#sinistresabreur

[sinistresabreur]

Dang... Pretty sure I got bootlegged out of a quality Ogniem i Mieczem dvd. Now I get to do the return dance with scamazon and hope for the best.

Oh well, back to the quest for a real copy I suppose.

[recoiloperated]

You also dabble in swords, right? (sorry if I got the wrong guy). Any suggestions for where to look If I want something for a renfaire that's not super expensive but also not stainless steel bs?

Depends on the type of sword you want, if I'm buying a sword for me- I'm looking at the Polish, Hungarian, Czech and other blade smiths with lead times. Windlass has some decent blades, notably their royal armouries line.

@sinistresabreur is more swordy than me. I dabble.

[kyokushinpunk]

sinistresabreur replied to your post “Look, I liked the episodes of Human Weapon and Fight Quest about...”

So, and no sarcasm or whatever, do you mean to imply that Savate is NOT an ideal martial art for developing self defense skills? Or is this more just calling out these people for actively looking for ways to be... martial without art?

What I imply is that it’s a combat sport, nothing else. It’s like training kickboxing or taekwondo or karate. It’s a combat sport that does a whole lot of sparring and has international competitions and various rulesets.

There is this idea around, and honestly I blame Fight Quest but especially Human Weapon for this, that savate is that ultimate hardcore fighting style and that since it was born in the streets of 19th century Paris and Marseille, arguably the most violent places in France, it still is that hardcore style that teaches dirty street tricks like how to kick with a steel-toed boot.

It’s not.

It’s a kickboxing style, nothing else. A wonderfully interesting one, but just a kickboxing style. You can either compete like regular kickboxing, looking for KOs, or purely point based with points taken for excessive power, like WT taekwondo. There’s no knees, elbows, grappling, weapons, anything that is actually useful for self defense. Hell, here in France, savate is often dismissed as “dancing with boxing gloves” because it’s such a safe style of kickboxing compared to K1 and muay thai, where most clubs train for assaut style competition (TKD like point based) rather than combat (KO / full power style).

So having people believing and presumably going into clubs looking for the hardcore-bloody-streetfight thing are both delusional and dangerous to everyone including themselves. I literally had to explain that to some guy today, who asked if he could substitute steel toed boots for football shoes with toe protection for savate training and kept hammering that savate was the style practiced by all french armed forces including the Foreign Legion (it’s not).

If you want actual savate based self defense, good news, it exists, it’s called savate bâton défense, but even that discipline is extremely far from a hardcore violent style with steel-toed boots because the entire idea is “counter attack / takedown / run the fuck away” because it’s made with french law in mind and it’s super duper restrictive, like “the only way i’m not risking anything is by not defending myself” , but it’s non-existent outside France and i’m not sure that something based on french law would be coherent outside the borders.

[victoriansword]

What's the "whippiest" sword you can think of? Does thinness of blade always translate to it being "whippier" or are there other factors? Also I've been following your blog for a while now and I'm always happy to see your posts!

Thinness frequently contributes to whippiness, although blade geometry is also a factor, as is the heat treat (I’m not super confident in my metallurgical knowledge, so I’d happily defer to someone else on that!). I can’t think of any historical swords that were meant to be as flexible as the ones in the Witcher trailer (the origin of the discussion of flexible “whippy” blades), but some ended up that way due to design, tradition, resources, and the knowledge and experience of the maker. 

The whippiest sword I’ve owned is a late 19th century takouba from Cameroon that has a broad and very thin blade. It was sharpened and would probably cut light targets fairly well, but it is extremely flexible and wouldn’t be able to thrust at all, and would flex excessively if it came into contact with another blade. I’ve owned other takouba that have much stiffer and thicker blades. 

Some spadroon blades are too flexible and a bit whippy. That is true of my British Pattern 1796 Infantry Officer’s Sword. Some P1796s have better blades than my example–better manufacture, better blade geometry, etc.

I can’t think of a scenario in which an overly flexible blade would be desirable for combat. I’d love to have input from other sword-related blogs! @armthearmour @we-are-knight @sinistresabreur @short-swords @historicalfightingguide @swordlesbianism @petermorwood and others!

Thank you for your kind words and for the ask!

[sinistresabreur]

Sabres and hangers of the American Revolution

[sinistresabreur]

Sabre nerd goals number uhmteen: Emboss a cock and balls on my pommel.

One of the first books I ever read, before Christmann or Burton or even Angelo, was a Hutton dueling number where he specifically says you should never bash your opponent with the butt of your weapon... unless they're being a dick.

I would like to be able to stamp said opponent as what they are for future reference for myself and others, whether on the forehead or in the mesh of their mask.

