Research and Discussion Forums

there's a really good book on native american and colonial fighting methods with tomahawks and knives called "The Fighting Tomahawk". I don't recall the author, but I have seen the book through a friend of mine in the military, and it looked like a good source of info. Otherwise, my curren...

Actually, the incident where I hit you in the head which I recall was during longsword vs. longsword practice and I used the pommel to hook you between the hands as I zuckened from the bind and forced you into a vertical oberhau. Unless you're referring to another incident of which I don't seem to r...

Actually, me and my esteemed colleague(Kevin) crosstrain with wooden waster forms of the rapier and longsword and really only use some face protection and control our strikes and thrusts so as to only make it known that the opponent would have been hit rather than just going hell-for-leather in 100%...

Yes, in my experience, I have found that parrying the stronger cuts from the longsword is highly unneccesary, since the weak of his sword is stronger than the strong of my narrow rapier blade when he comes in full force. It seems much more practical to simply void his strikes and thrusts and then wa...

I've been sparring with Rapier against Longsword for quite some time and I've been developing some techniques for countering the longsword just as my companion in arms(who rails against the inefficiency of the rapier like he's freakin' George Silver, who he's actually never even read or heard of, ir...

Mr. Chandler, I must honestly say that after all I have read on this thread, I am more inclined to agree with you than most everybody else. Although I feel everybody makes their own case and puts it very well, I knew that as soon as I saw this article open up, it would open up a big can of worms. I ...

No, he holds his hands high, but he's too far in to pummel strike, so he just drops his shaft horizontally on top of my blade coming up vertically and then locks the hold in place in what is basically a bearhug from the French Head Parry.

Justin

I've also performed this maneuver with the longsword, but it obviously is only effective if the opponent is of equal or greater height, and has to be timed just as he is raising his weapon above his head. With my friend, he's about 5 inches taller than me (maybe 6'2" or so), but build-wise, we'...

Hello, everybody. Been a while... In a fight of longsword versus pole-axe, a colleague of mine has been performing a very strong maneuver against a few other colleagues of mine by deploying his pole-axe in the way of Alfred Hutton's "French Head Parry" (akin to the Kron for staff weapons i...

As far as armour would go, I probably would walk around with an aketon and a shirt of maile under my jacket, since this was a more common form of armour defense for people in the Middle Ages who sought to protect their vital organs without necessarily revealing that they had armour on and because a ...

In my honest opinion, if swords, rapiers, daggers, staffs and the like were legalized weapons for walking the streets in the modern day, I think quite a few people would begin to carry them. The only thing is that we would need some kind of an ordinance which prevented cheap wallhangers from being s...

M. Blackford, interesting observation about what level of weaponry would be considered provocative rather than protective. And would need some manner of re-established social conventions about these things. Difficult, insofar as the fairly rigid social heirarchy (ie the falcon reference) under whic...

Oh, and forgot to mention, if it were conceptually possible for people to go about in the modern day with rapiers, swords, and such..we'd have to develop a code stating when and how certain weapons could be worn. Well, the hypothetical situation which I have created states that one may walk the str...

Actually, I don't think that you are straying far off topic with the hypothetical question I asked. I have trained quite a bit with the staff when I was in Aikido for six years(though, we called it a Jo), and I think that the use of a walking staff is indeed less conspicuous than one walking around ...

Well, in the case of being in a more crowded big-city type of urban environment, I guess the rapier or smallsword would seem appropriate for more of the close-quarters linear combat, since I've walked through some alleys that were barely as wide as my shoulders. But a sturdy arming sword/shortsword/...