The Armour Archive

Recently I've received some comments that many of my strikes in the sparring videos were taps with my body over extended, thus not giving much power behind the strike and should be neglected. Some were done with the very tip to the barehand of my opponents and may not seem having enough "bang" behind it. However, I'd experienced live edge drawing blood on living human body, mostly being the guy who was bleeding (don't try this at home , I admit I tend to be staying on the more careful side than most of us here because I've felt the impact of sword cuts to the top of my head, my left hand, right eyebrow and nose mentally and physically.

Yet, words often failed to deliver the meaning so here I made a video for reference. It features a sparring move, then the move actually used with a real sharp sword on pork target placed on a box with some give. According to my test cutting experience, pork on a box was significantly more difficult to cut than a living human target, both due to the give of the box and the thicker cross section of the organic parts in general. So the actual result on a human body would be even more tremendous than the ones shown in the video.


http://www.rsw.com.hk/lancelot-sparring-cuts.zip
25.5mb mpg zipped.

BTW, after the first tip cut on purely flesh and the cardboard box, the Brescia Spadona's tip was warpped from the direction of the cut. Since then, each tip cut altered the shape of the tip of the sword and at the end it ended up like this:





I hope I'm being helpful to the society by conducting the experiment. And again, I thank all for reviewing my sparring videos and give comments. I'm certainly working on some aspects raised to improve my techniques.

Stunningly effective weapons. Thanks for making and providing this video.

Nice job.

Now go wash your hands.

You're right! Hygiene is very important in this kind of test cutting.

Nice! If you decide to try this again sometime I have some sugestions.

You may want to try cloth around the thing- I don't know about you but I wouldn't be fighting barechested or barearmed...

You suggested that the pork is harder to cut- in the case of stationary targets I'd agree, but in combat you'd really be more likely to encounter a moving target. If there'd be a way to simulate that it may be beneficial.

Horradrick wrote:Nice! If you decide to try this again sometime I have some sugestions.

You may want to try cloth around the thing- I don't know about you but I wouldn't be fighting barechested or barearmed...

You suggested that the pork is harder to cut- in the case of stationary targets I'd agree, but in combat you'd really be more likely to encounter a moving target. If there'd be a way to simulate that it may be beneficial.

So you are suggesting cloth wrapped pork tied to a string.... Sounds like Medieval American Gladiator

We already did that long time ago and you may find that in the video gallery:

http://www.rsw.com.hk/videos.htm
http://www.rsw.com.hk/videos2.htm

The cuts used were the powerful ones, though. We wrapped not only with clothes but sometimes leather too.

According to my experience, cutting a mobile human target is somewhat still easier than the pork arm on a string. ;P

Horradrick wrote:Nice! If you decide to try this again sometime I have some sugestions.

You may want to try cloth around the thing- I don't know about you but I wouldn't be fighting barechested or barearmed...

You suggested that the pork is harder to cut- in the case of stationary targets I'd agree, but in combat you'd really be more likely to encounter a moving target. If there'd be a way to simulate that it may be beneficial.

Nice!

-Aaron

Chan, I'm not certain about the power during your bouts, but the video shows good power and speed upon the impact shots. If your shots during sparring impacted with the same velocity and power, and you are simulated un-armoured combat, I would think that you would indeed be well justified in expected them to be acknowledged.

I was hoping to see residents of the buildings facing your rooftop staring at the crazy people with a sword chopping somebody's arm off! I do not live in an area like this so it amazes me that nobody says anything when they see what you were doing. (I do not live in a metropolitan city).

Odo

The power used in sparring is usually slightly more than the cutting as you can see many tip cuts I used in the sparring was accompanied with a passing step while the one I did in the test cutting was stationary. Right, we're doing unarmored combat.

Jean Paul de Sens wrote:Chan, I'm not certain about the power during your bouts, but the video shows good power and speed upon the impact shots. If your shots during sparring impacted with the same velocity and power, and you are simulated un-armoured combat, I would think that you would indeed be well justified in expected them to be acknowledged.

They're having fun watching us all the time. They've become our audience. The first time they saw us doing these, they called police but since police left without a problem, they figured out we're just fine people and our continuous friendliness and hands waving make sure that they know we're a happy bunch of crazy people.

Odo wrote:I was hoping to see residents of the buildings facing your rooftop staring at the crazy people with a sword chopping somebody's arm off! I do not live in an area like this so it amazes me that nobody says anything when they see what you were doing. (I do not live in a metropolitan city).

Odo

For the record, I never suggested string, that would just be pointless- human combatants wouldn't be hanging... I don't know HOW I'd make it move, but if I had the time maybe I'd try some sort of wheeled thing... moving away from the cut, into it, and perhaps even parallel. It's just be neat to see, considering we can't do this stuff for real on real targets, nor would most sane people want to.