1865 Bannerman/Hollywood Frankensword

I hope folks enjoyed my little April Fool’s hoax about this being a rare Confederate cavalry sword. As promised, here’s the real deal (as far as I know):

This is a real US Model 1860 Cavalry sword blade, made by Mansfield and Lamb, with US Government inspection marks and dated 1865. The hilt is made from a cast of an 1840 artillery sword. You can even see where the wire wrap on the original hilt had slipped a bit. It is solid brass, with the grip painted black. I'm not sure what the spider-webby stuff is on the blade, possibly marks left by old packing materials. Scabbard is a repro, bought separately.

Francis Bannerman Co. (later Bannerman Sons) began selling war surplus after the Civil War. By the end of the century, it was a large and prospering business. The firm had barrels of sword blades, crates full of musket parts, etc. To market them, Bannerman came up with a number of pieced together items to sell in their mail order catalogues. One source says that Bannerman attached brass hilts to 1860 saber blades to sell in crossed pairs as wall decorations. The 1840 artillery saber hilt was chosen because it was easy to cast, and the resulting sword lay nearly flat against the wall.

Early in this century, Western Costume Company was the major supplier of movie props to the big name studios in Hollywood. Back then, it bought surplus swords rather than make the props from scratch. Many of these swords were bought from Bannerman. An alternative story is that Western Costume bought the blades and cast the hilts themselves, or that they had Bannerman do the casting and assembly for them. While these versions are plausible, I personally think Bannerman originally made them for catalogue sale, but then made a bulk sale to Western Costume.

Whatever the case, Western Costume sold off a lot of its vintage stock in the 1990s, and many of these cast 1840 Arty hilt / 1860 Cav blade frankenswords were among them.