My "new" antique schiavona

[Das Bill]

I mentioned on the other thread that I bought an antique. Well, here it is. Its a schiavona with a blade probably from the first half of the 17th century. I'm still trying to figure out if the hilt is as old or not. The blade I can identify because it has the engravings, "S-O-L-I  D-E-O" on one side and "G-R-A-C-I-A" on the other, which roughly means "For the Glory of God Alone". This is one of the five sola of the Protestant Reformation, which ended roughly in 1648, so most likely the blade dates to around that time or before. The hilt style was used from the late 16th century and into the late 18th century. It seems most like typical 17th century designs, but I can't be 100% certain.

Overall length: 40 inches
Blade length: 34 inches
Blade width: 1 7/16 inches at guard
Grip length: 4 inches
Guard width: 4.5 inches
Opening for hand width: 3.5 inches
Oakeshott Type 2b schiavona guard

I unfortunatley have misplaced the scale that I usually use to weigh swords, so I had to use a very innaccurate bathroom scale, which shows that the sword is roughly 2.5 pounds, though it feels much lighter. This is an incredibly lively sword. I absolutely love the handling of it. Since I've now put it up on a couple different places on the web, I'll just post a few pics here and then give you a link to some better pictures and a more complete review if anyone is interested:

http://www.myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=16998&highlight=

[Sir Edward]

Oh man, that's awesome. I need to go read your other review now!

*drool*

Yeah, I use a fishing scale (handle with a hook and digital display) to weigh mine. I hung some pieces of rope from the hook that I can loop over the guards. 2.5 lbs and lively sounds great! Did you manage to measure the point of balance, and center of percussion?

[Das Bill]

Whoops! I totally forgot to put the POB. Its 3 1/4 inches fromt the guard. I'm not going to try to figure out the COP since that involves whacking the pommel, and I don't want to do that to something that already has a loose guard (even though the hilt is, overall, pretty solid).

[Sir Edward]

I've found you can get decent results from whacking the blade too. I did it that way for most of the ones that I measured it on in my collection. The results were pretty much the same as when I hit the pommel. The most important thing is that you're inducing an oscillation.

But good point.