Has anybody ever had to fix the grip wiring on an Infantry Officer Degen, model 89? Is it hard to do and is the sword hard to disassemble? Also, is it hard to reattach the royal cypher to the grip? Any thoughts are welcome.

Max, this will be brief as I'm not a typist. Unscrew the pommel top. The handle and hilt assembly should then slide off. If a folding guard be careful of the leaf spring, you may have to depress to get grip off. The wire is held in place by wooden pegs, one at the bottem under the ferrule and one at top under the pommel. You can make them if they are missing. I'd insert wire in bottem hole, peg it and wind to the top and peg that. For the cypher there should be 3 holes in the grip. Fit the cypher pins thru the holes and bend them over with a small screwdriver on the inside of the grip so it will slide back on the blade tang. You may have to enlarge the holes slightly to fit them in. Reassemble. Be careful with the pommel top on removing, it may be rusted in place. Hope this helps. Barry.

Good write up Berry. Another tid bit,use a round tooth pick for thr "pegs". Trim a little off the end.If it`s to long,the tang will interfere with them when you put it back together.After the wires are secure, just snap the toothpick off and it`s done.
See you`all at SOS

I was wondering why nobody was replying. I knew there was an answer out there somewhere. Thank you to Barry and Mr. Fabulous for helping out. And to Tony who also contacted me with some good advice. There are a lot of nice swords out there with loose or damaged wire that just need some TLC. Thanks again.

If you can find a jewlery supply store in your area, they`ll probably have some real silver wire to replace the broken stuff.I double wrap a piece and put one end in a vise and the other in a hand drill and twist till you get a match!

You can find the silver (or gold) wire in any Arts&Crafts store. It is sometimes labelled as beading wire and comes in a number of gauges. It costs about $ 3.00 a spool.

Just thought I would close the loop on this thread. I finally got around to taking some pictures of the rewiring.

I must have rewired the handle four times until I was satisfied with the results. I bought about 4 different types of wire at different gauges until I had a good match to the orginal stuff. The middle strand is silver-plated copper wire from a local bead store. The outside strands are silvler wire from a craft store in Germany--Just couldn't find anything thin enough locally.

I twisted the wire using a drill. I found keeping the wire tight and the drill on medium speed worked best. Also, keep the wire from kinking as you twist it so it does not prematurely break. One thing I learned the hard way was that to reverse the direction of the twisted wire, you can't just flip the wire upside down. You have to twist the wire the opposite direction in the drill.

A women in the bead store said I could speed up the tarnish of the silver wire by leaving it in the refridgerator with an egg overnight. I didn't try this but thought I would pass it on.

Thanks to all who offered advice on how to fix the wire! Max

Close up of the wire

Nice job.

It's the trace of sulfer in the hardboiled eggs that will tarnish the silver.

Tony