Texas Revolution / Civil War ??? D-Guard Bowie/Cutlass/Short Sword

[zzyzzogeton]

I've been working on "cleaning" this one up lately. The old guy who had it never oiled it much during the 46 years he had it, so a bunch of rust had started and it had mud dauber nests built in the guard. He was selling it because he had collected a lot over the last 50 years and his wife said "Get rid of some stuff."

There is no provenance with it, just secondary hear-say, because what little documentation he had (notes made when he bought it) have disappeared during various moves over the years. He doesn't remember the family name, the units the guy was with or the name of the small community where it was made. All the info was on the missing papers. BUT... the back story is neat.

Back around 1971, the previous owner bought it at an estate sale in the "old" area of San Antonio. According to the family he bought it from, it was made for "great-great-grandpappy" aka GGP, and was used during the Texas Revolution and later during the Civil War. The local smith in whatever community GGP was in (somewhere east of San Antonio - DUHH - kinda large area), made this knife/sword/machete/cutlass.

OAL - just under 26"
BL - a smidge under 21"
Width at guard - 1-3/4"
Tang thickness - 0.144"
Thickness at guard - 0.125"
Clip/Point thickness - 0.11x"
POB is right at 4.5" forward of the guard

Edit - weight is 28 ounces.

The actual handle size within the guard is less than 4 inches so whoever GGP was, he had small hands.

The tang is a full tang and the guard is for a righty. The wood handle appears to be of either oak or pecan.

What's kind of unusual to me at least, is the guard. Most D-Guard Bowies I have seen have single guards and a much smaller number have had double guards. This is the first ne that I have seen that has a smaller 3rd guard structure.

Any one have any insight on the guard for this one?

Speculation time - the size and shape of this one is reminiscent of the German dussack (and the Bohemian tesac from which it was derived), as well as some early 18th century boarding cutlasses I have seen. The dussack specs were - 18" to 26" blade, 2" wide blade, either straight back or curved blade. (The tesac/dussack is thought in some circles to be the ancestor of European cutlasses and sabers.) The bug difference is the guard. This one is welded in place only at the pommel end of the tang and is "unwelded" at the guard end. Dussack guards were integral made with the handle and blade. So German influence? Galveston/New Orleans pirate riff-raff influence???

 

[kevin -the professor]

You probably already know this, but Central Texas was German and Czech at that time. So, yeah, there would be German influence. There were a lot of newspapers available during that period that showed D-guard bowies, too. Don't discount popular culture of the day. The D-guard bowie was a fearsome weapon, and it also had a reputation at the time of being about the most dangerous knife/short sword that there was.

Yes, Galveston had it's pirate history, too.

Can you tell I miss Texas?

I like most that the smith knew his material. The blades one sees in modern replicas are all .25" or more at the forte. This one was half that. Just as it should have been. It would have been a vicious weapon in its day, for sure.

great piece.
kc

 

[horseclover]

A sum of its parts, the term "espada ancha" has come to regard a number of forms rendering down by the end of the 19th century as most any short sword with a hilt.

Provenance, not providence. The southwest of the US is prime picking territory. If we look at this item kind of sideways, not so dissimilar to the klewang cutlasses but I doubt that to be the parent or sibling. One can be fairly certain it is a one off and not a particular model or production.

Cheers

GC

 

[zzyzzogeton]

You try spelling a word that long at 3 in the a.m.

I'll fix it later, when I add the weight. I was already working on a set of "Texican dussacks" without guards. Now, I'll start a guarded set. Good thing my waterjet costs dropped fro $3 / minute down to $2. I'm just about ready to cut the plywood prototypes, but work keeps getting in the way.

 

[horseclover]

Here is a thread elsewhere you might want to join.
http://www.swordforum.com/forums/showthread.php?116139-Spanish-or-Mexican-saber

Cheers

GC

 

[zzyzzogeton]

Added the weight (28 oz) to the original post and corrected my 3 a.m. spelling errors.

HC - Yep, it looks likes the an espada ancha flavor can be added to the soup as well.

 

[crimsonfalcon07]

To be fair, you did spell the word you originally used correctly (although, if we're really being nitpicky, you got a typo in one of your other posts )

Looks like a sweet piece regardless. I think hand size has been progressively growing in the US for a while now (or size in general), probably due to better nutrition and medical care. How lively does it feel in hand? Or is it going to be strictly display?

 

[horseclover]

To be fair, you did spell the word you originally used correctly (although, if we're really being nitpicky, you got a typo in one of your other posts )

Provenance not providence. One board I frequent actually defaults providence to provenance to protect the ill informed. Unless, of course, one is regarding the providence of acquisition as serendipitous or longed for. I try to relate my location as near Providence and that board defaults to provenance.

Visit a military site of any type and write about calvary a few times before being either gently chided or strung up by one's boot straps.

There is a reason they're misuse of grammar may too often lead to their being corrected.

I, for one, am guilty of many dangling participles.

In the original context here, I mentioned provenance as the correct word. I was intending it as gentle and a "by the way". Not as a "hey dummy, wtf!!!"

Cheers

GC

 

[crimsonfalcon07]

I got that. I'm just saying that the issue wasn't misspelling, it was diction.

 

[zzyzzogeton]

To be fair, you did spell the word you originally used correctly (although, if we're really being nitpicky, you got a typo in one of your other posts )

Really?? I only have a single typo in 3800 or so posts? Damn, I'm good, aren't I?

Looks like a sweet piece regardless. I think hand size has been progressively growing in the US for a while now (or size in general), probably due to better nutrition and medical care. How lively does it feel in hand? Or is it going to be strictly display?

