Posted 3 years ago
hotairfan
(388 items)
There are three medieval tools in my collection, Two of which I have previously posted. They are the Twibill and the Besaigue. Both are used to mortise beams. The third medieval tool is the one that I am posting today. It is a knife like tool called a "seax". The seax that I am showing was hand forged by a talented knife maker here in the USA. I say talented, because he gave it all of the attributes that a seax should have.
The tool has a blade approx. 8 1/2" long with a straight clipped blade on the top (it is sometimes called a broken back knife). The tool is 1/4" thick at the back and has a rounded taper to the edge. This made it great for chopping small wood limbs or splitting kindling like a froe. It was, and still is a great camp tool. The sharply clipped point was often used as an eating utensil for meat. The seax was also used as a weapon, not a stabbing weapon, because it had nothing to stop the hand from sliding over the sharp edge of the blade. It was more of a slashing weapon.
It was used by the Saxon warriors, so one might think that the name seax came from the Saxon's use. Not so, the Saxons got their name from this medieval knife called a seax, which they carried into battle.
Cool knife :)