Hi its Tod of Tod's Workshop and Tod Cutler here and today we're going to
talk about these daggers here. There's nothing special about them, in the sense
of there's no theme, there's no direction to this video. It's just the last few
weeks production for me and they've all got something interesting about them so
I'll talk you through them. First up is this bollock dagger here. Have a
look at that. So this is based on one in the Rothenberg Collection in Germany.
Dated around mid to late 15th century, probably later I would say and then
we'll come back down to the chase there. Now it's quite a fancy piece rather
obviously. So it's got an inscription on the top of the pommel here in Latin
which reads; English translation of; "the right hand of the Lord hath wrought
strength" Mottos like that are things that you often see engraved on blades and on
bits of hilt furniture very often though on blades. It's just a
nice catchy little thing. References to God and strength are very common. Other
than that you've got a strong double-sided blade here, diamond section
blade. The original of this dagger had a really weird, freaky, square blade, but to
be honest this is a more popular form for me and I am a commercial enterprise.
If people want that completely accurate reproduction that's fine. This is based
on some pieces from the portable antiquities scheme here in England, where
people who find components, in the case of this one it was the just the guard
and the pommel there was no blade. They dated it to around about 1350. It's quite a
small dagger, which daggers very often were, either at that time or later in
fact. Daggers are not always great big long things, they're always, they're often
quite small and handy that changes a little bit with time period and of
course with function. But what was really curious about it was the nagel here.
I've always associated those with later knives, around about 1500 or a
little bit after. So the dating for 1350 for this one I think is much too early,
I suspect it really is around about the 1500 mark. This one is based on a
piece in the Metropolitan Museum in New York again nice double sided blade and
very slim, very slender handle. There is a very Germanic kind of a feel to this
grip, flaring out at the top here. The other thing is it is it's just got
protection a nagel on just one side of the guard, which again is a feature of
early 16th century German daggers. I'm going to show you another one. This is
one from a private collection, but again you can see it's this sort of half
guard on it. Quite a flared top. Those two are substantially fairly similar in
form; they flare out, this thin skinny handles, they've both got a
guard on one side of the blade.
We have a bronze guard on here; very
often in museums you'll see that listed as copper alloy, and what they mean by
that, they won't use the word bronze, what they mean by that, is historically
different craftsmen's recipes changed, the purity of the metals that were
involved in making the alloys of bronze was different and indeed often
polluted. So you'll often find lead and silver and zinc in bronze mixes which
are predominately gonna be copper and tin. So really there's no way of saying
it is this type of bronze, it's not "bronze 3b" or something like that, because
there's just a sliding scale of all these different ingredients. So they get
over that by saying "copper alloy" that's why you see copper alloy as the
described material. But what is true for this dagger and indeed the previous one
is you can see that they have both got quite bulky pommels, but the blades are
not particularly massive. That means they would always, if these were solid,
over balance in the scabbard. They're not; if you ever see a big pommel on a
dagger you can bet that it's not solid. All right, it's the same with any dagger kind.
This dagger here is rondel dagger dated round about 1400. It's French,
you can see it's got quite thin rondels on it. I was just saying
that you don't get massive bulks of material in dagger handles because they
over balance, now that's true as well. Rondels very often have really thick
guards but they're never solid, they're just not. So these ones are solid but
they're quite thin. Next up we have an English rondel dagger round about 1450
based on one in the Royal Armouries. A little bit different on the grip, I think
it was a black grip on the Royal Armouries one but otherwise pretty
similar, strong single-edged blade, single edge you know relatively not common on
cheaper knives. There's nothing fancy, there's nothing flash about this. This is
definitely a man at arms type dagger, not a nobleman's. But what is also quite
notable, I'll just show you on the side here, on these rondels, is they have an
organic spacer in between them. Basically that's just a sheet a leather in this
case. Sometimes horn, sometimes wood, a little bit of dishing on the top here to
give it a bit of strength. Bottom rondel much plainer; very, very normal. I would
say without a shadow of a doubt this would be an English made piece. Like I
say plain utility, but you know, nonetheless functional. Next up, we have
this French piece here, or French inspired. So the reason I say it's French
inspired, is if we look at the grip here it's got this barleycorn twist on the
top half of it. It's a peculiarly French thing it's not
something that I've ever seen on English daggers. You see quite a lot of it on French
bollock daggers. I think I might be wrong, but I think even more towards the
South of France. So it's definitely local geographically; a local thing.
