Windlass British 1796 Pattern Light Cavalry Saber w/ Steel Scabbard

The sword is awesome and I actually held off on buying a 1796 saber until Matt Easton's review. My issue is with the scabbard which is lined with plastic that ended up wrinkling and having to be torn out, because it bound up in the scabbard.

I was initially hesitant to purchase this sword, after reading some reviews on here and on YouTube.  Every review had positive things to say in regards to the weight,  shape, taper, design and overall quality of the blade. The thing that caused me to hesitant was the mention of quality of the fittings, guard and handle being loose or out of alignment.  Things of this nature.  I have to say that my sword is as perfect as you can expect for a hand forged sword under 400 dollars. The blade is exactly as stated, light, fast, fantastically balanced an sharp as a razor. It's so sharp its a little scary! The guard and handle are tight and perfectly aligned.  As far as the quality of this blade, for the price.  I have nothing to complain about! I'm very pleased.  Something to keep in mind,  the grip area of this sword is very small,  as a big guy with big hands I wish the grip was larger but that's just me and I have to say the handle dimensions are historically accurate,  I just have ogre hands!!!.

One of the most fun backyard cutters I've laid my hands on. Good feel to the blade - authority in the cut without feeling tip heavy. Good functional sharpness, although it could be more refined.

A lot of fun to move around, and the distal taper is executed amazingly well.

Biggest downside is that my scabbard is underweight, and has the plastic inserts typical to Windlass leather sheaths, and I don't think they belong on what is supposed to be a wood-core scabbard. Makes me wonder if the scabbard isn't actually wood-core at all!

I did a full review on YouTube: https://youtu.be/yEGuzVXo_ow

I reviewed this sword in 4k resolution on YouTube: https://youtu.be/HZ79DhtEiys
This reproduction is modeled on one particular antique example sold to Windlass by Matt Easton, who provided counsel on several prototypes. The result is one stunning recreation of the original, particularly nailing the mass distribution along the blade--a concept that's always championed by Matt Easton, by having the most accurate distal taper, profile and cross sections. I have reviewed 4 reproductions of particular antique example developed with the help of Matt in the past 6 months--by different makers, and found the results to be highly gratifying.

The blade features a distinct concave distal taper by starting out at 8.8mm at the base, and thinning down rapidly in the bottom half, to 6mm at 8" from the base, and 3.9mm at midpoint, 1.9mm at the end of the fuller, and the un-fullered foible section between 1.5-1.7mm. It also has the most iconic broad profile done right, starting out at 42.5mm wide, tapers down by 20%, but flares up to 41.4mm at the hatchet point below the tip. The antiques of this pattern fulfilled by different 19th century makers vary a bit, but this profile is the most stereotypical. Comparing to the old Cold Steel version also made by Windlass, the distal taper is so much more accurate, as the top 1/3 of the blade carries basically only half the weight of that CS model. The handling difference is literally night and day. Coming in at 840g (1 lb 13.6 oz) but having the point of balance sitting at 7" from the hilt, it feels rather agile but each swing still feels highly authoritative, as a cavalry sabre doesn't need to worry too much about recovery. But if I am to attach a pommel to the end of the hilt, this would completely feel like a lightweight medieval falchion and moves exceedingly well!

For something with such a complex non-linear distal taper, you typically would have to pay a pound of flesh to a premium custom maker, who would usually be hesitant to work on a military sabre recreation. But Windlass did it right for a mere $380 MSRP. That's in itself a triumph. Other than that, lots of the small details have been refined, such as the hilt fittings and steel scabbard have the proper dimensions and tapering, and being hot-peened to the steel backstrap and ground flush--an obvious benefit from having the antique original in the maker's hand.

So you would think this is close to perfection, but unfortunately something has to go wrong. I don't know whether Windlass was trying to rush the first batch before Christmas, but the hilt fittings and the grip were mounted on very sloppily. The entire hilt looks 5 degrees canted from the blade. It seems that the hidden tang isn't centered within the wooden grip, and both the steel backstrap and the P-shaped stirup knuckle guard are not properly aligned and the hilt is slightly rattling. The movement is causing the backstrap opening to keep shaving the knuckle guard and creating some sharp burrs that look dangerous--luckily the locations of these burrs make them tucked away from the user's hand.

Miraculously the sloppy hilt mounting doesn't affect the handling when I cut with it. All the cuts are super clean and precise--after I spent 15 minutes to reprofile the edge to properly apex it and give it an apple seed geometry instead of the usual jarring secondary bevel, that is. So I'm willing to accept this simply because the handling is so amazing, and I'm not confident that I would get a better sword if I exchange for another one from Museum Replicas.

It seems that Matt Easton has exhausted all the options to push Windlass to do this right. And the blade component alone is absolutely a triumph. Yet the quality control without a doubt must be improved, and it can only be done on Windlass' end. Nate Sil made the comparison between 2 examples from the first batch of this new model before shipping one of them to me, and found both having excellent distal taper, but also equally sloppy hilt constructions. This seems to be a consistent trait. I hope it will only be corrected in the future.

I bought one of these after seeing Matt Easton's review, where he compared it to real antiques. This replica was made to be as accurate as possible, and for the price it's just unbelievable. This is a must have for anyone into replica swords. Mine arrived in just under 3 weeks.

Thanks to the distal taper and overall quality of the blade, it's very lively and just wants to whirl through the air. It is paper cutting sharp, and the included scabbard is lovely but just like the real one, you have to be very careful when drawing and sheathing the sword to avoid harm to the edge.