Spotted this, and well, felt it might be of interest to people for me to contribute.
So, just registered, and here goes.
The plain straight wire method depicted in this is a fairly simple technique, and in silver, particularly suited to viking era hilts, but as James Anderson's mentioned, its picky about straightness, and fiddly to get right. For later medieval, however, an alternative is counter-spiralling wire, as used by Albion and the likes on their high-end hilts.
Quite a lot of people try it, not many get it right. so I thought I'd show people how:
(Since I dont have any swordhilts that need it done to them to hand right now, I'm afraid its that good old substitute, a hammer handle.)
So, what you need, tools-wise, is:
1 pair of wire cutters, 1 Hammer, 1 Drill hand drill, or one with a reverse. 1mm drill bit. Vise, or similar clamp for holding wire. Ball of string.
And a long corridor, hallway, back garden, or similar location you can stretch the wire out for several metres.
Eye protection. bits of wire will whip around; trust me on this. Oh yes. Or "Arr, aye", as I say nowadays.
Materials-wise: Wire. your choice.
Pins: broad-headed, to pin down the wire. very small clout nails work, upholstery pins work very well. Or you can make non-ferrous broad-headed pins from bronze/brass stock soldered on to panel pin nails, without drawing the steel's temper if you're careful and stark raving mad.
Generally, I'd reccommend that you wrap the hilt in leather first, in the usual wet-forming technique with risers which I expect most people will know well enough. it gives a little bit of "give" which the wire can bite into .
So, you've got your materials: handle/hilt, pins, and wire. I'll personally reccommend "the scientific wire company" as they do reels of iron, bronze, silver, or if you're a sick deviated prevert, anodised aluminium. a 50gramme reel is easily enough for one hilt unless its a two-handed monster, I should add.
Stick 'em all together, you get something like this:
your first step is to use the ball of string. stick it onto your hilt where you want the wire wrap to start, and wrap it around, all the way to where you want to end. mark it, and unwrap from the hilt. That'll give you a good estimate of the length of wire you're going to need to do your wrap. Saves you screaming when you realise you're 6 inches short...
So. what you want to do for spiralling wire is take that measurement on the string, and half it, and add about two metres extra, so you've got a bit of extra. Now, what you want is to cut a wire that lenght, and loop it in half, and clamp it into the vise, and feed it out down the hallway or whatever nice open space you've got to hand.
sort of like this:
now, you want to stick the other end of the wire into the drill. A nice little effort-saving tip here: clamp the ends in the vise, and have a continuous loop of wire. instead of trying to attach the wire into the drill chuck, get a ? shaped hook, and clamp that in the chuck, and hook the wire over it. far, far easier to keep the wire in place and under a little tension.
with it all hooked up, start to turn the drill slowly, and the wire will start to spiral:
keep on going till you have a nice, tight spiral.
now, repeat the process all over, with a second length of wire. Only this time, reverse the drill, so the spiral is turning the other way.
when you've done that, you should have two lovely, straight spiralling wires, like this:
Now, you've got your hilt, and you've got your wires.
Use the 1mm drill bit to drill pilot holes around the point where you want the wire to start. main reason for this is that its very easy to split the wood close to the edge with a nail, and this minimises it, and also guides the pin down straight. I'd normally do 8 nails around the entire hilt, but for this, I'm being lazy and just one.
slip the wires underneath the pin when its just above the surface, then give it a good tap to bite the wires into the surface, and pin them in place.
Repeat all the way around the hilt, with at least half a dozen pins. so the wire is securely fixed in place.
Then feed the two spirals of wire around the hilt, and wrap it all the way up as far as you want it to be done. I'd reccommend wearing gloves, and feeding the wire over your thumb... the gloves will mean you dont saw a hole through your thumb after 2 inches of hilt.
when you reach the end of your hilt, I'd reccommend developing mutant powers, and with your second pair of hands, drill a second set of pilot holes for pins. If you have more brain cells than I do, you might even figure out where you want your wrap to go to, before you start with the wire. it would be the sensible course of action, certainly.
Then, use a second set of pins, to hold the wire wrap end down. if you've got it right, it'll be nice and secure. if you got it wrong, expect wire to sproing out from under your pins, and unwrap into something like a bomb in a spring factory.
But if it works, you end up with something like this:
and if that's done on a proper hilt, that should end up looking something like these two:
Erm. Yep. something like that.
Hope its of interest to people.
And, since this is a first post, er... Hello.
