new swords? haha yes..

[Mad Jim]

Well ok no so new but recycled!
As it was I have two Hanwei practicals the Norman and the Knight, now I liked both swords, a little heavy though but still ok for the job.
Though I had thought that the norman could have been given a straight cross guard instead of the small curved one that it has, and the knight that could have had a full round pommel instead of it going from round to square!.....anyway a while back while fighting we managed to take a good sized chip out of the knights blade, bugger! Shall we retire the sword? Seemed to ok for light drill and light sparring, but who wants a broken sword, ok not fully broken but could be worse anyway I didn't really want to use it due to the damage and possible other damage it may cause. So it sat there....and a little boy waited.
I had toyed with the idea of hacking it to peices or just letting it sit there.. I ummed and arhhhed for ages.
Then oneday looking at swords and such I had come across a short sword, simular style blade, curved cross and round pommel, Ureka!! I cryed as I slipped out of teh bath, nearly bashing the goat who was next to Cow, with the water level going down due to my shift of mass, lets make a short sword.....
So I took both the Norman and the Knight apart exchanged cross guards, and cut down the broken blade to a working blade, lost ten inches in all, modified the shoulders to accomadate the new cross guard, as the norman's curved guard is slightly narrow length wise, shortened the tang and added to both new tight fighting oak grips. So now with not to much work I have a new norman sword that looks more norman with the tea cosy pommel and straight cross guard, and a short sword thats about 4 hands long with curved guard and round pommel, but in hindsight I should have taken the pommels square egdes down to a round.... oh well... tchuss Jim.

[Mad Jim]

Got a picture now...