Question about a Guttman gladius!

[Virilis]

I have a question about this picture. It seems that in this reconstruction of the Guttman gladius the metal guard plate is not "sunk" in to the organic guard itself. Can this be true and is there any evidence of metallic guard plates not sunk in the main guard piece?

[Tarbicus]

Are the guard and pommel original?

[Virilis]

That`s the problem, I don`t know !

[LUCIUS ALFENUS AVITIANUS]

I think there aren't original. Many times only is preserved the metal guard plate, so we don't know it were sunk or not. But all the guards with the wooden part preserved have the plate sunken.

[Magnus]

Shouldn't the size of the guard plate be an indicator of whether or not it's sunk? You would think that on average if the guard plate is somewhat larger, then it may be to cover the whole guard, and vice versa.

[Celer]

Salve,

The sword in the image is a reconstruction. The original had no organic remains left. However, there is a rather beautiful one-piece ivory hilt from a C1st Roman sword in the British Museum which as far as I can remember has no recess at the base of the guard for a brass guard-plate. As there are no markings on the base of the guard from the shoulders of the blade, it is therefore possible that there may have been a brass plate underneith the guard.

Vale,

Celer.

[Virilis]

there is a rather beautiful one-piece ivory hilt from a C1st Roman sword in the British Museum which as far as I can remember has no recess at the base of the guard for a brass guard-plate.

Do you have a picture somewhere perhaps?

[Celer]

Salve,

If someone can explain to me how to reduce the size of an image to the point where ezboard will accept it, I will post the link.

Vale

Celer.

[Caius Fabius]

Google IrfanView, there is a nice program for working with photos, sizing and such.

[Tarbicus]

And if you have no joy with IrfanView send it my way. If you're using WindowsXP, you can also right click on the image file in a folder, and you should have options for resizing it, provided it's jpeg.

[Matt Lukes]

It's been my observation that many, many guard plates actually appear dished or with raised edges suggesting they're actually quite deeply-sunk into the organic guard- none are acutally flat. Regrettibly I haven't yet been able to find evidence in the form of a guard with such a carved-out face though, so I can't be sure the plates aren't bent due to some other reason.

I have seen a couple of wooden guards that have a recess for what would seem to be a flat guard plate, but strangely they also have indentations where the blade edges go as well as if the blade were also sunk into the guard. The oddity is that guard plates usually have only a hole as big as the end of the tang- the blade touches it, not the guard. The guard with the petal carving on the outside is a good example- appears to have a recess for a guard, but also has grooves for the edges of the blade- seemingly contradictory features. Of course it's possible that the recess wasn't for a plate at all, or that it was originally and at some point the plate was removed and the handle reset so the blade was slightly recessed into the wood.

[Matt Lukes]

Here are some pictures- clearly the two plates have raised edges, meaning they were rather more deeply-inset, and the guards' faces show a small recess.