More test cutting on meat and bone

[Lance Chan]

Hello. As promised, I video taped this test cutting. This time I was cutting free hanging pig hands with skin, fat and bone. Man, it was VERY DIFFICULT!



I can cut into the bone most of the time, but it was damn hard to cut it clean through. The skin and fat made a lot of difference, and I would not doubt that the addition of clothing would render my cut futile, save the bludgeoning force.





All my cuts were tip cutting. My tinker sword got nicked in several places on one edge as a result. However, the other edge that was equally used showed no damage at all. It maybe that the hardness is not equal between the edges.



The rebound force of each cutting was great that the hand guard cut my index finger and sprayed my blood on the guard and forte, making it kinda "battlefield" like.



Of course, here's the video. 3mb of download. My form wasn't as good as when I was cutting bamboo and tatami, because it was the first time I test cut on my rooftop seriously with such setup. Hopefully next time my form will be better.

http://lancelot.servehttp.com/sunday%20butchers/Test%20cutting%2025-6-03/Test%20cutting%20cutting%20only%2025-6-03.rm

I've taken out everything except the cutting motion. I've made several versions of the video, some including slow motion replay and the other includes the funny acts such as watching the cut meat flying out into the sky, showing me freezing in action and my face turned into "OH MY GOD!" look. Eventually I'm glad that the meat did not fall down 20 floors of building.

For your interest, after the test cutting, I gave the butcher back the minced meat and showed him the video of my test cutting. You guess what, he gave me 30 HK dollars back in return (1/4 of the price I bought the stuff). Hhaha! Good way to recycle my money!

[Shane Smith]

Good stuff Lance! I don't know if I would hold that hunk of meat off a ladder on a stick for you though <img src="/forum/images/icons/ooo.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/forum/images/icons/crazy.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/forum/images/icons/grin.gif" alt="" />

So,it looks like you were doing all of this stuff on top of a high-rise in the middle of a metro area.What must your neighbors think <img src="/forum/images/icons/grin.gif" alt="" /> ?What model sword were you using?

[Randall Pleasant]

Lance Chan wrote:
All my cuts were tip cutting. My tinker sword got nicked in several places on one edge as a result.

Archaeologists have conduct a large number of lithic studies looking at the effects of cutting meat and bone on stone edges. Does anyone know of similar reseach on metal blade wear patterns? Would be a cool project to compare bone, edge-on-edge, edge-on-flat, edge-on-armor wear patterns and then do a servey of historical swords in collections.

[Lance Chan]

Neighbours? What neighbours? people in HK dun raise their head that high. They walk with their head low to see if there is money to pick up on the ground. MUhhaha so they dunno.

The sword is the same one I did the meat cutting last time. Tinker XVIIIa bastard sword.

[Richard Strey]

Hi Lance,
I find your comment "The rebound force of each cutting was great[...]" quite interesting. Do you consider your sword "properly balanced"? I haven't been able to handle Tinker swords, so I wouldn't know. I ask, because -if you take this into account- you shouldn't feel much of a "rebound" at all when cutting, right?

[Lance Chan]

the COP test in that article shows my tinker sword properly balanced, having COP right at the tip or 1 inch from the tip.

I suspect that it was the hardness of the bone that caused the tremendous rebound force that I was unfamiliar with.

I've done another test cutting yesterday and this time my form was better due to the lack of fear of hitting the ladder mistakenly. The cuts were deeper but it was hard to make clean cut through, still.

[Lance Chan]

Just did another test cutting on the following day to correct my form problem on the first day. On the first day, I was having a psychological hindrance that I was afraid of hitting the aluminum-made ladder behind the target. This time, I got rid of the fear and unleashed my full power.

Here is the video, 6.6mb
http://lancelot.servehttp.com/sunday%20butchers/Test%20cutting%2026-6-03/Test%20cutting%2026-6-03.rm

The result of the improved cutting is making generally deeper cuts and one downward diagonal clean cut through.


What worth mentioning is how the blade flexed during some cuts. I've made snapshot at the moment of the impact for each cut and you can see how the blade behaved at the impact. Here are a few examples.







Some didn't shown much flex though.

[Mike Cartier]

nice stuff Lance
Thats a cool looking flex on that one pic.

[Lance Chan]

There is something I wanna say .. I won't post it on SFI but I wanna share with you guys here.

The following content is part of the email I sent to arms and armors:

Ben tried his luck with his sword, the GBS.

We were totally awed!!!!!

Before he cut, he watched my video and knew it was very difficult beforehand. He said he might be able to cut through the meat eventually after 3 cuts, because he practices way much less than I do.

However, GBS alone made all the differences!

One simple swing with pass forward footwork, he cut right through. DAMN! It was so challenging to me and so easy to him. Now I know how a good sword makes a huge difference. The sword I used cannot compare to the GBS at all in this aspect.

Moreover, one of my edges has rolled during the cutting, while the other is fine all along the way. On the other hand, since Ben didn't practice usually, he hit an iron pipe sticking out of the rooftop accidentally before the cutting motion fully stopped. The force of impact was a light tapping. We expected that it would nick the edge a bit and we could blame no one but Ben himself. But then, upon examination, NO NICKS AT ALL! God...

Both of us think we owe the guys in arms and armors some compliments.

[Lance Chan]

Video of Ben's cutting, 1.99mb.

http://lancelot.servehttp.com/sunday%20butchers/Test%20cutting%2028-6-03/test%20cutting%2028-6-03.rm