Crossword-Solution: CROSSGUARD 10 letters, 1 clue 🏆 scrabble score: 14

These tall specimens had slender boles and threw out their slender horizontal branches of great length on all sides, from the roots to the crown, the branches and the bole itself being armed with thorns two to four inches long, hard as iron, black or chocolate-brown, polished and sharp as needles; and to make itself more formidable every long thorn had two smaller thorns growing out of it near the base, so that it was in shape like a round tapering dagger with a crossguard to the handle.

The projecting ornament in the center of the crossguard may be cut from heavy pasteboard and bent into shape, then glued on the blade as shown.

The crossguard was of heavy brass, rather than steel and a further backing of brass along the heel, up to the extent where the curve toward the point began.