Hello fellow enthusiasts,

as in every year Ars Gladii from Austria was a guest at the Knife Makers Show in the Blademuseum in Solingen, Germany.

There we showed, among other things, a disarming with a sharp blade.
Very interesting, for us as well, was the fencing with sharp blades to show the edge damage.
Correct techniques resulted in minor and mostly irrelevant damage while improper Hollywood techniques resulted in deep gouges and cuts in the blade.

See for yourself.
Here is our video.

Have fun!

Herbert

Thank you Herbert, excellent stuff.

Very interesting, and courageous stuff... (including the risk to your nice blades!)

Thanks for posting Herbert. How long have y'all been doing partner training with sharps?

Jean

Thank you!

We only occasionally do partner training with sharps.

We aim to debunk myths and show people the difference between Hollywood and reality.

There have been so many questions about blade damage at previous demonstrations, that we decided to show people what happened.

best wishes

Herbert

Thanks for the video. It's interesting to compare the result I had on my sharp to the result of your technique demonstration. :D

Great video! it's great to see someone biting the bullet and showing what happens to a sword when it properly ends up in the path of an opponents blade.

A personal Anecdote, a member of the highschool reenactment group I'm an alumni member of bought a cheap windlass and within an afternoon of playing with some peoples Baltimore Knife and Sword blunts had turned it into a saw blade via static blocks with the edge a la typical "stage" fighting holywood dribble. Ouch :eek:

All the damage done with proper techniques would have been honed out within 10 minutes on a good honing stone.
Only one was a little bit deeper and would have need a bit more attention. None of them would have resulted in a problem.

Every static block (which was the …don't do this!) resulted in a deep gouge of about 2 mm in both blades.

Nothing new but it was nice to show the people. It got them talking.

This certainly looks like a great show.

However, as far as the old parrying debate goes, note that we have strong evidence for edge-on-edge parries and static blocks in at least 16th-century texts. Regardless of the damage caused, certain historical styles did employ hard edge-on-edge blocks. Saying static edge-on-edge block are Hollywood or aren't historical depends the period and style.

We can call what you did "correct" technique if you like, but it definitely wasn't performed realistically, which makes what you say about edge damage irrelevant.

The difference between strikes at full force statically parried or while displacing or riposting is simply the notch in the blade itself, static parrying will give a very straight "clean" notch, where as displacing or re-posting will tend to give a twisted edge notch, how deep it is depends on force, your not using any so the damage is limited... of course.

Personal Experience? I've done it myself and spare regularly with sharps, if you want to know how just look up my posts where i discuss it. By the way for your own safety if your going to spare with sharps, don't use stiff or pointy swords... your asking for trouble.