What the well dressed fencer will be wearing in 2010…2 sparring gear.

Here we have that Rawlings fellow again, this time modelling the required uniform for sparring within the Boar’s Tooth.

Mask: Duellist, Leon Paul or PBT UK

Black fencing jacket: PBT UK

Fixed throat and clavicle protector: RBK, Knight shop.

Black Fencing breaches: PBT UK.

Gloves: These are Brine, others available.

Training sword is the One of the old Rawlings range, the new Rawlings range is  available for pre order from the knight shop.

The socks and trainers are down to personal taste, however white or black only please.

See you in the new year…

billy

It was only when he saw the mistletoe that Billy realized why Einar had spent so long brushing his beard…

Well chaps, it’s the last training session of the year tonight, and I just wanted to thank all of you in the Boar’s Tooth,  for your commitment and effort in your training this year.

Looking forward to a  training with you all in the new year…

We are back on the 4th of January.

peace to you, your and your loved ones, may your enemies become your friends.

Happy holidays.

Rawlings Range/Knight shop sparring swords

Excellent news (from Bryan at the Knight shop):

nysword

I now have a confirmed release date for the Longswords (hand & half) from the factory.

Blades will be ready for the end of December.

Cross Guard and Pommels – middle of January.

Grip – middle to end (hopefully middle) of January.

So full product will be on the shelves middle to end of January.

We are going to work with retailers to try and maintain a fixed price globally. Being (no more than):

Price for full sword is £40 (ex VAT)

Blades are £25 (ex VAT)

Basic Guards £10 (ex VAT)

Basic Pommel £10 (ex VAT)

Replacement Grip £10 (ex VAT)

Pictures and videos will be posted this week along with lots more info.

We will also be doing a special price for pre-orders of only £35 (inc VAT) – they go live on the site next week…

Single Hand Sword Blades will be ready by end of December.

Guards & Pommels – end of January.

Complex Hilts Early Feb

After this we should be releasing new guards, pommels and blades at a rate of 1-2 a month. Initailly this will be based on what you have told us so far (schola forum).

A concept view of the construction of the hilt. Photos will go up shortly.

The standard guard is made from reinforced nylon. The ball shaped quillons are designed for safety when sparring (large surface area = less chance of being impaled). They are exactly the same size as the ones shown on the Del Tin 15th Century sword to the right. A nice example of a historical design that helps us with safe sparring!

The grip is made from a thermoplastic elasomer to closely replicate the feel of a leather wrapped wooden handle. It serves to soften any impact but does not feel spongy to the touch.

The handle is reinforced by a threaded steel rod molded into it and right down and into the first couple of inches of blade. This stops any flex in the handle and reinforces the weak blade to tang joint where breakage is more likely to occur.

The pommel is contructed from nylon (less likely to damage your fencing mask on a pommel strike) and is weighted to give the sword realistic balance. Different weights of pommel will be available to change balance to suit.

Image

Guards and pommels will be BLACK.

Grips will be DARK BROWN.

Blade colour will be GREY (almost matt metalic but not silver – we don’t want this to look like a toy sword)

New Schools

throwTwo new schools opening in December.

Sutton in Surrey starting this Sunday the 6th of December.

And Croydon Holy Trinity School on Tuesdays starting Tuesday 8th of December.

Both classes are fairly full as in a fit of enthusiasm students have set up the classes for me.

If you want to book a place

contact us

Arts Of Mars

5_0.png

From the end of this week you will be able to buy the “Italian Longsword” by Colin Richards from the web store.

It has some very useful information offering calm, clear and easy to follow instruction in Colin’s  interpretation of Fiore Dei Libri’s works.

Excellent material for anyone, extremely useful and clear for a beginner.

November News…

A fair bit going on this month

Firstly I’m teaching a Longsword seminar in Scotland on Saturday 21st for Mark Wilkie, Mark is a student of the rather fine of Mark Davies,who as you may know taught a most excellent seminar on the Bowie knife for us earlier in the year, if anyone wanting to attend should call Mark Wilkie on  07875 255949

There is a new class: Croydon

Tuesdays 7.30 at last count we have one space, if you are interested  contact us

The Nylon Swords are coming on apace with a messer hopefully being added in time for the first production run.

There is some very interesting news regarding masks coming too.

also the debate on the  international open rules is going strong, and I’d again like to thank the folks on various forums for taking the time to argue through the finer points with me(Phillipe who must had bleeding ears for all the shouting I’ve done down the phone at him and Paul Wagner who is being most patient  and polite with me on sfi). I’m enjoying the heated and reasoned debate that’s going on. I hope they may serve to unite the community.

wmac

Finally for now, a major change to the forum, as of today I’m closing the F.M forum and forwarding the link to the W.M.A.C forums. There are a few reasons I’ve chosen to do this and why I’ve linked to W.M.A.C. as opposed to the long running SFI or the UK based Schola or Exiles sites, all of which are great forums.

