Hi everyone

Beeing a poor student and swordfighter, who spends his money on coffe, chain mail and new 17" Powerbooks, I regretably do not own a sharp sword. :(
This is especially sad since there are a couple of things I would like to prove to my fellow reenactors.

This primarliy deals with the use of the back edge of the sword. For pragmatic reasons, a lot of people fall for the temptation to "flip" in back edge attacks around block and shields. I do not aprove of this, since the effeciency of such a hit is doubvious.

So my question to all you test cutters: Is at all posible to make a hard back edge strike with a single handed sword, that will cause damage??

And, oh, please don't break your wrist trying to find out this...would make me feel realy bad. ;)

Yours
Elling

On the Cold Steel DVD Lynn Thompson is demonstrating back edge cuts with a 1796 light cavalry saber on hanging meat. It was a quick attack and the results were deep gashes that would probably end a fight. Those attacks were not just done with a flick of the wrist, they had some power behind them.

I suppose a sharp and light civilian type singlehander or a saber are good choices for emploing these kind of attacks. Medieval singlehandes made for war may be a little heavy for optimal use of quick back edge cuts and the wrists don't like it.

You don't need much power though to do serious damage on test mediums with either the leading or back edge.

Hi Eiling,
If you are talking about against an unarmored opponent (or at least to an unarmored part of the opponent), then yes, absolutely. In fact I recently got to take a workshop at WMAW with Stefan Dieke on the use of Meyer's "rapier", which is technically a "cut and thrust" style, and not the longer thrust oriented rapier. So already we're talking about a sword that isn't as cut oriented as Type Xs and XIIs and the lot.

There are a number of cuts done with the false edge, including, to my surprise, the use of a shielhau with the single hand sword. The shielhau is a technique where you cut downwards with the false edge, with your hand up high to lock out the line of attack.

Is it correct with sword and shield? Unfortunately, we may never know. Is it possible to wrap around a shield and make a powerful cut? Definately.

But here's another important question dealing with the "flip around" cuts... is it a martially effective attack, or a convention of the fighting rules? Without seeing what they're doing, I can't really comment, but I've seen the "wrap shot" that many SCA fighters use. They get in close enough so that they can reach around their opponent and literally wrap the sword around to make a false edge cut to the unexposed back, while using their own shield to block. They are certainly able to generate a very powerful blow, but the thing is in REAL combat, I'd expect a hard shield rim to the face if I attempted something like this. Since that's not a viable safety option for SCA combat, and since the focus on SCA combat is to win the competition as opposed to learn realistic techniques, the wrap shot works very well within the system.

I don't know about the SCA style cut, but as far as a sotani rovorso with a longsword, two-handed, I've had lots of success on tameshigiri doing that. It's actually pretty surprising, since there's not much windup, but since the hands act differentially, the sword develops a lot of tip velocity.

I suspect the "wrap shot" or whatever it is, wouldn't work as well, since the blade is not maintaining a single plane of motion AFAIK, sort of twisting in the middle of the cut...

I've found that cuts with the back edge tend to be more damaging with a longsword than with a single-hander. I think the torque that comes from using the hands as a fulcrum has something to do with that. With a single-handed sword a cut with the true edge will be more severe due to the body mechanics involved, but a cut with the back edge will definetly cause damage and could still be deadly if employed upon an unarmoured opponent.

Someone got a pic of me making a false edge cut at my Pre-halloween cutting party. It does develop some serious cutting power.

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Don't know if this is what you're looking for, but here's a short film of some back edge cutting with a Hanwei Basket hilted broadsword.

http://homepage.mac.com/aaronjustice/.Movies/basket_cut.mov

Found it at this thread at the Swordforum: http://forums.swordforum.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=38258

-Henrik

The points everyone's made so far have been good, but I don't think that's exactly what Elling means when he's talking about the false edge. I think he's specifically talking about when a person parries with either the sword or shield, and someone wraps the sword around to hit with the false edge.

Like I said earlier, if the person's unarmored, it's feasable to make a very severe wound, provided the other person doesn't punch you with the shield or something to that effect, which is usually forbidden in most reenactment rules and such. So people probably get away with those things far more than what you could realistically do.

Yes, I'm refering to the SCA/Reenactment technique, wich is basicaly a flip of the wrist with the back edge.

While it is scertainly posible to deliver a propper, powerfull back edge strike with a single handed sword, another question is why you would want to.
In my experience it is faster to turn the blade after a blow that to bring it to a stop and execute a propper, full force backedge strike. This is not the case with a longsword, though, since the twohanded grip lets you stop the sword almost instantly.


