I Like Knives

[Rowan]

My dream is to apprentice with Rob at castle keep someday. I've always believed that something as personal as a sword should be made by my own hands and sweat. Plus, I really want to spend a year or so in Scotland backpacking anyway. I wonder if he would even accept an apprentice? I think I asked him about it a while back and he just said that I should begin developing the skills and knowledge on my own before coming to him, which makes a lot of sense.

[vometia]

My dream is to apprentice with Rob at castle keep someday. I've always believed that something as personal as a sword should be made by my own hands and sweat. Plus, I really want to spend a year or so in Scotland backpacking anyway. I wonder if he would even accept an apprentice? I think I asked him about it a while back and he just said that I should begin developing the skills and knowledge on my own before coming to him, which makes a lot of sense.

I see what you mean. Personally I'm entirely useless at that sort of craftsmanship so having someone like Rob bring my ideas to life is the next best thing, but I can understand how it must be to feel that you're actually forging a part of your own being into something like that.

As far as apprenticeships, I'd guess he's a fairly solo creature given his location, but you never know. But even if not, I wouldn't let it put you off doing your own thing; he and others like him would probably be interested in sharing ideas, I'd wager.

And as far as backpacking goes, Scotland is a wonderful place for that. I've done similar things back in the mists of time when I was younger: I tended to stick to established camp sites (probably a good idea: it's not always sensible or welcome to just pitch up anywhere!) which are often very good, though I think we missed a lot by our tendency to largely do motoring holidays: I mention that because I'm thinking of Skye especially which is kind of "okay but not great" by road but can be absolutely spectacular if you're prepared to give your legs some exercise!

And don't listen to people who say it rains all the time - they just say that to keep it all to themselves! (Well, except for Fort William where it really does rain all the time and hasn't stopped for at least the past 600 years. A bit.)

Edited January 12, 2011 by vometia

[Rowan]

Haha, thanks for the insight!

[Si-Shen]

Its purely decorative but I just got my Grey Warden Sword in, tis pretty, I would love to be able to afford a custom job of it though, its even duller then my Kit Rae stuff

As for being able to learn to make your own, it is something I wish I could learn myself, I woiuld enjoy it a lot I think.

[Joben]

New toy!

[vometia]

I have a new project from Castle Keep in the pipeline now (yeah I know, I never posted any new pictures of Glamdring!) which is another LotR sword, this time Arwen's sword. Although I think I've mentioned my ambivalence about the films, I think the swords were incredibly well done. Like Glamdring, this one has a slightly reduced amount of decoration as it's very easy to overdo it, but I'm very pleased with it so far. The motif on the grip was done by inlaying silver wire into the wood; the matching motif on the blade either by etching or engraving, though I think at this stage it's still just the outline. Rob's waiting for the castings to come back in order to finish it off.

In the meantime, I can't remember if I ever posted my "Skyrim swords" picture; these are my two Viking swords, an Albion Valkyrja, based on the Finnish Suontaka sword, which I absolutely love (talking of Castle Keep, Rob's done his own version of this sword which you can see here: as much as I love my Albion, I'm still jealous of what he's achieved here!) and an Armour Class Anglo-Saxon sword, based on the Gilling sword. The Armour Class sword came with its own scabbard, which is really nicely done, but the Albion swords don't, so protecting the Valkyrja's modesty was was another job for Tod's Stuff: and again, very pleased with the results.

Talking of Albion and Skyrim, interesting looking at the names of their Viking swords and seeing a few familiar terms! The Thegn has a description of what a thane is, apparently an Anglo-Saxon English title that was the predecessor of the knight, though similar titles existed in other Scandinavian and Germanic areas; it also mentions the lower ranking "ceorl", which along with another sword, the Huskarl, sounds quite familiar; and then there's the Jarl, which just occurs to me is probably the same thing as the more familiar-sounding "earl". Anyway, just rambling now.

[vometia]

More pictures are up on Rob's site here. Should be arriving tomorrow: I'm pretty excited, but I have to wait 'til my birthday! (It's a present from my girlfriend...)

Edited June 17, 2012 by vometia