The Tuck is an interesting and impressive sword. Having just finished a replica of a nice example, we thought it would be interesting to take a look at this elegant blade for battle.
This style of sword is mounted with a long tapering spike like blade. It can be triangular, square or hexagonal in cross section and is primarily for thrusting or binding from the half sword grip. This is where the one wielding the sword has one hand on the grip area and the other forward in the mid area of the blade.
Half sword combat
The Wawel Estoc/Tuck
There are not a lot of these swords surviving in collections today. One of the earliest that exists is the first reproduction we will look at. It is in the Prince’s Czartoryski Collection in Cracow at Wawel Castle. It is mostly likely 15th century in date and is a massive weapon.
We did this replica from limited information over ten years ago and we had the pleasant surprise when comparing it to the original that we were very close in our attempt. We had only one image of the hilt and limited info on size to work from. The client had seen the original and had a sense of its dimensions and the rest came down to apply principles and understanding of medieval weapons.
Here are the original specs for the piece in Cracow:
Weight: 8.9 lbs / 4050gr
OL: 62.4”/ 1586mm
BL: 52.9”/ 1346mm
COG: 9”/ 230mm
Source: A Kampfschwert from the 15th century, Maciej Talaga
Tuck with mid area flattened for half sword grip shown in Flower of Battle.
Tuck with sliding rondel shown in Flower of Battle.
Check out Tucks part 2 Needle of Battle, a spike with attitude.