Kevin R. Cashen
Super Moderator
2017 started with the January filming of episode 401 of A Craftsman's Legacy, The Sword Maker at my shop. I have had my share of television experiences and have found that they are not always my favorite aspect of what I do. After almost swearing off television appearances altogether I was treated to something incredibly rare, serious T.V. professionals who actually cared about portraying my craft in a positive, dignified and educational light. Eric Gorges and the Craftsman Legacy crew were a joy to work with. I was impressed with how hard these professionals work and how they are as much perfectionists about what they do as I am.
For two busy days Matherton forge was turned into a makeshift studio and I was treated with total respect as a talented crew captured the making of a Roman pattern welded spatha from beginning to end. The spatha itself was tucked away until the show was to air on PBS in September. On the scheduled air date, the e-mails started flooding in and I was overwhelmed by the kind and positive feedback that I got from the public, but it was also time to get some work done.
The sword was initially completed under the time constraints of filming the show, but I decided to do a little extra work on the piece to really polish it up to reach its full potential. But I had been so incredibly busy with teaching and lecturing travel, along with deadlines for jobs at home, that it took me until November to be able to unveil the final package, with bronze trimmed scabbard and all.
When the time came to offer the spatha for sale, I prepared its page for my web site. My normal method of selling my available work is to create a web page that is private at http://www.cashenblades.com and then a mass e-mailing goes out to all those great folks who have signed up for my mailing list. These established clients then have a day or so of private viewing and first dibs at buying before the page goes public. The spatha didn’t last more than 30 minutes before it had a new home, and I can’t thank my good customers and its new owner enough for their support.
Just in time for the new year I received the images from Coop just a couple of days ago and he did his usual magic with it.
The blade is a traditional three bar pattern weld, two, forty layer twists in the core with a forty layer edge wrapped around the outside, consisting of 1084 and 15n20 steels. The grip is cocobolo hard wood and the fittings are bronze. The scabbard is leather covered wood trimmed out in ancient Roman style with hand wrought bronze trim.
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