Feels pretty good just swinging it around, but the grip is clunky. It's more square than rounded, like it was rough cut out of a board and the edges "kinda" sanded down. Hard use would cause some hot spots.

It will be a pattern and a display piece. I would be too afraid to hit anything harder than a watermelon with it. I think it has too much corrosion damage - it would probably snap. I was already designing variations on what I'm call a Texican dussack. Dussack-like, but with "differences". I'll start a separate thread after I get some prototypes cut out. But it's kinda uncanny how similar this is to what I am working on.

Provenance not providence. One board I frequent actually defaults providence to provenance to protect the ill informed. Unless, of course, one is regarding the providence of acquisition as serendipitous or longed for. I try to relate my location as near Providence and that board defaults to provenance.

Visit a military site of any type and write about calvary a few times before being either gently chided or strung up by one's boot straps.

There is a reason they're misuse of grammar may too often lead to their being corrected.

I, for one, am guilty of many dangling participles.

In the original context here, I mentioned provenance as the correct word. I was intending it as gentle and a "by the way". Not as a "hey dummy, wtf!!!"

Cheers

GC

Hey, I resemble that remark. As soon as I saw your post, my first thought was "Nah, I really didn't do that, did I?"

 

[pickin_grinnin]

My great-great-grandfather's civil war sword (from Texas) is an odd local blacksmith design, too. I can only describe it as a gladius with a D-guard. The blacksmith engraved the whole provenance right into the blade, even.

 

[NihontoEd]

Nice find. It may have been made in Mexico or Texas, but the guard and the upswept point are both clear indications of the Mexican/Spanish style of short sword. This, as you noticed, being clearly different than your standard Confederate Bowie. The guard is much too fancy for Confederate made. It could have been used in the civil war. The Confederate Army was not as well supplied and had to improvise using whatever was available.

*Pickin_grinnin: Do you have a photo of your Grandfathers Bowie ? I for one would love to see it.

 

[kevin -the professor]

okay, first forgive me, I see that you live in Central Texas so I was wasting my time talking about the ethnic mixture there.

I lived in Austin and have family in Round Rock.

Second, I was thinking about the similarities between that blade and the D-guard bowies in a Bowie Collection book I recently bought. I wasn't thinking about influence from Mexico. That definitely seems like an espada ancha, but the clipped point changes it somewhat. The guard is consistent with the espada. The clipped blade looks bowie-like.

Or dussac-like.

really interesting old blade.

 

[Storm Crow]

Let me echo Kevin's last line: Really interesting old blade.

 

[zzyzzogeton]

The more I oil it, look at it, fondle it, swing it around a bit, compare it to others (books, internet, on hand) the more I like it, and get confused about and by it.

I'm definitely enthused about making one like it that I can whack on things with. Probably the proto will be out of A36, with the final being made from 52100 or 1095. Probably make 3, 1 with a near-traditional dussack handle, 1 with a espada ancha style guarded handle (similar to this one) and 1 with a BK9 handle.

The only "location of manufacturing" is the anecdotal family history that "ggp" had it made "in a town somewhere east of San Antonio, over towards Houston." Probably somewhere within 50 miles of the 200 mile line between the 2), giving us a possible area of manufacture of about 10,000 square miles. So we have potential design influences from the Northern Mexico/Texas espada ancha, boarding cutlasses from New Orleans/Galveston, possible Bowie knife influences, maybe some fencing and cavalry, early German/European settlers.

Even my great-great grandfather or great-great-great grandfather could have had it made since they were from the Germanies (Westphalia and Bavaria), (they came over in 1845-1846ish), were of sturdy peasant stock and would have been familiar with dussacks/tesacs, ran freight to/from Washington-on-the-Brazos down to San Antonio/Mexican border area and so would have seen espadas anchas, and would have seen boarding cutlasses on the ships on which they traveled from Europe.

I can easily see some European peasant trying to explain a dussack to a Texican smith, (Texican was the term for anyone in the Mexican state of Coahuila Y Tejas) or a Texican trying to get a European smith to make an espada ancha and this being the result.

The only thing I don't really like about it is the handle. The only way I can put it is that, in a nutshell, it sucks. I mean, yes, you can hold the weapon by it, you can swing the weapon by it, and you can hang the weapon from a nail by it. The handle is "blocky" and would quickly rub a blister. Good thing sword fights are usually over quickly or the original user would have been up the creek quickly. The handle and guard construction are tight. My hand is only about 4" as measured from side to side. To me it is tight.

My 80 y.o. mother says "It fits pretty good. Kind rough feeling. It's heavy, though."

I had her try it out since her hand is smaller than mine (about 3-1/2" across) AND I keep trying to get her to quit ragging on me about how many "sharp and pointies" I have by getting her interested in the history and mystery of sharp and pointy things. Working well, that scheme is not.

 

[kevin -the professor]

keep trying with the scheme. It has promise.

The handle baffles me. The person who made the blade seemed to understand a lot about how to make a blade that would function well. I mean, the dimensions you described, especially the thickness, speak to some serious ability by the smith.

The, the blocky handle. That's the part that doesn't seem right. Maybe the smith made everything but the handle scales? Or, maybe I am just guessing to pass the time.

Thanks for letting us play along with you on the journey, though. It does look a lot like a hanger, too. It is sort of like Texas of that day. A rough, potentially violent, combination of European and American cultures. (Sam Houston was actually a great, great Uncle of my mother).

I miss Texas.

 

[zzyzzogeton]

I had to google you to see where you are. Ugh. You need to get back down here ASAP.

 

[the possum]

It seems kinda odd to me that the tang is not tapered.

 

[NihontoEd]

Back in the civil war era and earlier, distal taper was not common on full tang knives. With large heavy blades they needed the weight to help with balance.