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Salvete Omnes!

The Dacian Falx came in two basic forms. A single handed weapon generally called a Sica or Sicle and a long two haned version called ensis falcatus or Falx. The first reported accounts of this leathal weapon come from the 3rd Dacian war or Trajans 1st Dacian war. We have just procured one to be included as part of weapons display. It's about 1.8m tall with a hardned steel blade. The blade tang extends about 400mm into the shaft and is secured by three iron rivets. Our blade is based on the example in the Cluj National History Museum in Romania.



The overall weapon.



The curved blade, about 750mm long and sharpened on the inside only.



The business section of the blade.



Detail of the leathal point.



We'll be using this as both a static display and demonstrating it's devasting action against Barberian water melons over the coming season.

Valete,

Nerva

i heard the reason the Romans put a reinforcing band on the front of their helmets was due to these any idea if that's true or not?
and it looks nice too im sure plenty of people will go cannibal and eat those water melon barbarians on you

nathan wrote:i heard the reason the Romans put a reinforcing band on the front of their helmets was due to these any idea if that's true or not?
and it looks nice too im sure plenty of people will go cannibal and eat those water melon barbarians on you

yes they were in the 1st Dacian war.

Nice job - good replica of a rightly fearsome weapon!

looks pretty cool, one cutting exercise I saw is to get milk cartons and similar filled with water, put them on a wooden post and try to cut the carton in two without knocking it off the post - cheaper than water melons and different bottles give different resistance

Hi Brendan,

You see what we do is to cover a melon in a thin coat of modeling plaster and draw a face on it when it's dry. So when you stick the melon on the pole the public don't really know what it is. When we cut and smash the melon there's an explosion of red bits everywhere, you should see the reaction of the crowd We used to use plaster of Paris but the fabric stopped us from getting a clean cut.

Hi Dave, it is a bloody frighening thing all right. My fear is that the pole will split when we use it, it really needs a couple of metal bands around the blade tang/pole shaft joint. I've re-enforced it with a leather bind for now but I think I'll ultimately have to get some metal bands on it.

Cheers,

Martin.

Nerva wrote: ... My fear is that the pole will split when we use it, it really needs a couple of metal bands around the blade tang/pole shaft joint. I've re-enforced it with a leather bind for now but I think I'll ultimately have to get some metal bands on it.

Have you ever tried raw hide instead of leather or metal? Much cheaper, easy to use and incredible strong...

You need to use metal. Even tight-wrapped wire works well. Rawhide has great tension, but it'll flex too much to keep the blade from moving around.

John

Salvete Omnes!

Forged metal bands have been found with a number of the Falx blades, so guess we better use metal

Valete,

Nerva.

BTW, that is a thing of beauty. I can't help wondering if that's similar to the various viking weapons we have no translations for anymore (and in the medieval period, were all translated as 'halberd').

John