Dagger/knife testing materials

[Corey Roberts]

Question, a fair amount is often said about what makes good test cutting materials for swords, but does anybody do any test thrusting/cutting with daggers and knives? What is good practice material for them?

[Benjamin Smith]

Exactly the same materials would be just fine. They'll give you a good idea of the difference between those weapons when you strike.

[Jason Taylor]

I did this once; somewhere on my phone I have some crappy photos of the results. I used a few materials with differing results.

The thin water bottles worked really well; they did a good job of showing when a cut penetrated and how far it went by the flow of water. The plastic on these (I used the .5l ones) is really good for testing things like edge alignment, but not so much for the penetration of a realistic target, since the plastic is pretty thin.

I believe I also used an old milk bottle, but I'm not sure now....it's been a while.

I also tried one of those apple juice bottles, but with no luck whatsoever. Those things are way too tough to penetrate, at least without nailing them to a surface first (mine were sitting on top of a trash can in extremely ghetto style. That is how I roll, after all. )

Bananas were a good choice, because the thick skin offered some resistance, and apples gave me nice clean slices. I didn't try any meat, mainly because I didn't have any on hand.

One thing to be careful of here is something I dodged a bullet on. If you're test thrusting, don't use anything too resistant unless you have a decent handguard on your blade to stop your fingers from sliding up. The ghettocity of my set-up saved me the problem, because the resistant materials bounced off the tip of the blade rather than drive the handle backwards. But if I'd nailed that apple juice bottle down to something, it might have fought back.

I'll see if I can find those photos.

Jason

[Randall Pleasant]

Question, a fair amount is often said about what makes good test cutting materials for swords, but does anybody do any test thrusting/cutting with daggers and knives? What is good practice material for them?

Although it is not "test cutting" one of the best practices for dagger is to throw several fast & hard hammer-fist strikes into a punching bag from both distance and while belly-up to the bag using both the top and bottom of your fist.

[RayMcCullough]

One thing to remember when test cutting anything is to put clothes on your targets. You will be amazed at how much a simple t-shirt will protect you from cuts. I tested this with a k-bar knife and a pocket knife. The k-bar being a big knife cut great without the t-shirt(it cut through bamboo like it wasn't there), but only made minor cuts through the t-shirt. The pocket knife cut decent against the target and almost non existant through the t-shirt. My targets most used was the wet, roled newspaper wraped with duct tape.

It makes you realize why thrusts with a knife are used more often. Cuts to the head, neck, wrist and hands can be distracting and deadly sometimes , but a thrust through the head neck and body will almost always kill and end a fight even if it doesn't kill.

Something to think about.

[Randall Pleasant]

Ray

I was watching a TV show about a prison the other day and some of the convicts who were expecting to be in fight wore two or three pairs of pants and shirts, which they referred to as their as armour.

Ran Pleasant