Research and Discussion Forums

But, back on topic. Like I said before, I've performed round kicks in sparring--in fact there's a combination in the Codex Wallerstein which uses two of them. Jake that sounds like a fascinating combination, any chance of a link to pictures of that one? And Lyn for clarity can you define your own i...

As to sparring, you must be careful how you go about this. The techniques are intended to deal with the committed attack, and in most free play, the attacker does not make committed attacks. If you free play, the attacker must be very disciplined: he must make strong unexpected attacks, but they mu...

Scotchbrite is great, or any other brand of that hard nylon scouring-pad type stuff.
Another good thing is a piece of ringmail, noisy though.

Rennaissance wax : I second that.

It looks like this "80-90cm" viking shield diameter comment is quite prevalent, DESPITE the Gokstad shields all being 94cm or larger. Wierd misinformation there, a 90cm top limit is just WRONG. Jeffrey worte ; " I wrote "strapping" to indicate the flat-iron, sometimes plain ...

Usually I do not see plywood sheets of poplar -- but of course then one may build a plank-construction shield, with the needed gluing and iron-strapping to achieve that. The 'plywood' idea is somewhat of a red-herring. The only ply-construction shields I know of are from 1st to 3rd century and are ...

Aha! I see you are referring to the C4 'Weapons that made Britain' series. As I recall the SHIELD episode was very poor, getting distracted with the wierd duelling-shields with spikes on the top and bottom. The section on making and testing smaller round shields should be ignored. The maker obviousl...

I make such shields as part of my living. I trust you are talking about early English shields from 5th to 10th century? Lime/linden wood is good, willow or poplar is good too. Both have a tendency NOT to split, and to become damaged and cut thereby absorbing impact not brittlely resisting. Suitable ...

I know many many Russians from in and around Moscow, and have found something terribly damaging to to progress of real research in this matter. Russians, in my experience, have a compulsion to bullshit (can I say that word here?) when questioned about their knowledge or ability in ALL subjects. Take...

In my experience the thrower has a far greater chance to access weapons than the one who just hit the ground. I value greatly those throws which are likely to leave the fallen with no grip on me at all. If he is thrown and can cling or drag me down then I might be in as much trouble as he during the...