Arizona bladesmith Vince Evans has recreated complex ancient swords worth thousands

More than 900 exhibitors will be gathering in Atlanta starting Friday for the Atlanta Blade Show — it calls itself the world’s largest knife show.

Vince Evans will be among them. Evans is an Arizona-based bladesmith, specializing in historical recreations. He’s been doing this for more than four decades.

The Show spoke with Evans about his craft and how he first got interested in swords.

Vince Evans

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Full conversation

VINCE EVANS: Well, I grew up in an artist home. My father was a blacksmith, my mother was a portrait artist, and so I kind of grew up in the arts and early on, I just took an interest in, you know, medieval knights, "Lord of the Rings," that sort of thing and kind of just fell into it.

MARK BRODIE: So you just kind of fell into it, but like what you’re doing now is more than just falling into — having fallen into it, right?

VINCE EVANS: Right, yeah, yeah, but I’ve — this is like a 45-year journey. So, falling into it meant I did some antique restoration early on. People would come to my father and he didn’t really want to do it. It was time-consuming and not really his line, so he’d pawn it off on me.

And through that, I learned the techniques of how old pieces were built, you know, by taking them apart and repairing them, putting them back together, replacing missing parts, you learn quite a bit about history.

MARK BRODIE: Well, it’s interesting because you hear a lot of times people talking about like taking an old radio apart or an old camera apart or something like that and sort of reverse-engineering how it works. It sounds like that’s basically what you did, just with swords.

VINCE EVANS: Basically, right. It’s — it’s kind of like a 100-year-old pocket watch. You take it apart and you understand the mechanics of what a craftsman did back when he made the parts, you know, one piece at a time.

MARK BRODIE: What appeals to you about recreating historical swords?

VINCE EVANS: For me, what it comes down to is part of it is the challenge. If I find a piece that I think was extraordinary in the way the craftsman did it. In other words, I believe one of the pictures that I had sent is a dagger that I actually own the original of. I bought it last year from an antique dealer because the complexity of how the craftsman made the blade in 1600, roughly, was so complex and the amount of metal that he removed and the way he removed it to create a very lightweight but very stiff blade. And then he pierced it with a whole bunch of little holes.

MARK BRODIE: [LAUGHS]

VINCE EVANS: And to me, when I saw it, I was like, "That’s a challenge. I’ve got to do it because it’s a challenge."

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MARK BRODIE: Is it really the challenge of trying to figure out how and maybe to an extent why craftsmen people made them the way they did that — that you like so much?

VINCE EVANS: I think so. For me, I’ve always been interested in detail. You know, as a kid, you build models and things like that, and it’s the detail that always intrigued me. And so, I would say a medieval knight sword to me is quite boring because there’s nothing to it. The more complex it is, the more of a challenge it is to me. And the fact that they did it, you know, three, four, 500 years ago is even more of a challenge. Like how did they do it back then?

MARK BRODIE: Yeah, so do you try to do it the way they did it, or do you use modern equipment to make them?

VINCE EVANS: It’s a little of both. This dagger that I just did, most of it had to be done by hand. In other words, I made my own tools for scraping the metal away because there are those who would say, "Oh, well, you could just, you know, take a small milling machine."

And but not really. When you look at the subtlety of the depth of the groove that he scraped, you know, it’s like you — you would be hard-pressed to do it with a milling machine and not mess it up. By hand, it — it’s a slower removal process.

MARK BRODIE: That must take an unbelievable amount of focus and patience.

VINCE EVANS: Probably more, yeah. It — I guess it does, focus and patience and time.

MARK BRODIE: Do you have, and I know this is kind of like asking a parent to pick their favorite child, but like do you have a favorite sword that you have made or recreated?

VINCE EVANS: There’ve been several of them. As far as complexity goes, probably the Ottoman Turkish kilij would be the one that was the most complex to do.

As far as favorites, memorable favorites, one of them would have been the blade I did for the Sutton Hoo sword. Sutton Hoo is a burial, a ship burial in England, which discovered in 1939. They did a movie called "The Dig" about the finding of the ship, and basically, extremely fancy sword, gold fittings, complex pattern-welded sword blade, but encased in rust so you couldn’t see it.

And a friend of mine in England was having everything in the grave except the ship recreated, and he asked me to do the blade for this project. ... And so we actually flew to London, met with him, met with the original person that did the X-ray on the sword and analyzed it. And basically, it was really an honor to be able to be asked to make the replica for his ensemble, I guess you would call it.

MARK BRODIE: Where do you find the swords that you see and want to recreate?

VINCE EVANS: Museums mostly.

MARK BRODIE: That sounds like a challenge to like go to the, you know, the British Museum or some other museum somewhere and take — I assume you take a bunch of photos and maybe try to eyeball how big things are. But like if something’s under glass, you can only get so close.

VINCE EVANS: True. In many cases, you can actually make arrangements with the British Museum or with the Museum of Scotland, which we’ve done both. And they will actually pull an item off display if you ask far enough ahead of time. ... I’ve had several swords pulled off display.

MARK BRODIE: What is it like to hold a sword that’s hundreds of years old?

VINCE EVANS: It’s, it’s definitely gives you reason to think back, you know, who held this? I think the oldest sword I’ve actually held, oh, probably from about 900 AD, several Anglo-Saxon swords.

MARK BRODIE: Oh my God.

VINCE EVANS: Yeah, several they pulled three Anglo-Saxon swords once for me, one off display and two just out of storage which are similar. And those were in the 900 A.D. era, roughly. I believe that’s, I believe that’s the oldest that I’ve held.

It just gives you appreciation for what they were, even if they’re rusty now, but, you know, just that thought that, "Well, who carried this?" You know, there’s always a story behind everything.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah. What is the market for swords? Like, what do you do with them once you’ve made them?

VINCE EVANS: [LAUGHS] It’s a really odd market.

MARK BRODIE: [LAUGHS]

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VINCE EVANS: You wouldn’t think there’s a market for very high-end — I’m referring to swords that probably start at $5,000 and go up from there. I know of people who have sold $50,000 swords. I never have, but there is a market. It kind of spreads out, and you’ve got more and more people getting into the market thinking that they’re going to get rich doing it, which you won’t.

But it does push people. I’ve been in this so long that I’m one of the ones, I guess, that is kind of more an old-timer now. And so, a lot of people look to what I do and then use me as their standard to work toward. And I’m saying, "Don’t look at me, look at the antiques, because I’m trying to still match what they did, you know, so many centuries ago. And I’m still learning. I’ve been doing this so long and I’m still learning."

MARK BRODIE: How long do you think you want to keep doing this?

VINCE EVANS: Till I fall over my anvil and die, I guess, I mean —

MARK BRODIE: [LAUGHS]

VINCE EVANS: My dad always said he just wanted to slow down. And really, what would I do if I retire? You know, most people start making knives when they retire, so what do I do since I’ve been doing this so long? Go — go get a real job, you know?

No, I just, you know, slow — slowing down. I’m, I’m trying to slow down. I’ve got so many people wanting pieces that it gets overwhelming. That’s part of the problem, is they don’t want a simple piece, which I don’t want to do anyway, but they want complex pieces, which is fine, but if I do one or two shows a year, my time is taken up by getting ready for those shows.

MARK BRODIE: All right, we’ll have to leave it there. That is Vince Evans, an Arizona-based bladesmith specializing in historical recreations. Vince, it was really nice to talk to you. Thank you.

VINCE EVANS: Yeah, you, too. You’re welcome.