I have mixed feelings a bout this item. I had high hopes for it, because I own a medieval sword from Windlass which was absolutely top notch in both design and execution and around the same price point. Unfortunately the saber is a bit underwhelming. Not terrible, but not great. PROS: – The blade is very light (lighter than my other shamshir) – The grip is comfortable and fits well in hand – The blade is balanced about 5-6″ from the grip, making it choppy but not too front heavy which seems right for a saber – It’s a great looking sword, save for the crossguard (see below) CONS: – The ornamentation on the crossguard appears to be hastily spot welded on. You can literally see burn marks on the metal, that were not properly cleaned up. I own another shamshir (from universal swords) that has an almost identical crossguard design, and the ornamentation there looks like an internal part of the design, rather than a last minute welding job. Windlass dropped the ball here. I would rather not have the ornament at all than have it looking like this. It it ruins the blade’s potential as a display item. This is my biggest and most significant gripe with the blade. – There is something wrong with the crossguard fitting. When you wobble the saber side to side, there appears to be a little bit of play and you can hear the blade hiting against rainguard/chape on the right side (but not on the left). I’ve seen other vendors securing the chape by putting padding on the inside, likely to prevent this exact issue. The pommel is secure and this does not seem to have much effect on cutting action so far. This could be a unique fitting defect specific to my blade. – The scabbard for the blade is almost comically oversized. You can kinda see it in the pictures, but in real life it is just plain huge – way to wide than it should be with such a slim blade. The saber rattles in it when you carry it. Thankfully, the crossguard design of this blade, they had to make a fitted receptacle for the chape/rainguard bolts so the blade is secure and does not slide out which is the only saving grace here. I think Windlass should just skip the welding step in their production pipeline and sell the sword with a plain un-ornamented crossguard. Clearly they are not very good at this type of thing, and the decorative aspect of the ornamentation is completely ruined by the weld marks. Properly sized scabbard would be nice too.
