Some years ago I met Chris Adams from UK at a HEMA event in Malta. He trained Highland Broadsword under the guidance of Lyell Drummend in Sussex and was an apprentice of famous sword-smith Marco Danelli. We not only had a great time together with fencing, feasting and a fortress (the event took place inside the Fort St. Angelo), but we also exchanged a lot about making swords. Back then I asked Chris if he could make me a solid, simple training Broadsword. He would have loved to, but still being an apprentice, he was not in the position to take any orders yet.

We kept in contact and in 2018 Chris asked me for support to create a design for a good training Broadsword. He now had his own workshop Balefire Blades and I was very happy and honored to help. We worked through various Regimental desings of historical Broadswords from the period between the 1750s and 1780s and came up with a result for a prototype sword, which was named “The Angelo”.

After finishing the prototype, Chris sent it to me for extensive testing in training and bouting and so me and the other members of the Broadsword Academy Germany did. The prototype was already excellent and we loved it. Some improvements were necessary, but overall it was already a solid, affordable, realistic and historical correct training Broadsword. I wrote a detailed review, which you can read here.

You can see the test videos in our channel:

Chris took our order for the final model and worked on the design more also with other Cateran Society members, who were interested to order the Angelo. The design changed a bit inspired by a Regimental Broadsword model with an even more massive Basket-Hilt and the final result is now available for order in Chris´workshop 🙂 It looks amazing 🙂

Check out Balefire Blades to see the Angelo and order yours!

Excellent work, Chris, well done, we can´t wait to hold them in our hands 🙂 More informations and another review will follow 🙂