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Black Curse - this is how the Turkish name Karabela was interpreted. It sounds both menacing and picturesque, and it really is. This weapon, when equipped with a handle of the Polish type - eagle's head widening towards the beak - as a master Wojciech Zabłocki maintained, in the hands of a skilled fencer, was evoking respect and was able to inflict irreparable losses on the opponent's body. I just finished such a karabela. The construction of the hilt of this type of saber is interesting - a strap of brass sheet encirceling the wooden plates is soldered to the sheet adjacent to the tang, which has a cross-section of more or less a triangle or a narrow trapezoid,which means that you need to put some effort so that the strap is ultimately in line the blade. I think it's easier to understand by looking at the pictures :) Bronze cast crossguard was made by Maciej Lesczyński - precisely according to the project. I have put it in my blog as well. https://lipinskimetalart.blogspot.com/2021/08/karabela.html

Hi !! This time i want to show my first XVII century saber. Blade made of 50hf steel, handle made of stainless steel and ray skin. Overal length 970mm, blade length 855mm. Weight 780 g

I know it has been a while since I posted anything new, but I wanted to share my latest work for a client. Normally, I name the work to kind of personalize it, but this time, the client chose the name. Here's how the project started. I was contacted by a good friend of mine about possibly making him a saber to open champagne bottles. He didn't have a regular type of saber in mind, he wanted something a little historic, but custom. After a nice conversation, he had the idea of combining a Confederate Artillery short saber with a modified Spartan sword. So after a few design changes on paper were agreed upon, work began. Keep in mind, this is the first sword/saber I have attempted. What you see above is 56 hours of work, not including mistakes. The blade was hand forged from a leaf spring and the D-guard made from 3/8" thick brass bar. The handle scales are walnut. Blade length overall is 27" with a total length of 31 3/4". This experience was a rather long one, but well worth it.

Hi ! During summer I build a new workshop, made a new power hammer and now I start a new project, Polish saber, karabela type. I decided to made it from damascus steel, I choose 1045 and ncv1 steel, 3 billets, 18 layers each, 450 g. weight. After the first weld: Heating to the welding temperature in my gas-forge: And after forging on the power hammer: After forging I use the stell rolling mill to get flat surface and equal thickness on the lenght: 3 billets after forging: After grinding and forging the weight get loss from 1350 to 1083 gram. Each billet cut into the 5 pieces, restack and after forging i get the 90 layers: Forging: and all three billet after forging process: Now I loose less weight then previous time: And now all three prevous billets weld together to make one big billet, after forging I get 270 layers: And ready to forging 7mm thickness bar: It has 3 cm width, 60 cm length, and 870 g. weight. Here is the bar after the forging process, I got the 85 cm length blade, in the widest point is 34mm, After first grinding I mark the fullers and start to grinding the blade: During the forging and grinding I did not notice any delamination, so I'm very happy of welding quality in this piece. Now it is after the grinding, near the tang I got 2 wide fullers and 1 narrow fuller on the back of blade, in the middle near blade is 1 wide fuller, near back is 3 narrow fullers, and at the point there is 2 wide fullers. I hardened the blade already, and now hand grinding the blade, after that I made a video showing flexibility of the blade Regards, Rafał Garbacik