Small Anglo-Saxon seax.


This is a repro of a smallish Anglo-Saxon handseax (or scramasax, or sax) of circa IX - early XI cc. There are no completely preserved specimens in existence (at least I haven't found references to any), but you can look at a typical blade shape and repro sheath, both at Regia Anglorum site.

The blade is 4" long, 1 1/8" wide were its back "breaks", and almost a full 1/4" thick at the back! It is made of 5160 steel, almost razor sharp with a needle point, but not highly finished ( I wanted it to look like a knife for day to day tasks).

The handle is simple in shape (I have seen similar in period manuscript illustrations), made of nicely figured dark walnut wood. 

The sheath is shown here as they supposedly were worn in period, hanged from the belt almost horizontally in left-front of the body.
It is made of leather wet moulded and decorated, then treated with heat and melted beeswax (what was known as "cuir boilly" in different spellings). The decoration on the front side is rather simpler then would be the norm, and the crosshatching on the back is just like I have seen on a picture of an excavated seax sheath. 
The sheath edge is covered with riveted brass U shaped piece. It is engraved on the back with Anglo-Saxon runes spelling "Alex made me" in Old English ("Alex me worte"). There is no known examples of a seax sheath inscribed like this, but there are several sword scabbard parts from the same period bearing runic inscriptions, usually rather roughly inscribed.

 

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