On Saturday just past, myself and Instructors from three other schools met to discuss the final “prototypes” for the new Rawlings range/Knight shop training swords, I’m pretty convinced that my nagging our community and Bryan’s hard hours grafting have succeeded in making these something amazing, I think they will pleasantly astound you all…
Two and a half months to go, better order in an extra long xmas stocking this Mithrasmas.
However… I completely failed to bring the RBK body armour to the Wallace collection as I was supposed to, this is just as well in a way, as we wouldn’t have spent the time we needed on the swords had I done so.
Now I dislike over armoured unarmoured fighting, it tends to make people sloppy, ignore shots and lead to bad form.
So I, with a sense of “oh I know how this is going to go” donned the cursed non hurty stuff.
Shoulder/upper torso/back, collar bone and gorget, upper arm elbow and mid arm guards.
RBK 9k upper torso/arm and shoulder protection.
My basic instruction was “chaps, I’m not interested in seeing technique, I want you to go out there and bash seven barrels of shit out of each other, I’m not interested in seeing technique I want to see what this can take”
And that’s what we set about doing.
Now we were using the new range prototype swords and they are good in the cut and bind but actually make it fair hard to even dent a fencing mask. That is a very good thing.
And….well guess what this armour is very good, it has spaces in it which isn’t so good, as of course that’s where I was hitting people out of spite.
but against the strong down wards and diagonal blows it is outstanding.
Mobility feels a little limited, but as soon as your blood is up this is very much not the case.
This fills in the gaps, this is a piece of equipment I would recommend to any historical fencers, protection for both throat, and the much ignored collar bones.
Now
the net result of all this was:
What started as brutish and uncontrolled bashing began to correct itself and return to proper sparring, with the exception of this.
The more nervous of my students realising they were less likely to get hurt, got stuck in, with their minds less cluttered with fear they were able to process instruction (yelled at them in the manner of abuse), in the heat of the exchange itself.
Due to it’s stiffened plate form each hit seems to register a tap, semi audible but certainly enough to register each hit. So i was pleased with it on that front also.
now further to a discussion we had in the pub yesterday.
If you have the throat and collar protector, place your mask on and tuck the bib between that and the shoulder guards collar, you have a nice mobile rotating join, (i have a pbt mask so the bib is pretty big but mobility was still very good).
And at no point was there the slightest chance of a thrust going up under the bib.
Over all this Armour is actually a really good investment, I now have to try and convince Bryan some got lost in the post….two sets oddly, very strange…
Good points,
very light.
Very good protection from downward blows.
Enhanced confidence while still offering blow received awareness.
creates a sub bevor.
bad points
it can’t cover everything
it’s not mine, ( it is now, if you can afford this go and get some, at the very least the throat and collarbone protectioon is a must).
Train hard, Dave
