Lead Moderator European Armoury
Join Date: Dec 2004
In any case, it appears rather difficult to spot one of these swords complete with their cross bar, worse a technical description of these devices, even worse that there is more that one system; although certainly not the 'horn' like version, in the discussed case. Cross bars or 'travincas' (as we call them here) made of wood and bone were materials already used in prior hunting spears (ascumas), in a manner that they were firmly binded to shafts, as scabbards didn't take place to conflict with. It seems more consistent that steel (iron) was a material that prevailed in hunting swords when cross bars started their appearance in the XVI century. We can see that when Emperor Maximilian in 1526 ordered a set of miniature paintings, only one of the five huntsmen had a cross bar fitted in his sword.
Foxbat's splendid example has some similarities, at least in what concerns the orifice for the cross bar, with those in Wallace Colection (plate 115); the author assuming how the (missing) cross bar was usually secured; somehow consistent with the right hand sketch in the above linked work.