[urbanspaceman]

I un-intentionally hi-jacked someone else's thread so I have moved to this new one.
This gilt on iron smallsword hilt (see below) was posted by Corrado24 on the 24th instant and I posted the following responses which I include here as a new thread to prevent further hi-jacking of his thread:
You will see that the fuller of the wide face of the blade (or the lower face as it is sometimes described) is actually a constant width groove, not a hollow with a decreasing radius.
This is a product of the rolling machine invented by the Huguenots in Solingen in the early 1600s and used to produce colichemarde blades.
There are a few regular (non colichemarde) smallswords that feature this style of blade but generally they feature less expensive hilts as they were much cheaper to make than the traditional 'three similar faced ' blades.
I am not, however, saying that inexpensive hilts always featured this style of blade, rather the reverse, that these blades have, to my knowledge so far, always been seen on base metal hilts.
The gilding on this hilt is particularly attractive though, despite being a base metal product.
If anyone has, or has seen, a colichemarde blade that doesn't feature this constant width groove, I would really appreciate a look.
Corrado24 was a bit mystified by my post (my apologies) so I responded thusly:
The blade in question IS NOT a colichemarde...obviously, but it does feature a constant width groove on the wide face - or lower/bottom face - that is a characteristic of every colichemarde I have seen to date.
It is virtually impossible - even today - to design a machine that will mechanically grind a hollow/fuller that has a decreasing radius in a single pass.
It is possible to use a roller to produce a constant width groove.
The stock triangular (cross-section) material was placed, wide face up, into a mould cut into a block, and the roller forced the metal down and formed two small - pre. shaped - hollows as it pressed a groove into the wide face. Obviously, this was done while the metal was hot and malleable.
That block with a mould cut into it was used as early as the Middle-Ages to produce a version of the Estoc, but in that case the pressure came by hammering a 'fuller' (this is the name of the tool and it gave its name to the result) down onto the metal. We used the same principle to produce early Brown Bess bayonets.
Exactly why this machine was used to produce colichemardes is something I have yet to ascertain and it fascinates me; hence my request for sight of anomalies.
There are a few colichemardes that feature the groove extending all the way to the top of the forte although most end at the lower shoulder.
Perhaps folk would like to indulge in this new and previously ignored research of mine; I would be grateful for all the input and assistance I can get. As I mentioned earlier, I have never seen a colichemarde with anything other than the constant width groove, but maybe there are folk out there who have.
The groove rolling machine was in use in Birmingham: probably taken there by Mohll/Mole from Shotley Bridge - who was descended from the Mohll who first took the machine out of Solingen; I have a Naval smallsword by Thos. Gill (a one-off special commission made during the reign of George 3rd) that has just such a grove. I have also seen smallswords of munition's grade with a similar blade to the one from Corrado24.
The machine made production much cheaper than Solingen's insistence on hand manufacture (Luddites) so it was taken to Shotley Bridge in 1687 along with the machine for powered grinding of regular hollow trefoil blades – which, for a long time, were produced in Solingen using hand-files only.
However, as no smallsword blade has ever been seen with an armourer's mark - other than the Klingenthal output - it has remained a mystery as to where they came from. My intention is to show conclusively that colichemarde blades were made in Shotley Bridge using the secret machine (despite it being much talked about) but I need to confirm they were not made in Solingen with a regular hand-ground lower hollow.
As less than five percent of all smallswords extant have colichemarde blades we are not talking about vast numbers here.