tang exactly and glued around it, then shaped to the hand and finally covered in leather stretched over and closed along one side. That is the standard construction for a sword grip and it has been for a thousand years, for two reasons. A shaped core can be given a waist and an oval section that solid material cannot easily hold at this thinness, and the covering is a wearing surface separate from the structure. The leather will eventually darken, polish and, after years of handling, wear through at the high points. When it does, it can be stripped and recovered without touching the core, the tang or the peen. A solid one-piece grip offers no such option: when it splits, the hilt comes apart.

It is a running foliate scroll, leaves and tendrils repeating down a panel on the flat of each face, produced by acid etching. Yes, you can have it plain, at no extra cost, and a fair number of buyers do. Two things are worth knowing. First, the panel sits on the forte, the lower third of the blade nearest the guard, where the steel is at its thickest and widest. That is not accidental: decoration wants to be well clear of the edges and well clear of the last few inches where the blade is thinnest and doing the most work. Second, this is a modern technique. Medieval blades of this class certainly carried decoration, but it was inlaid wire, latten filling or cut engraving, and none of it looks like an etched panel. We say so on the page rather than implying a provenance the finish does not have.

Yes, and it is the single thing most likely to disappoint you if nobody warns you first. A mirror polish is not a coating; it is the bare steel surface taken through progressively finer abrasives until the scratch pattern is too small to scatter light. That means there is nothing at all between the steel and the air. Human skin is mildly acidic, so a fingerprint left on a mirror-polished carbon blade will etch itself permanently into the surface within a few days, and it cannot be wiped off afterwards, only polished out. Every mark shows, because a mirror shows everything. If the dagger is going on a wall and you enjoy maintaining it, the polish is the most beautiful finish we do and it displays the etched panel far better than anything else. If you would rather own it than tend it, order the satin finish, which costs the same and hides handling almost entirely.

Both edges as standard. The blade is broad at the forte and tapers evenly all the way to the point rather than running parallel and then dropping to a tip, which keeps mass and stiffness where the leverage is greatest and puts fineness only in the last few inches. Ground for thrusting first and cutting second, which is what the type was for. At 920 grams over 17 inches this is a noticeably heavier blade per inch than our bollock daggers of the same length, and that is the broader forte accounting for itself rather than a heavier steel or a thicker stock. 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 then apply independently on top of that. At 17 inches this sits above the ordinary knife allowance almost everywhere, 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 closer to the historical proportion anyway.

The hilt is orthodox and the blade is not. A straight cross with flared terminals, a leather grip over a shaped core and a peened wheel pommel with a raised boss are all correct for a 14th to 15th century quillon dagger, and the construction is the period construction rather than a modern imitation of it. What is ours is the 17 inch length, which exceeds most surviving examples of the type, and the acid-etched panel, which is a modern decorative technique. Order it plain and at 11 or 13 inches and you have something a reenactor could carry without argument, at no extra cost. Order it as photographed and you have a handsome display piece that is honest about which parts are which.

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 matters particularly on a long thrusting blade, because a thrust that lands off-line loads the blade sideways, and that is precisely the case 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, and that is the nature of forged work. The blade profile is drawn out by eye against a pattern, the taper is ground by hand, the cross is forged and filed individually, the grip core is carved to its own tang, and no two peens are formed the same way. The etched panel is masked and applied by hand, so its position will vary slightly along the blade. 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.