Sexy Sword Mystery Solved

Recently, at the pre-Thanksgiving Day Parade festivities, I felt that familiar tingle that fine steel was nearby. You know that sensation. It’s like Déjà vu, electricity, and the post-coitus afterglow all rolled into one then given a shot of adrenaline – you know, just for kicks.

Yeah, I felt that.

Walking around the reenactors’ tents, I folded back a flap and there she was:

I hefted her. She felt light. I took her through some motions. She felt strong. She just felt right. Beautiful. Durable. Stylish. I’m not one, really for rapiers, one-handers, main gauches, etc. But, to me, this brand was the Christina Hendricks of weaponry and I just had to know where she came from:

“Who made your basket hilt?”

“Don’t rightly know. If you like swords, try this company called Armor Class in Scotland.”
“Oh, no problem. It’s just a beautiful piece. (aka Hi. We haven’t met but I am a sword fanatic and want to steal your piece like Arthur stole Excalibur when he was a squire for Sir Cay).

I did some digging.

After talking to a lot of “Town Guard” –style parade-marching marching groups, the mystery of the sexy sword was final revealed by these cheerful fellows, the Salem Trayned Band:

“The sword about which you're asking is Darkwood Armory's English Baskethilt IV with a wire-wrapped grip (single wrap), built to living-history quality (an option you can request from Darkwood) and mounted on an old Museum Replicas broadsword blade. Regrettably, I'm not sure which one, but it may be from MRL's very old Early Basket-Hilt sword.

Darkwood reshaped and fullered the blade. We ordered the sword before Darkwood offered as complete a line-up of blades as they do today, so we opted to provide our own blade rather than waiting for them to either order a Del Tin blade or to develop a suitable one of their own.”

Well HOOO-RAY for customization, but this now means that I may never get that same EXACT model, as forges can be prickly about making copies of the same blade.

Ah, well. At least now I know her name and where she lives.

The rest, I think, is simply horse-tradin.’