Doesn't really seem to spread outside. But then you get another slightly French
one which is this. So that is a triple bollock dagger. As you can see there
we go. So it's actually a bollock dagger; now I probably don't have to tell you,
usually they come in pairs. For whatever reason this one has got three. The French
seem to love doing the three-ball bollock daggers, the Flemish quite keen on them
and the Germans quite keen, but it really was a French thing. English,
we don't like three balls at all, we like two. What is also odd about this
is it has the triangular blade. I'm going to see if I can show you. Now if you look
at this, I will just slowly, slowly, rotate it. Whenever you look at it, you
pick it up, you look at the dagger and you think that the blade has been put on
irregularly, non-central to the hilt. It's just a really annoying thing
about triple bladed, triple edged bollock daggers or triple edged daggers at
all really. It doesn't matter what way you look at it, it looks like the blade
has been put on squid. Now the other thing is that of course this blade is
against the Geneva Convention. So I think it was 1922 that Geneva Convention was
was signed and the idea was that for those of you unfamiliar with it, was that
there would be rules to war that you couldn't do particularly unpleasant
things to people and one of those was the French; again coming back to the
French, did like triangular and star form and cruciform blades on bayonets and
daggers and things like that. Military and civilian and they give a wound
which is very difficult to stitch up because of the way the collagen works it
it it gives a difficult wound to stitch up and if you can stitch it up it's
going to be messy. So those dagger forms were banned by the the Geneva
Convention. Now that means that our militaries all signatories to the
convention, our militaries, cannot use triangular blades. Civilian you can, so it
is illegal militarily in the modern day and age, but it is not illegal in a
civilian sense. Next up is this bollock dagger here. This is a spare that I made
for Outlaw King originally, so it is nominally, well supposedly, around the
Year 1300. Really flared top that sort of interesting sort of blade geometry
the step on it and so on this really dates it towards the end of the 15th
century. But as is the nature, I've done a good film, a good video
actually about films and why you choose props in certain ways; but as was the
nature, we needed five different bollock daggers. Now this one here is another
English rondel dagger. We can see that. Dated around 1350, 1370, now we've got a
more conventional pommel at the top here. Again, a hollow pommel as you would
expect. But if we compare this, to let's say this other English rondel dagger
from around about a hundred years later this one. They've both got a rondel at
the bottom, but this one, the earlier one is now got a conventional pommel at the
top. Rondel daggers didn't arrive fully formed, they didn't arrive as a complete
design, they developed like all things develop I suppose. And it developed with
a pommel on the top and a rondel guard at the bottom. And then over time the top
one was replaced by around a rondel guard. Here we have a rather curious
Landsknecht era dagger. So this is sort of fifteen twenty, fifteen thirty,
something like that. Very flared top, this sort of half ring
guard on it here, and the very, very, characteristic skinny handle, flared top
which is just so Landsknecht. The other thing that is completely Landsknecht
about this, is fashion was just so much more important than practicality. Look at
the clothes. That handle there, my god it looks great sitting on your belt, it's
not so great for holding, but actually it looks horrendous. But actually it cups
your hand really quite well, you see it's all nestled in here and it is not
remotely as uncomfortable as it looks like. So what you need to consider with
dagger handles as well, is they used you know once, rapidly, fast, they do the job
they're done. You don't train with your dagger for hour after hour. You see it a
little bit obviously in the manuals, but it's not something that people just do
continuously for hour after hour in the day. It's not using a hammer
where you develop blisters after eight hours or whatever. It is quick and fast
and you know what? most of the time, almost all of
time, it sits on your belt looking damn cool, right. So actually how it looks is
also really important, not whether it's comfortable or not. Another Landsknecht
piece here, absolute classic, from the Royal Armouries again. S guard quillon
dagger, double-edged blade, this one in fact is even a little bit longer than
the original, I think the original is probably only about, sort of yeay long
really. I think about 220 mil, something like that. English, apparently dated
around about 1400. As far as I know there's just nothing else like it out
there I call it a spiderweb quillon. If you
look at the pommel here, it is a spiderweb but I would say that without a
shadow of a doubt it's a spiderweb. Again very curious decoration on here, who
knows what it's about really? Copper alloy bronze guards. Blade again nice and
substantial, it's quite long I think 12 inches, 12 and a bit inches, so 300 mils
something like that. Quite thick. Curiously the blade was just slightly
thicker than the guard and if you can quite see that there, so you have to
chamfer in to get the blade to fit the guard. It was like that on the original
it's not just me making a mistake, I'm copying the mistake somebody else made.
And then this this funny little cutout on the back here. What's it for? No idea at
all. I think it just looks cool. Goodness me, this is the Royal Armouries day
actually. So next up second to last is Henry the VIII's dagger. Now, this is
based on a piece in the Royal Armouries in Leeds and we've got a lovely little
shell guard here and it's dated I think about 1515, 1520. Nice little quillons,
here with sort of an acorn finial on it. Single-edged blade not massively thick,
not massively long. I think the original may have been hollow ground and it had
arms engraved on it if I remember rightly.
But, and this is where it completely differs, this is missing on the original.
So on the dagger that is in the Royal Armouries, they replaced,
I believe in 1960s, they had the guard and the blade, they had no grip, no pommel.
So they put on a black wooden, presentable enough grip but it is not
the original, and and it is not like the original. We don't know what the original
was, so I have worked on the basis of the styles of the time. It's quite flared
it's quite skinny here and it comes out to
he was a King of course, a nice ostentatious top here, a lot of chisel
work on there and in the steel. It reflects the work on the shell
guard here. So again, just show you there, we've got this sort of bulbous pommel
there and then we've got the shell guard. Did it ever look like that? Well you know
what? Maybe. We don't know but it is a plausible style for this kind of knife.
And then the last up we have another one from the Royal Armouries. Royal Armouries
one has got two fullers here, I've just put a single fuller in this one. There we
go and that's it for today. I've talked you through 14 different daggers, last
few weeks production. If there's any questions or any comments you want to
make about any of them please fire away. It's the comments that really keep me
going you know and I do try to interact as best I can.
So I'll give you a close-up now and and we'll go through