New Article Online - Damaged Edges

[John_Clements]

On Damaged Edge

[Ryan Ricks]

"gnawed like beavers" i love it.

honestly i expect that many with the "emotional investment" in edge blocking will continue to do so regardless of the evidence against it.

hopefully there are enough sword enthusiasts with an open mind to make a difference

ryan

[Erich Wagner]

Excellent article. I like the summarization that people understood that their weapons would inevitable get damaged in heavy combat but wouldn't go out of their way to accelerate the process by intentionally damaging their edges. It boils down to the fact that the sword is a tool like any other. If you take care of it and use the way it was meant to be used you'll get a lot more use out of it.

[JeanryChandler]

Interesting article.

Would it be safe then to say then that while edge parries were avoided as much as possible, there was a certain amount of inevitability of them happening in combat eventually, which would lead to damage and ultimately the retirement of the sword (meaning swords had a short life expectancy in combat)? And that, when possible, the forte of the blade was used for the hardest parrying ?

I've always noticed that every steel blunt I have ever seen which had seen sparring use was very severely notched up. My assumption was always that even where edge on edge parrying was intentionally avoided, it must happen eventually. A ruined sword is a bad thing, but a ruined body is worse. Not even the very best fencers win all their matches with voids and mastercuts only...

This could also effect assumptions about the nature of many surviving historical blades. Should those with fairly pristine edges perhaps be assumed to have rarely if ever been used in combat?

It also makes me wonder about the large (10" and more) ricassos on a lot of longswords / greatswords. I used to assume they were for halfswording, maybe they were really for parrying...


JR

[John_Clements]

I have steel blunts I have used in hard cut & thrust sparring for years with senior students but that are hardly damaged along their edges---why? Because I don't make clumsy parries with my edge nor strike at my opponent's edge edge-on. It's that simple. Train in the correct historical techniques of setting aside and displacing and you won't be doing the blade-destroying garbage we see in movies and stunt fighting shows. If we have rediscovered this now and can redevelop these skills today I am quite convinced our ancestors fighting for real did so even better.

JC

[david welch]

Good article, informative, and very well sourced. It's a shame it has to be.

Train like you are training for real combat.
Spar like you are in real combat.
Don't beat your swords together edge on edge...

Everything about ARMA's training guidlines are just so, for want of a better word, self evident. I realize I haven't been doing this as long as a lot of other people, but I just don't understand how they can argue in good faith with this stuff.

[JeanryChandler]

Interesting... are you speaking of weapons more like rapiers or weapons more like longswords or arming swords?

Is it your feeling then that without reckless or overenthusiastic use a sword should have a virtually indefinate functional lifespan, or at least one longer than several battles?

JR

[Ryan Ricks]

we hear that viking swords lasted generations and could be passed down in the family. i forget where i read that though.

ryan

[JeanryChandler]

True that, but as John pointed out in his article, 'Viking' swords weren't used much for parrying. They were almost always used in conjunction with a shield, and the shield was used to parry. Thats one of the reasons early Norse swords, and most swords before that, rarely had any kind of quillions or cross guard to speak of.

I also know that by comparison, Scottish swords were also passed down from father to son, but often transforming along the way, from longsword to shorter sword, from shorter sword to dirk (dagger) from dirk to skein dubh (sp) which was a kind of knife. Presumably the weapons would be remade in smaller versions as the blades were messed up in combat.

Of course that doesn't prove anythnig about edge parries either way.


JR

[JeffGentry]

Hey Jeanry

Would it be safe then to say then that while edge parries were avoided as much as possible, there was a certain amount of inevitability of them happening in combat eventually, which would lead to damage and ultimately the retirement of the sword (meaning swords had a short life expectancy in combat)? And that, when possible, the forte of the blade was used for the hardest parrying ?

Like John was saying his blunt's used with senior student's show almost no damage , if you look at our gaurd's with long sword, when two skilled people are using them there is very little edge on edge possible, example och's to gaurd vom tag it would be very difficult to strike edge's if you tried to cut at the head the natural alignment is edge on flat try to krump the och's it is again naturaly edge on flat.

I wonder if the damage came from less skilled opponent's who could not react quick enough and just did something to try to defend themselve's in combat, they did have a fuedal system so some may not have been skilled swordsmen trained maybe.

By the way good article John, loved it.
Jeff

[Ryan Ricks]

another thing i've been wondering about in the article, why have unsharpened cavalry sabers? all things being equal, wouldn't it be better to have a sharp saber than a dull one? did this come about because the governments tried to save on cost of the weapons?

dunno. pretty interesting.

ryan

[JeanryChandler]

Thanks for the comments.

I have noticed similarities when doing longsword fencing, most of the 'parries' now days seem to be my edge striking the other guys flat or my flat hitting his edge, while setting aside or even binding. A little less so with sword and buckler though... and I especially find myself resorting to older habits sometimes for example when parrying a strike to my lower legs from certain guards (which I would probably void instead if I wasn't so fat and slow) or parrying a downward strike from a hanging guard.

I guess I haven't had the privelege of witnessing fencing done so cleanly within the correct forms 100% of the time, and of course it's harder to tell when people are using padded weapons or wasters.

I do believe y'alls assertion though and it is very intersting that you are finding longswords with little edge damage after a lot of sparring. I guess I just have to still unlearn as much as I have learned to reach that point, as even though I may feel good when I can win matches, in terms of correct form I don't think I'm in the ballpark yet.

JR

[JeffGentry]

Heck Jeanry

even on our waster's most of the damage to them is on the falt's some is on edge because we are using them to learn new technique's a good majority though is on the flat's.

Now a real sword would be diffrent we are no where near as skilled as some we do try to get the edge alignment right so that it set's up our next cut and it naturaly goes to an edge on flat configuration.

Jeff

[John_Clements]

No, by that time period they just didn't bother to sharpen their weapons much because cutting at live moving things was just not that common anymore. Swords were not the primary weapon of either war or self defense by the 19th century. So, they gradually lost the skills and lost awareness of the neccessities of earnest real combat ---and most did not really notice even they had lost it.

[Casper Bradak]

It wouldn't suprise me if it was their SOP to keep their blades unsharpened until deployment, when they would sharpen them (which in practice never seems to happen). That's the way it is now in the US with bayonets in most places. That or 100 years of being drawn from a steel scabbard. I know they were often complained about for their tendency to dull blades.