Bramblehilt Hand Forged 1095 Steel Basket Hilt Broadsword | 38 Inch Overall with a 32 Inch Blade | Pierced Steel Basket, Red Liner and Black Scabbard | Highland Collector Gift | RK-1738

A basket hilt broadsword in 1095 high carbon steel, with a pierced steel basket built from wide flat bars, a red liner set behind the guard, a bun shaped pommel and a double edged blade cut with twin narrow fullers. It comes with a black scabbard with a steel throat and chape.

The word broadsword causes more confusion than any other term in sword collecting, and it has a precise meaning here. On a Scottish hilt, broadsword means the blade is double edged. The same basket fitted to a single edged blade with a thick back is a backsword, and the two were made side by side in the same Glasgow and Stirling workshops through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Nothing about the word refers to the blade being wide. This one is forged, ground, heat treated, fitted and finished in Memphis, Tennessee, and ships with its scabbard.

Specifications

What the basket and the liner are doing

A cross guard protects the hand from a blade running down your own. It does nothing at all about a cut aimed straight at your knuckles. The basket hilt is the answer to that problem, and it is a complete one: bars sweep from the guard round to the pommel and enclose the whole hand, so the sword can be used without a gauntlet. That is why basket hilts appear at exactly the moment armour is disappearing from everyday wear. The hand still needed protecting, and now the sword had to supply it.

The piercings in the plates are not there to look pretty, although they do. Every ounce removed from a hilt is an ounce that does not have to be carried at the end of your arm, and a solid steel shell over the whole hand would be intolerably heavy and would also trap sweat. Cutting the plates back to a pattern of pierced hearts and circles keeps the coverage and loses the mass, and it lets the hand breathe.

The red liner is the part everybody asks about. Inside the basket the bars are hard steel with filed edges, and a hand moving inside a bare basket will be rubbed raw within an hour. A liner of cloth over leather pads the inside face of every bar, stops the knuckles rattling against metal, and keeps the hand centred on the grip. Red was the traditional choice on Scottish hilts and it is the one we have kept.

1095 steel and why there are two fullers

Those two grooves down the blade are fullers, and the folklore about blood grooves is nonsense. A fuller is a stiffness trick borrowed by every engineer who has ever designed a beam. Steel in the middle of a blade, close to the neutral axis, contributes almost nothing to how stiff the blade is in a bend. Steel out at the edges contributes almost all of it. Grinding a fuller removes metal from the middle where it is doing least work and leaves the metal at the edges where it matters, so you lose weight without losing much stiffness at all.

Cutting two narrow fullers rather than one broad one, as here, adds a third rib of metal down the centre of the blade and stiffens it against twisting as well as against bending. It costs more time in the grind, which is why single fullers are far more common on production blades.

The blade is 1095 hardened and tempered back to 54 to 58 HRC. Long blades are always tempered softer than knives, because a sword that flexes has to spring back rather than break, and a blade at knife hardness is brittle at this length. This one takes and holds a proper edge and returns straight from a flex. It is sharp and it is sold as a collector and display sword. It is not a sparring weapon and it should not be used in contact drill.

Engraving, runes and your own design

Use the rune converter on this page to turn a name, a date or a short phrase into Elder Futhark and we will cut it into the steel, the leather or the wood. If you would rather have a Viking pattern than a rune line, choose your own design in the engraving option above the add to cart button and tell us where it goes. Where a piece already carries an engraved design, your chosen engraving replaces it rather than sitting alongside it. On a basket hilt the natural panels are the wide flat plates of the guard and the ricasso of the blade just below them. See the engraving page.

Handling and balance

A basket hilt handles differently from a cross hilted sword and it takes a few minutes to get used to. Your hand cannot slide up the grip and your wrist has a limited range inside the basket, so the sword is steered from the forearm rather than from fine finger pressure. In exchange you can hold it much more loosely, because the basket will not let the sword go anywhere.

The basket itself is heavy and it sits behind your hand, which pulls the balance point back towards the hilt. The result is a sword that feels lighter than it is and changes direction very quickly, at the cost of some of the cutting authority a forward balanced blade has. That was the right trade for a sword worn every day and drawn in a crowded place.

Slide your hand in from the front rather than trying to force it down through the bars, and check the fit before you buy gloves for it. A basket sized for a bare hand is a tight fit over a thick glove. For display, lay the sword flat on a stand with the basket outward so the piercings catch the light, rather than standing it on the point.

Care

1095 is not stainless. Wipe the blade dry after handling and put a thin film of mineral oil or blade oil over it, because bare fingerprints on carbon steel will start to etch within a day or two. There is more detail on steel care.

The inside of the basket is the part that gets neglected. Sweat collects in the corners where the bars meet and rust starts there long before it appears on the blade. After handling, run an oiled cloth or a cotton bud around the inside of the bars and behind the liner where you can reach. Do not soak the liner in oil, since cloth holds it against the steel rather than protecting it. Keep the sword out of the scabbard for storage, because a closed scabbard holds humid air against the blade.

Forged in Memphis

The blade is forged, ground with its twin fullers, heat treated and polished. The basket is built bar by bar, welded, filed and polished, the liner is cut and fitted, and the scabbard is made up, all in our shop in Memphis, Tennessee. This is not an importer catalogue sword with a label swapped on the box. A basket takes longer than the blade does, so allow one to two weeks of processing before it ships and a little more for custom engraving. Shipping inside the United States is free.

A note on handmade variation

This sword is hand made, not machine made and not bulk produced, so what arrives will not be a pixel for pixel copy of the photograph. A basket hilt is assembled from many separate bars and plates, each one bent, welded and filed by hand, so the exact sweep of a bar and the exact spacing of the piercings will be its own. The red liner is cut from cloth and hide and its shade will vary. The blade will carry its own grind marks under the satin polish. The dimensions, the steel and the build are the same every time. The character is not.

Frequently asked questions

What does broadsword mean here

It means the blade is double edged. A basket hilt on a single edged blade is called a backsword. It is not a comment on how wide the blade is.

Is the scabbard included

Yes. The black scabbard with its steel throat and chape comes with the sword.

Will my hand fit inside the basket

The basket is cut for an average adult hand with no glove. If you have large hands or intend to wear a thick glove, tell us in the order notes before we build it.

Is it sharp

Yes. It arrives sharpened and should be handled as a sharp blade.

Can I use it for reenactment

No. It is a sharp collector and display sword. Reenactment and contact drill need a purpose built blunt.

What are the two grooves in the blade for

They are fullers. They remove weight from the middle of the blade where the steel does least work, so the blade stays stiff and gets lighter. They are not blood grooves.

What is in the box

• Bramblehilt hand forged 1095 basket hilt broadsword
• Black scabbard with a steel throat and chape
• Blade wiped and oiled for transit
• Lifetime warranty against defects in the forging, the grind, the heat treat and the fittings, with no end date and no receipt needed
• Forged and finished in Memphis, Tennessee

Explore the range

See the rest of the swords, the arming swords, the Anglo Saxon and Celtic pieces and the guides.