Imperial Edged Weapons

[Mark M]

Kaiser's cypher

Mike

Nice sword - and with history to boot! Thanks for sharing them. The swords I have shown are all pre-war swords. Your sword was produced after the war started. Initially the base metal of sword hilts was brass with fire gilting. After the war started both brass and gold became too valuable to be used for swords. Steel was substituted for brass, and you will sometimes find gilt over steel versions. However, steel did not hold the gilting very well. When the regulations changed making all metal parts of uniforms non reflective the hilts were switched from gilted to black enamel. To be honest it is a lot harder to find this version than the gilted as the only made the painted variety for a very short time.

Mark

[Mike Dwyer]

Mike

Nice sword - and with history to boot! Thanks for sharing them. The swords I have shown are all pre-war swords. Your sword was produced after the war started. Initially the base metal of sword hilts was brass with fire gilting. After the war started both brass and gold became too valuable to be used for swords. Steel was substituted for brass, and you will sometimes find gilt over steel versions. However, steel did not hold the gilting very well. When the regulations changed making all metal parts of uniforms non reflective the hilts were switched from gilted to black enamel. To be honest it is a lot harder to find this version than the gilted as the only made the painted variety for a very short time.

Mark

Mark,

Thank you very much for your reply. I had always presumed the black hilt was probably a war-time attempt at camouflage!