Bone for Gladius handle

[lyuv]

Hi all,
I keep failing to find a suitable bone to make handle for my gladius. I did search the forum, but the information was insufficient. Bone's "name", the proper leg, cow's age ect. eventualy, I always ends up with a bone too big, too small, too thin or of the wrong shape.

Could someone PLEASE upload a picture of an appropriate bone (the entire bone), and it's length. This is the only conclusive description I can bring to my butcher.

Thanks,

[LUCIUS ALFENUS AVITIANUS]

You have to search metatarsal or metacarpal bones from a young cow. There are the first long bone.Those are the bones of a leg cow:



You have to pick the long one at the right side of the previous picture.

[LUCIUS ALFENUS AVITIANUS]

[brennivs - tony drake]

Hi Lyuv here is a site that sells full camel bone shanks. Have not ordered from them yet but they look good for Gladivs handles.

http://www.highlandhorn.com/bone-gunsmit...als/10.htm

http://woodandknifesupply.com/index.php?...Path=1_2_5

http://www.traditionalmaterials.co.uk/ht...rnbone.php

Hope these are of helpful
Regards Brennivs

[Gaius Colletti]

I work in a Meat Department at a grocery chain called Kroger in America, we sell femur bones for $0.99/lb you can get a full bone or have it cut. Maybe give that at try?

[PhilusEstilius]

Tony.

They are just great links indeed what a Star you are.

[Crispvs]

A femur is far too big to use for a grip, although you can use it for a pommel and a circular guard like the Mainz and Dorchester examples. For a grip you need a bone with a much smaller section and the bone that best fits the bill for this is a calf's metatarsal. Judging from the weight of finds this seems to have been the first choice for the Romans for this purpose (although one or two which I have seen in museums look as if they might even have been made from sheep leg bones). The internal section of the metatarsal is either round or roughly square and that of a calf is small enough to grip the tang of the sword, while the bone is thick enough to file down into the correct profile for the grip. The metacarpal looks very similar but the internal section is 'D' shaped and is not suited to the task.

Here is a picture of my own sword handle. The drum of the pommel was made from a section of femur (with caps made from shank bone. As you can see, the femur is far too big a bone for a grip. The grip of my handle is made from a calf's metatarsal (cannon bone - third long bone from the left in the photo Cesar posted up) and the guard from an adult cow's metatarsal, which shows the importance of getting the size of the bone right as well as the shape. The caps, again, were made from shank bone.


Although I made my guard from cannon bone, if like me, you were making a fully bone handle you could opt for a circular guard, cut from the same femur as the pommel but at at a point closer to the nock where it widens. This is an authentic way of doing it and both the Mainz and Dorchester handles were made this way. Caps for the top and bottom of the guard would again be made from shank bone and a number of such cap pieces have survived form places like Vindonissa.
Here is the bone handled sword from Mainz.


When you look for the right bone for your grip it is important to be able to recognise it in its 'raw' state. You may be able to get a suitable bone from a pet supply shop and if so it may have had its nocks cut off (allowing you to easily check the internal aperture, but if you get one from the butcher (as I did, still attached to the rest of the cow's foot) it is worth knowing what to look for. The nocks on the metatarsal bones differ slightly from those of the metacarpal bones and if you can recognise the difference it will make getting the right bone easy.
The metatarsals have a 'rounder' shape than the metacarpals and you will see from the photo below that the two metatarsal nocks on the left have 'T' shaped indentations in them, whereas the two metacarpals on the right do not. You can also see that the metacarpals feature a notch in one edge which is absent from the metatarsals. The upper metatarsal is an adult's and the lower one (the calf's) is the one you need to match if you are looking for a suitable bone for a grip.


I hope this helps a bit.


Crispvs

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Thanks for the links Tony!

[Crispvs]

The links are certainly good for horn and so forth and I may go shopping with them myself for these items, but I would be a little more careful about the bone. Bone from the butcher will need cleaning up and boiling but it is also almost always free or very cheap, whereas the bone being advertised in the links seems very expensive to me. Also, when they talk about scales for knife handles they will be talking of flat plates for the sides of handles rather than hollow bones and equally, when they talk about hollow sections of bone, giving the length of the piece of bone tells you nothing about how wide the bone is or what its internal shape or measurement is. In my opinion you are far better off learning a bit about bones first and then selecting the bones you need from a butcher or pet shop where you can see them yourself and check them over. The same bones on two different animals may be slightly different to each other and one may be better for working. You could only pick the better of the two if you could see them in person with your own eyes. The websites do save you the trouble of cleaning up the bone, but then again, cleaning and preparing bone is not that difficult really.

Crispvs