The birth of a blade 4: The main gauche

I remember enjoying the three musketeers as a kid. Both as a movie and as a book. I was fascinated by their bravado and their mastery of their blades.

at the time I mostly saw them in my inner eye wielding rapiers that looked mostly like the epée of modern fencing. Little did I know that a rapier is a heavy weapon, and that it is usually not used alone. A rapierist would often have a left hand dagger or a main gauche as it is often called. It literally means left hand in french so I guess that makes sense. I have worked on a main gauche for training HEMA (historical european martial arts) since I want to begin learning rapier and dagger at some point. There are several different types of daggers which can be used for parrying. the only criteria is that it is a long dagger with a guard of some kind. I went for a sail dagger because it is easy to make and gives good hand protection

There wasnt a lot of forging involved in this process since the blade is fairly simple, and the pommel is actually screwed on

The whole dagger can be disassembled. I welded a bolt to the handle and a nut inside the pommel to make it removable.

The whole dagger is easy to assemble and can be taken apart for transport or cleaning.
Some historical samples are very elaborate but I wanted this one to be simple and utalitarian. Training weapons lead a hard life and it wont make sense to put to much work into making them look pretty.

If you want to read more about my knife and sword making You can look here:
My sons knife #2
Gyldenklo
Pertinacia
my sons knife
My cousins knife

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Im EvilHippie, a compulsive creative and jack o' trades. If you want to know more about me, check out my introduction post here

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