#grosse messer

[thestellarpartner]

lesson learned, never buy the ebay grosse messer

[armthearmour]

A beautiful Grosse Messer with a set of by-knives,

OaL: 40.9 in/103.8 cm

Blade Length: 32.5 in/82.5 cm

Passau, Germany, ca. 1520, housed at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum.

[lawnegnome]

Part 3: painting and tooling

Ok! So finishing up the scabbard itself is not that much of a deal. Got some leather dye, a sponge, and plastic gloves. You don't want this on your hands or clothes. It's gonna be there for a while if it stains.

Also - cover your work surface, especially if the work surface doubles as your dinner table since you don't really have a workshop because you live in a two-room apartment.

Got some red for this build. A really strong red that the photo doesn't give any justice for whatsoever.

There we go! Scabbard done and colored. Don't forget to rub in some leather fat into the leather after dyeing, otherwise it's gonna dry up as the dye sets.

Now a short break where I try to do a mockup of a Wisby plata for Battle of Wisby 2023. That's gonna take a bit to finish up. Oh well.

After that comes the question of a belt. I looked around for historical inspiration, and found this on The Landsknecht Emporium:

Number two seems kind of simple. It's an over-the-shoulder type solution for carrying the sword, not a hip-belt, but that is fine. Should be able to do that.

You can find it in some illuminations which is nice. Don't think carrying it around your neck like that is the beat way to go about it though, but whatever floats your boat.

Got 3m of a 1,5cm wide belt strap to work with. Wanted to try to knot it around the scabbard in that way people do it so nice-like, and as luck would have it, Tod uploaded this video one the same day I decided to try:

Thanks Tod!

Not as hard as it looks, to be honest, but it looks real good. Next up, the belt.

Found a nice leather tool to use, so two hours of hammering and making the neighbors love me made this lovely belt.

Have a nice hard surface to work on while you're tooling. I found a piece of marble while thrifting, have heard from others that it's a good thing for working leather like this.

Keep the part of the leather you're working on wet so you can make an indent. Strike hard and sure with the hammer, and be ready for a sore arm before you know it.

Love it. Stoked to see it all completed.

Next up, we're gonna decide on how to put it all together.

[theodorebennas]

Got to do some cutting with a sharpened Cold Steel Grosse Messer and it was incredible!

[matdoeshemaforfun]

Who’s this guy?

Mat.  An untalented left-handed HEMA fencer in Minnesota.  It’s almost been two years now since I’ve started at the Minnesota Sword Club.  I’m in my late 20s.  I guess HEMA is sort of a way for me to avoid my long-term responsibilities if I’m being honest with myself.

Gonna use this Tumblr as a way to avoid spamming my Facebook un/loved ones with SWORDS SWORDS SWORDS in their feed.

[armthearmour]

A Grosse Messer with a long grip, Austria, ca. 1490, housed at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

[lawnegnome]

Thought I would update here with some actual work I've done, for once. :)

A couple of years ago, I started up some tutorials on how you could make a scabbard. I actually have yet to finish those, but I made another one a couple of weeks ago, when I finally got some steam up to do anything, and I thought I would show you.

This is a scabbard for a grosse messer I bought some years ago that has been needing some dressing up. The first issue I had to think around was that it is a backsword, and only has one edge, so i added a smal rise for the back and end of the scabbard.

The whole thing was glued together with wooden glue after I put the main pieces of the scabbard into the bathtub for a bit, and then, instead of just sanding the edges even, I bought a small plane to make my work a bit easier.

Then we cover the wood up in some fabric, in this case some actual linen I had lying around, and in some other cases it's bedlinen (cotton) from Ikea. If you want it historically accurate, go that route, but we're just gonna cover it all up with leather anyway so I don't feel like it matters much, it just gives one more layer of strength to the build.

After the core is done, it's time to start fiddling with leather!

1. Make a pattern by taping over some baking paper around the core.

2. Cut it open and put down on leather. Mark up and cut out.

3. If you want to add any risers under the main leather covering, the time for marking them out is now. You might want to put down something to mark out where a belt would go around the scabbard, or make other shapes and adornments on it? For this scabbard, I wanted to just make some nice and pretty shapes and loop the belt fittings over those.

4. I decided waves was too hard to do nicely, so decided on triangles. Added a border and a lip up by the opening of the scabbard to make the final coverage match the width of the knife's crossguard.

5. For the border and zigzag I took some round leather straps I had lying around, flattened them by rolling a pen over them to match the thickness of the leather lip I have around the scabbard's mouth, and then glued them to the wooden core.

All in all, a nice start I would say. Part 2 coming in a bit. Leatherwork, tooling, coloring and metalwork(?)!

[lawnegnome]

Part 2: wetworks, gluing and sewing

How do we get the leather to stick?

On earlier builds I've used woodglue on wet leather which worked out fine. This time however, I tried contact glue instead. It sets even harder, but you have less time to work, so you'll have to be quick. I started with the front, using a whalebone to do a first press on the zigzags before the glue hardened. The whalebone is also used to sort of rub the leather in place on the edges around the wood core, so it stays even.

Then I glued the back, leaving a bit of the leather unglued so I could have some room for both cutting a straight line down the back of the scabbard to make it even and to be able to sew the back together.

The point is always a tricky bit, so I always leave it to be cut for last. Sadly I didn't take any pictures of the process.

With the leather glued on, now for the fun part: forming the leather!

I have not yet sat down to learn how to properly cut leather and to do pretty patterns, so right now I work with risers under the leather covering, trying to do nice things with those. Also I'm terrible at sketching and drawing, so we'll see how it turns out the day I decide to try. :')

Aaaanyway, time to get wet!

Here we go! Using a wet sponge to dab the leather bit by bit, only on the places I am working, I got great results. Did a few passes back and forth to fix som happy accidents here and there, but overall I'm really happy with it. Leather is realy nice to work with, and the whalebone can help with undoing some minor mistakes, just rub it gently over the leather to even it back out if you haven't made too many hard dents in it. It stands out real nicely. As the wet leather dries off, it will set even tighter around the wood core.

Next for the sewing.

For this crosstitch, I am using two needles and waxed linen thread which is strong and sturdy, starting at the top, going all the way down sewing crosswise. With one needle in each end of the thread, I alternated every hole just as when you lace up your shoelaces.

This also adds some nice texture to the scabbard I think. You can just glue it down completely as well, but this way it stays in place even better.

The main issue is always the tip of the scabbard. I always try to get it as snug to the scabbard core as I can. It can get a bit muddly when looked at close up, but if the end result is good, no problem. If you plan to cover the tip in a chape, then noone will ever see the messy stitchwork. Sometime I might try to make a chape out of brass plate, but not for this project. I don't have the tools. :(

This is it for part 2. I ran out of image space. I decided to divide things even more, so no coloring or metalwork this time. Stay tuned for part 3: Some splash of color!