Watching a series on FX titled "Taboo" staring Tom Hardy.

It is set in 1814 London, and Hardy's character James Delaney is recently returned from Africa, bringing lots of baggage home to compound the baggage that he left there in 1895.

Delaney goes armed, and prominently uses knives in self defense.

The link below gives the background on the knives he carries and photos of them: [By the way, the show is at least Restricted due to violence, nudity, sexual situations, and adult themes]

https://myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=34502
Leo Todeschini


Location: Oxford, UK
Spotlight topics: 1
Posts: 1,383
Posted: Mon 02 Jan, 2017 11:41 am Post subject: Taboo - Tom Hardy knives
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Hi All,

This Saturday the 7th Jan, the BBC will be starting a new series called Taboo starring Tom Hardy (Revenant, Mad Max and lots of other stuff over here). The trailer for the show can be found here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1fiijqrKuc This really does promise to be one heck of a show, so catch it if you can.

I was asked to make a series of pieces for the series; a variety of leatherwork, but more interestingly, a series of prop knives.

The rather nasty hook knives were designed based on ideas of Toms' and developed up myself to be as if they were made on a village forge a year to two apart. The blades were superheated to blister the carbon out and then were just brushed back. The blades were punched and chiseled to add detail and the scales on one knife are buffalo horn and on the other ox and rather crudely grooved. The finger rings are integral to the rest of the knife.

The scabbards were meant to be worn horizontally on the belt and have cords to hold them in.

Tom loved these knives and as a consequence I suspect they will be seen often in the films.

The 'African' styled knives were designed by the art department and needed to fulfill certain requirements on size and appearance and so were based on a series of original pieces. The handles are in ebony and bone with silver fabricated fittings with carved agate and the decoration to the blade is all stamped and again the blades were aged by heat and brought back, to give a lot of texture.

The sailors knife was (thankfully) meant to be a little crude and was based on a 1942 UK army knife and had new scales and bolsters which were then scrimshawed. As this was my first attempt at scrimshaw and I deliberately chose some badly done originals to follow, it worked out OK.

I marked all the pieces with my makers mark, so I will chuckle if these knives ever get picked up by the film reproduction people and they think it is part of the decoration.

I hope you like them.

Tod
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www.todsstuff.co.uk
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I like Tod's stuff, I just can't afford them AND Randalls... LOL.