The Association for Renaissance Martial Arts

I'm picturing a Bruce Lee dual-nunchuck kind of concept. Very flashy and theatrical, and a windmill of pain to pass through, but otherwise not very practical.

Although, given the capabilities of fast blunt weapons to negate even some plate armor, I could imagine a very brave (or very stupid ...

what martial art that is widely available most like ringen?
Various forms of military combatives are probably closest, especially the more grappling oriented ones.

Similar objectives (capture or kill in a high threat engagement), similar situations (armored* opponents potentially carrying ...

That's interesting about the Wurfkreuz. I've used something similar, but made out of wood. I learned it as an expedient survival tool for catching small to medium game.

Get two fairly straight and thick sticks of hardwood. Notch them in the center, so they fit together. Bind them into a cross ...

Sure it leaves a gap, but I believe we're overthinking things a bit. Gaps in instruction are largely intentional, so if a master left something like that out, it's probably because he didn't feel that one specific way was better than any other and thus didn't rise to the level of "art" that needed ...

But without the instruction of strikes in (most of) the manuals, how do we reconstruct the methods of striking that they used in training?

Like the culture of brawling that you mentioned, Stacy. The masters could rely on their students to have a basic understanding of throwing a punch or kicking ...

I don't know about prevailing scholarship on this, as I'm still quite new, but I've often wondered if some illustrations were unarmored for ease of communication, rather than realism. It's easier to determine limb orientation ("is the forearm rotated?") and body position without obscuring plate. So ...

i was wondering why they would not have striking how else would you close in to grapple?
These are all primarily weaponed battlefield arts commonly practiced against an opponent who's at least mildly armored.

Obviously, at the extreme, striking isn't terribly useful against an opponent in full ...

Randall Pleasant wrote:When you add a spoon of salt into you coffee instead of a spoon of sugar the quickest and best way to fit your cup of coffee is to just pore it out and pore a new cup of coffee. The best way to solve your waster problem is to just buy a good NSA waster.

Well, that's a solution too.

I think a simple answer that involves cutting might help most? some stuff to lower the mass of the blade? Not the crazy stuff with all the wood and such... something that can be done with simple materials?
Cutting material from the blade, to lighten that end, could adversely affect the integrity ...

Is the bounce that much different from the flex of steel?

Hmmm, could be a downside.

I agree that taking off the sharp spots with a file and putting a bit of weight on the pommel would really add a lot of function to this thing. It seems like a really heavy bolt could be fixed into the pomel somehow.

The My Armoury forum thread Jason posted includes a few pictures of a guy who ...