Research and Discussion Forums

A couple of comments on the above arguement (not that it'll help much). First, rapier slash vs. sword slash. It seems to me that fighting with a rapier is similar to modern knife fighting in that while slashes are certainly part of it (and you will take the opportunity to do so should the opponent p...

Unless someone posts something different - I will head to the student union bldg or whatever it's called by default - they have a food there. <img src="/forum/images/icons/laugh.gif" alt="" /> directions from the north: take I-15 south to exit 272, head east, up the hill, stay on...

try some floryshes... watch one of the JC clips from the ARMA site and then go try the same type of thing with your waster where essentially every step is a striking step of some sort. get used to swinging and moving and swinging and moving, stringing cut after cut with motion in all directions. Whe...

I watched one of the "Making of" segments where they talk about how 'genius' their swordmaker was to embed the tang in urethane within the handle to absorb the 'shock of combat' or somesuch... and how they didn't break a single prop-sword during the whole movie and how they had 6 of each s...

Battle is not a one-on-one affair as most of our sparring and/or training seems to be. In battle a number of wounds are going to caused by "blind side" attacks coming from other enemies in the melee while the individual was "occupied" with the oppponent to his front. How do you a...

As a rough overview: 1500's begins the cut and thrust period, and while cut and thrust swords had fully functional edges, they fought point on and attacks more or less centered around thrusting. For military (battlefield)applications swords always had some type of edge even into the 1800's. Civilian...

commenting on Jared's list of wood for wasters - I prefer hard maple over hickory because it is easier to work with hand tools and I dislike red oak because it seems to develope splinters easily with hard use. haven't tried ash yet so i have no opinion on it as yet.
my two cents
art

I would advise against using oak for making your own waster as it tends to splinter and Hickory is hard to work with; hard maple was suggested by a local wood expert and has served me well - it is quite durable and is easy to work with.
just my two cents worth making your own waster

Art

I have found that doing some pre-exhaustion work on the large muscle groups (benchpress or push-ups/dips or curls/chins etc) prior to doing swordwork makes a big difference - it makes my forearms/wrists work harder without increasing the weight of the waster/blunt and subsequently increaseing the ri...

Vikings swords made in the 900 - 1200 era by "masters" have exibited equal quality to swords made by japanese "masters" in the 1200 - 1600 era (based on testing of actual surviving pieces). Given that most (if not all) sword makers used similar methods (conceptually if not techni...

Following link is current and a good source of the right stuff - it isn't cheap tho, as they seem to only sell full sheets of the 1" foam. However, one sheet should (theoreticly) be enuf for 30-ish swords making per/ea cost not too bad.

http://foamorder.com/closedcell.html

Craig, Here is my two cents on Krumphau vs. Shielhau (or Schiller) We'll start with one use of Krumphau: Stand in pflug. Imagine your opponent throwing a zornhau from over his right shoulder to your upper left blossen. use Krumphau to in des fechten his blow. From pflug your point rotates back towar...