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Albion Crecy

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Sir Ulrich:
Thats nice! I want to get an Albion with the aged finish? Any links to where you got it? Now I see why everyone goes after Albions... Better than my current sword which looks bland compared to it.

Ian:

--- Quote from: Sir Ulrich on 2012-03-13, 05:58:43 ---Thats nice! I want to get an Albion with the aged finish? Any links to where you got it? Now I see why everyone goes after Albions... Better than my current sword which looks bland compared to it.

--- End quote ---

I ordered directly from Albion over the phone.  You can order through Christian Fletcher as well if you want him to specifically customize your sword, or you can obsessively check KoA like I do and see if they ever get any in stock (but theirs are not customizable).  Other than that you're looking at previously owned Albions.  People really go for Albions for the feel and construction as well though, not just looks. Albion gets this right unlike a lot of other makers. Less expensive swords usually feel overbuilt or dead in the hand because of things like having no distal taper or the subtle geometry a historic sword would have had. This being my first Albion, it did not disappoint.  I'm sure all the other guys here can attest to the quality of an Albion.

Sir Edward:
Oh heck yeah. I'm a total Albion snob now. Between them and A&A, I'd have a hard time convincing myself to get a sword from anyone else now. It's funny, just about 5 or so years ago, I was saying I couldn't bring myself to spend $800+ on a sword. Now, it's the other way around.

There are other ways to get very good swords as well, including the custom sword makers out there, as well as getting a Christian Fletcher sword with an Angus Trim blade. But to me, Albion is pretty much the top maker of production line swords.

Albion's sword designs are based on careful study of museum originals. Except of course their Museum Line, all of their swords are their own design, but are meant to be representative examples of those types of swords from history, with an eye toward the modern market. That is, there were some really awful swords made back in the day as well as very good ones, so they're replicating the better characteristics from better examples.

They capture the proper internal structure, as well as blade geometry with all its subtleties like distal taper, cross section, fuller thickness, point thickness, etc. This means they feel good in the hand, move well, and cut well. The one thing where they "cheat" a little in the final product is that they harden the blade a little more than was typical back in the day.

While they use modern construction methods (most notably a CNC machine to mill out the blanks, as well as hot-peening with a blowtorch), it's in the spirit of historical construction. Period steel wasn't nearly as good, and had to be worked and folded to get the right carbon distribution. They can skip this step since modern steel is already correct. From there, the blanks were ground into blades historically, so the fact that they grind theirs with large belt grinders is actually not far off from what our ancestors did.

Check out this video done by "How it's Made" on the Discovery channel, filmed at Albion:

Sir William:
I feel that if I say anything else about Albion craftsmanship to Ulrich, I will truly be beating a long-expired mount.  Suffice it to say, they are as attractive as they are functional- and Albion is one of two smithing operations that can lay claim to that, not counting custom smiths like John Lundemo, Jake Powning, Patrick Barta and their like.  The other being, imho, Arms & Armor.

I have always like the Crecy's clean and simple lines...I've gone away from longswords for a while now but if I ever get back 'into' them, definitely will pick up a Crecy at some point.

Sir Edward:

The Crecy really has a lot going for it. It's one of their more affordable longswords, for one thing. It's also a very good "jack of all trades, master of none". It performs well in the cut and the thrust, but isn't completely optimized for either. It's not too big, not too small. A very "middle of the road" sword, and very controllable.

One of these days I'll get a scabbard for mine. But I think I'll do the Talhoffer next. :)

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