The Making
of the 2001 Original Vic Anselmo Sword
Setting
out to recreate the sword, twenty years later, proved a challenge
for Vic. Though he still had his original drawings, Vic has
not made a knife or sword for many, many years. Due to his failing
health -- and the fact that all of the rough work had to be
done outdoors (which depended on weather and the times of day
that would not disturb his neighbors) -- his time to work on
the sword was very limited.
Another
challenge was presented by the fact that Vic had never used
a belt sander. In his day, hollow-grinding was done on Cone-Lok
sanding drums, wrapped with shop cloth. As he was uncomfortable
making the sword using processes other than those he used for
the originals sword, we spent six months looking for Cone-Lok
sanding drums - a futile and frustrating quest, as they are
no longer commercially available.
Through a fortunate accident, while contacting Dan Fitzgerald
(a long time friend of both Vic and Jody Samson) for prints
of his photographs from 1979/1980, we discovered that he had
Vic's original Cone-Lok sanding drums in his possession. Vic
had given them to Dan when he retired from knife and swordmaking
and had forgotten. Dan was kind enough to lend these to us for
this effort.
Plagued
by health problems, it took Vic almost a year and a half to
complete the sword, recreating each component in painstaking
detail, using all materials identical to the original.
Here
are various photos taken by Vic and his sons, showing his progress
stage by stage on the recreation of his landmark sword design.
