Battlefield testing my swords
Even the best laid plans do not survive contact with the enemy. Well, hopefully the weapons do.
To truly test my swords I have to use them. Sharp swords are by definition not safe, and so should not be tested in combat, but my blunt training swords can, and should, be tested.
What better way to test them than to let a bunch of eager historical fencers get their hands on them and merrily try to bash each others head in with them. It just so happens that I know such a bunch.
They are the members of my historical european martial arts group in copenhagen.
Whats even better, we are a bit short on swords at the moment, due to a lot of new members and some old equipment, so when I proposed to bring my newly made swords and leave them at the club for a nonspecific time period, everybody was happy.
Yesterday I finally managed to go to training after a period of being too busy at work/ being ill/ cancellation of training.
I decided to get a few pictures of my blades in action but since I am primarily there to train it was only at the last part where we do sparring, that I got a few shots of. Incidentally I also get to show you the absolutely fabulous place we train.
Our Salle( thats the european version of Dojo) is located in the concert-hall of the Odd fellow Mansion in Copenhagen.
This is one of mine in the hands of one of my clubmates, he immediately grabbed the one with the skull pommel, and it didnt leave his hands for the entire training.
He didnt manage to break it even though he is a big strong guy, so I call my test a success.
They dont come out completely unscathed though. This is the one I used during training, the one with the wheel pommel. As expected there are little nicks in the blade, but nothing that wouldnt happen to a profesionally made blade, and nothing that a little love and some sandpaper cant fix.
If you want to see how the swords where made, here are all the posts related to the making (in the order of making, not the order of posting)
forging the blades
grinding the blade
heat treat and straightening
forging quillons
making a pommel 1
making a pommel 2
making an alternative pommel 1
making an alternative pommel 2
making an alternative pommel 3
handle making
handle wrapping
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Did he try to run off with the sword too ? ;)
That is an amazing place to train, for sure.
What kind of training do you guys do before sparring time ?
In any case, your swords survived a real world "battle" test, yay !
I dont know actually, i left before he did :-)
Since this is historical fencing the training is based quite closely on the original manuscripts that was used to train real swordfighters.
we start with a (modern) warmup, then we do single person exercises, basically doing each of the cuts ten times, and sometimes combinations of cuts. then we pair up and do controlled exercises called plays, where each person have a role, so for example I do an oberhau (a very normal attack) aand my partner then has to react to that using a predetermined response like this one called Krumphau. Usually we then do longer and longer series cosisting of attack response, counter response etc. Then last we do some sparring to try and use the techniques we have learned.
I love how I am seeing the rise of European martial arts.
A long time ago I actually got thrown out of Asian martial arts gyms just because I wanted to try both Arts against each other.
Well some people want to keep the two things apart but as hema becomes more popular i think more and more people get that exact idea. wanting to know what happens when trying to pit e.g. Kendo vs hema Longsword
Let alone, fma, and other weapons arts. Love the work! Keep trainng and testing. I need to make room for a good longsword.
Wow. Its very cool. Your sword are awesome sir. Thank you so much for sharing sir.
thanks