It just seems... right.

[sinistresabreur]

Lol people always think I must be lying because I actually did things with my life... and I think it all seems to stem from not "doing things" in the way most people think of the phrase. But I thrive on experience, not some token measure of accomplishment.

I grew up ranching cattle, goats, and pigs. I farm crops and grow food. I'm about to go visit 13 of my family's 17ish horses and eat fresh eggs for lunch. I got my first shotgun at 8yrs old and have been hunting dove, turkey, deer, and rabbit since I can remember. I spent 15hrs on a tractor a few weeks ago. I love being my own mechanic and have crawled, mudded, and raced all over the place.

I also lived for about 12yrs in various cities. I've played with big bands, orchestras, steel pan groups, rock bands, country bands, and hosted the jazz night at a coffee house for several years as house drummer. I've taught at public and private schools, done clinics for ATSSB, hosted a marimba booth at an international percussion convention, and have been giving private lessons for almost 20yrs.

I've dressed in full armor with a shield and gone on the field for full contact combat. I've been beat to a pulp and felt the rush of victory in a melee assault. I've used recurve bows, longbows, crossbows, broadswords, glaives, spears, and more made of wood, plastic, and steel, and still practice and research historical sabre methods. I even got to teach a class on british military sabre a few years ago.

I've lived in the country and in the ghetto. I've rapped on local artists' debut albums and maintain a laundry list of recorded bluegrass and blues tunes. I've bumped New York underground rap in a 79 toyota crawler with a tan stetson on while driving through Texas to a dinner&jazz gig. I've drowned myself in homemade meade from a drinking horn and sipped expensive cognac alongside a maduro cigar. I've gone to rodeos and art studios, hung out with French painters and Brazilian guitar prodigies, drank beer with good ole boys and smogged out apartments with hoodrats, and to this day love all of it just the same.

Too many people try to find their lane and make the most of it. Life is long, but a lifetime is short yall. Enjoy it while you have time or risk wishing you had when that time is nearly up. Like a famous jazz saxophonist once said, and which I poorly paraphrase: Everything on this planet you don't enjoy and someone else does is just that - another thing you don't get to enjoy that someone else does.

Do all the things.

[sinistresabreur]

Well I'll be... finally found a decent cavalier pipe for a decent price. Not exactly a hunter, but darn close and the only other type I've been after since I got into pipes.

Debating it vs a vintage jager now, but you never know with a vintage piece.

We shall see.

[sinistresabreur]

Introduced my godson to Rocky tonight. Forgot how much fun that fight is to watch, and being old enough to catch all the details and nuance made it both a better movie than I remember... and a cheesier one lol.

Go punch something.

[sinistresabreur]

I always like hearing American takes on saber, because we've done an abysmal job of continuing the tradition

[sinistresabreur]

I think it's odd that acronyms have gone so far down the lingo rabbit hole that we're now coming full circle, where people write out in longer phonetic form the sounds of the letters once used to shorten the terms they correspond to.

It's just... a variation on a pet peeve of mine in which people use acronyms or half-words to abbreviate something with the exact same amount of syllables, thus saving themselves no hassle or time in conversation.

[sinistresabreur]

Flowcharts and stuff, from the pile

[sinistresabreur]

Meyer's dussack, from Norling's work on the material:

Of Note: Vidilpoge is lit. "fiddlestick" - notice the use of the arm as the fiddle and the sword as the stick, and Halbschwert is lit. "halfsword", a term many enthusiasts are now familiar with. One of the most beautiful and unadapted parts of these manuals to their modern counterparts, despite the mystique using an outdated lexicon adds to the art, is that they are all just named to make sense.

Wacht: Wait; Schnitt: Cut; Langort: Long [place]; Bastey: Bastion (the angular defensive protrusions from castle walls). Weschel is Left, Neben is Right, and Mittle is Middle. Einhorn mimmicks it's namesake the Unicorn, as does the Stier (Bull) and Eber (Boar). Bogen and Zorn, Bow (as in curved like) and Wrath respectively, are more directly descriptive of their form. It's great stuff.

[sinistresabreur]

Sabreneighs by de Saint Martin

[sinistresabreur]

Happy Independence Day fellow Americans. It's easy to forget, when we spend so much of our time focusing on what needs improvement, that it's in large part how good we have it that lets us do just that.

We bash our own government across all forms of media, fight aggressively for a better tomorrow for everyone even if we disagree on what that entails, and enjoy the free time and freedom required to do it all again and again.

We have a long ways to go, but that is the nature of things; we will always need to improve. Today is about being thankful we even have that opportunity.

[sinistresabreur]

The Stratioti of the 15th-18th century