A cup hilt rapier for id.

[fernando]

Originally Posted by Jim McDougall

... it does seem the grip area on these rapiers were often quite small relative to the hand size, so these kinds of adjustments were understandable, unless ya had real small hands.

But while short grips in Indian swords were a (sort of) standard situation, i believe the majority of cup hilt swords grips had normal lengths, notwithstanding relatively short ones were so because as, the manner to hold the sword with finger/s wraping the front section, would not need them to be made larger. Still you have extreme situations, where pondering on such fashion results in examples like the one attached, where only three fingers could hold the actual grip. The civilian that owned this sword was certainly a short fellow, its blade only measuring 83 cms.

.