Yours
elling

I wouldn't call that a strike or cut, more of a slice. Against someone wearing no form of armour at all it would really hurt. Against someone in leather, padded armour or chain it wouldn't be very effective and, quite frankly, bloody dangerous. Shield strikes, head butts and tripping are the least I would attempt. And have(the trip that is) Just a judicious application of force via the foot and knee against their off balnce leg and down they go. And when I say leather I don't mean soft clothing leather but buff hide and the like!

Agree completely. One of our ex-SCA fighter test cut with his Albion Norman sword on tatami with that technique. None of his attempts worked. It became smacking the mat with the flat of his blade, every time.

A snapshot is included in the following link:
http://www.rsw.com.hk/img_1676.jpg

Patrick Kelly wrote:

Bill Grandy wrote: The points everyone's made so far have been good, but I don't think that's exactly what Elling means when he's talking about the false edge. I think he's specifically talking about when a person parries with either the sword or shield, and someone wraps the sword around to hit with the false edge. Like I said earlier, if the person's unarmored, it's feasable to make a very severe wound, provided the other person doesn't punch you with the shield or something to that effect, which is usually forbidden in most reenactment rules and such. So people probably get away with those things far more than what you could realistically do. If that's what he's refering to it changes things considerably. Having done SCA stick fighting for a number of years, I am familiar with the technique. I think it would be one of the least efficient ways to deliver a cut upon an opponent. In addition to the points already mentioned there are biomechanical reasons as well. The motions of the arm and wrist during that manuver run contrary to the proper edge alignment neccesary for cutting with a sharpened steel blade.

That's a good snapshot, Lance. It definately shows the shortcomings of such a cut.

I have no doubt about being able to make a powerful blow with such an attack: I've seen SCA fighters dent armor with wrap shots using rattan. It's the other issues surrounding it that make it dubious: Proper edge alignment, getting punched in the face with a shield rim while doing it, not to mention the danger of cutting through the back of your opponent's head and hitting your own!

While certainly not as potentially fast or hard, the falso cuts *can* be quite effective.

I was tooling around and came across this web site:

http://www.rsw.com.hk

They fabricate sparring weapons of all shapes and sizes with a close eye for the size, weight and handling characteristics of the real thing, and seem quite impressive tools for beating each other up (good prices too... :)

What caught my eye is their video archives. While I certainly can't identify the maker(s) of the swords, they have several short movies showing various cutting techniques with various cut and thrust blades against pork legs. The pork is tied to a cardboard box to supply a little resistance, but also a bit of give, in order to approximate a body. The blades are certainly cutting through bone in standard strikes, but even a slight falso wrist shot from a Chinese Carp Jian yields a sizable cut ino the flesh:

http://www.rsw.com.hk/videos.htm

(Look at the second video from the top)

This blade weighs just under two pounds, and features an apple-seed profile, so could be easily likened to a Katzpalger, Schiavonna, or Basket hilt, and other generally similar profiled weapons .

At any rate, it's interesting to note...

Matthew

Yup. With proper blade alignment and power generation, false edge cuts were quite nasty. There were some unshown videos on the site where I false edge cut on a pork arm with my tinker bastard sword, both hanging in the air with a string and on the cardboard box. Many cuts skidded off the surface because of the unstable support. However, those succeeded in biting in go to the bone! And I am sure that if I was cutting a human that has a much firmer footing than my hanging/cardboad pork leg, the biting would be deeper for my cuts.

So I think with proper power and alignment, false edge cuts present more than just hassling threats to exposed targets.

Now, if we're talking some where covered by fabric, that's another story. That's why if you care to see our sparring videos, our false edge cuts are mostly directed to wrist and fingers. :)

Matthew Kelty wrote:

While certainly not as potentially fast or hard, the falso cuts *can* be quite effective. I was tooling around and came across this web site: http://www.rsw.com.hk They fabricate sparring weapons of all shapes and sizes with a close eye for the size, weight and handling characteristics of the real thing, and seem quite impressive tools for beating each other up (good prices too... :) What caught my eye is their video archives. While I certainly can't identify the maker(s) of the swords, they have several short movies showing various cutting techniques with various cut and thrust blades against pork legs. The pork is tied to a cardboard box to supply a little resistance, but also a bit of give, in order to approximate a body. The blades are certainly cutting through bone in standard strikes, but even a slight falso wrist shot from a Chinese Carp Jian yields a sizable cut ino the flesh: http://www.rsw.com.hk/videos.htm (Look at the second video from the top) This blade weighs just under two pounds, and features an apple-seed profile, so could be easily likened to a Katzpalger, Schiavonna, or Basket hilt, and other generally similar profiled weapons . At any rate, it's interesting to note... Matthew