Got a Real-World Weapon or Armor Question? Mk. VI

[Galloglaich]

I used to be a huge fan of Windlass and MRL, and it was a great company until Hank Reinhardt passed away. I had the privilage of receiving training from that man, he was awesome. I was not impressed by John Clemmens(however you spell his name) comments after he passed on.

Agreed, it's hardly the first time Clements has made an ass of himself, I've seen him do it in person. Be glad you had the honor of meeting Hank, I wish I had met him instead of the little snaggletooth ;) Hank was a 1st class guy.

They used to be great, now I'm somewhat leary of MRL goods until I see and handle them myself.

MRL has some crap in their inventory, but their newer weapons have been much better. It's probably something on a case by case basis but I'm not alone in noticing this, I've seen a lot of comments and informal reviews of some of their newer offerings on Myarmoury, which is a much stricter review site than SBG. You can see their reviews here:

http://www.myarmoury.com/reviews.html

As such, I'm in the market for either a scimitar, a shamshir, or cutlass. I've seen and handled just about all the MRL lines for any of the above, I'm not super impressed, but perhaps I received poor representations.
Any suggestions on where one could find any of the above?

I don't know sabers of any kind very well, I know Cold Steel makes a Shamshir but I haven't been very impressed with their stuff (their grossmesser was utter crap, for example). But I posted a query on Schola Gladiatoria forum where I know many people are into those kinds of blades, I think Matt Easton has a collection of something like 20 antiques.

Somebody should chime in here in a day or two:

http://www.fioredeiliberi.org/phpBB3...hp?f=7&t=14257

You can also try Kult of Athena, if you see any nice sabers there you can look 'em up on Sword Buyers Guide, probably steer you in the right direction.

Or you can try Ebay, you never know what you will find... antiques usually run around $1500 but sometimes you can find bargains especially on contemporary weapons... always a bit of a roll of the dice but so are replicas.... and with antiques the luck can go both ways. I know a guy who recently bought a Schiavona for $2000 on Ebay which turned out to be from the early 17th Century and worth about $30,000.

Here is a Tulwar for $400 which looks like it could be real, seller has 100% feedback

http://cgi.ebay.com/Indian-Tulwar-Sh...item2a03482531

Here is another

http://cgi.ebay.com/Antique-Indo-Per...item2a02be4f93

Here is one for $300, looks like it's real though not antique.

http://cgi.ebay.com/37-old-rusted-tu...item5884fb59b2

My issues with the scimitars I find, is that the weight seems high. shipping weight being 3-4 pounds, not what I'm expecting from such a weapon, unless I'm missing something about scimitars.

If that is the weight of the actual blade, yeah I agree that is way too much, I would guess more around the ballpark of 2-3 pounds, and it should be balanced well so that it doesn't feel heavy in your hand.

G.

EDIT: I followed one of the Ebay links to an auction site, this Tulwar is $175

http://www.swordsantiqueweapons.com/s094_full.html