It is with a little sadness that I report that I have shipped both copper alloy Fake Hercules Swords (the California sword and the Italian eBay sword) that I've had in my possession back to the rightful owners. I think we can all agree that they served us all well in cracking #Swordgate, and I'm grateful to the owners for sending them to me and allowing me to hold onto them for so long. While there is still a lot that can be learned from those swords, I obviously haven't been able to find much time to work with them since the semester started. So now the crappy Design Toscano sword is the only one in my office. It alone guards the interior of my Fake Hercules Sword filing cabinet drawer.
The last thing I did with the Italian eBay sword was compile a series of 3D scans of the front surface of the blade. I had to do it in five sections. 'm still processing that data, but will make it available on SketchFab when it's done. Ideally I would have been able to do the back of the blade also and produce a model of the full sword, but I can't realistically say when I would have had the time to follow through with all that. So I just did the front, which is the surface that revealed the common casting anomalies that really busted the "Roman sword" claim during the glorious January of Swordgate.
With the owner's permission, I took some small samples of the base metal of the California sword before sending it back. My plan has always been to try to get metal composition results comparable to the basic data reported by Christa Brosseau (i.e., the percentages of copper and zinc). I don't have any expertise in metals analysis, so I am dependent upon outside advice and the abilities/capabilities of the equipment and operators available to me on campus. So I hope I've taken enough metal for the SEM and I hope I've collected the samples appropriately. I'll keep you posted on what I learn.
Bon voyage, California and Italian eBay swords. It was nice knowing you.
The last thing I did with the Italian eBay sword was compile a series of 3D scans of the front surface of the blade. I had to do it in five sections. 'm still processing that data, but will make it available on SketchFab when it's done. Ideally I would have been able to do the back of the blade also and produce a model of the full sword, but I can't realistically say when I would have had the time to follow through with all that. So I just did the front, which is the surface that revealed the common casting anomalies that really busted the "Roman sword" claim during the glorious January of Swordgate.
With the owner's permission, I took some small samples of the base metal of the California sword before sending it back. My plan has always been to try to get metal composition results comparable to the basic data reported by Christa Brosseau (i.e., the percentages of copper and zinc). I don't have any expertise in metals analysis, so I am dependent upon outside advice and the abilities/capabilities of the equipment and operators available to me on campus. So I hope I've taken enough metal for the SEM and I hope I've collected the samples appropriately. I'll keep you posted on what I learn.
Bon voyage, California and Italian eBay swords. It was nice knowing you.
3D model of the front surface of the Italian eBay (Type J) sword, processing in progress.
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