Most importantly of all is the approach of neutrality and welcome that is present on the new forum with a genuine feeling of open discussion and no presumed hierarchy with a strong move towards video based discussion. I hope it continues on with in the fine spirit it’s started.

I will see you there, and those other forums too I hope.

Dagger Days…a return to the Museum of London…

Monday the 26th of  Five members of the Boar’s Tooth and our guest Paul Binns, travelled to the Museum of London to look at one of their lesser known secret collections….

Ugly mugs and Hazel

Jon, Paul Binns, Owen Bush, Steve, Ed & Hazel.

The trip came about almost by chance while chatting with Hazel Forsyth, she revealed that the museum holds the largest collection of fighting knives in the country…in case you didn’t hear that, I said THE LARGEST COLLECTION OF FIGHTING KNIVES IN THE COUNTRY!!!

And they were very happy to let us look at it…

box31#That may look like a box of files but…

Many of these knives are river finds, bought in to the museum by mudlarks (not the birds, a society under licence from the Port of London Authority, who are allowed to dig and detect along the shores of the Thames), but also from the many excavations of our ever changing London, and they have several wonderful things about them.  Firstly, even the seaxes that at first glance looked liked nothing more than a box of broken files, showed so many subtle and unique variations, so many little nuanced blade shapes( a real full bowie knife clip reversal on one) that you really begin to get a feel for the pride that the smith put into his work, and also for the desires of his client. That as Owen said, the more you look at a blade of a certain type, the more you realise there is no certain type, the lines become blurred as desire and function dictate to create unique and amazing items.036

Of course this is too big for a left handed dagger…. Silver would be proud, huge, heavy and very practical.

Secondly, how culturally diverse London has always been, with styles and variations from many miles beyond our shores blending with what we may consider, bland and homely.048

050

It Looks simple, look closely at the pommel and blade

items such as the knife below stand out for their apparent simplicity, looking at very much like a kitchen knife, till you look at the bodkin tip and realise the wielder of this blade had more in mind than cutting carrots when he ordered this piece.

051Unless before tin foil, chickens wore chain mail.

Of course one other thing that made this trip special, was the insight that Phill, Owen and Steve (our smiths in residence), bought to the table, though I’m not sure why they so happy, that the fact they found so much evidence for forge welding going on.044

Although I appreciate their fine work even more having witnessed the little imperfections and “finishes” you find on almost all medieval blades:)

069there were many other little insights that actually made viewing the less intact pieces a delight and learning experience in themselves, but… those are things I’ll tell on another day, I’ll leave you with this my favourite blade of the day, and hidden in the last drawer we opened.

Thanks once more to Hazel Forsythe for her immense  patience, and to the chaps that came along.

And if you go to London, go to the Museum of London, understated and lacking the grandeur of other more highly profiled museums, it is a fantastic resource, with a positive approach to genuine enquiries, go there and learn.

If he doesn’t react…Netherlands review 2009.

At my request David Rawlings of Boars Tooth Fight School came to Utrecht on 26 and 27 September 2009 to teach a 2-day workshop about the sword and buckler system I.33. I specifically asked him if he could approach this system in a way that would make it appear simple and logical. David definitely succeeded at this.

IMG_0737

During Day 1 we practiced stance, movement, and the main positions in the system, and we started looking into what position is used &  why.

 Day 2 brought more focus on action-reaction as we were guided deeper into I.33. Without bringing in any (unnecessary) complexity, he showed how the actions and reactions described in the manual are actually the only sensible way to deal with a given situation. As we went through the various exercises, David further explained and demonstrated the main points in (his) fencing theory, stimulating an intuitive understanding of the reasons behind the actions. These are lessons that will help not just with sword and buckler fighting but with all fighting arts. In order to be able to keep practicing after the workshop, each participant was given a copy of one of David’s DVDs about I.33, that I am sure will be a great help.

IMG_0831

In short, all participants had a great and inspiring weekend. David has distilled a simple, logical system out of the I.33 manual, and managed to teach this in an instructive and easy to follow way, just as I requested.

 

If he doesn’t react…

… Stab him in the face!
H.E.M.A.N. – nlhema.myfreeforum.org

Reinier van Noort

Sparring swords in action!

Here it is, the clip we’d thought we’d lost, this is a very quick snippit of the New Rawlings Range/Knight Shop sparring swords.
This is one of the calmer moments of the sparring, but hopefully you can see quite how well they move, latest reports put the eta at January, but we can always hope for sooner.

Body armour.

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…sil3

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.

shouldersRBK 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.

Throat

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