I have a question about the 'touching the blade" issue. You sometimes see the thumb pressed against the base of the blade in some styles of grip. The fellows at Ochs mention the "Thumb grip" when delievering certain strokes, but you also have the 'thumb pressed on top of the cross" grip, which is nessicarily against the blade.

So is would seem that touching the blade there is normal.... or am I missing something? Do they 'always' clean it somehow after touching it this way?

The thumb on the blade is primarily a German thing. It's used to support the blade during certain strikes, such as the zwerchau, in which the thumb supports the base while the sword makes a horizontal strike above the head into ochs. I've never seen it used in other styles. Nonetheless, I don't think medieval warriors were too concerned about getting a finger print on the blade, at least when compared to a modern swordsman... I'm sure when they had the chance they wiped it off. :)

The use of gloves will also protect the blade to a great extent.

Jeff

There's a 15th century Italian painting of St. George. He seems to be wrapping his thumb and index finger around the crossguard and ricasso. Maybe my eyes are just playing tricks on me.

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In swordplay - today and back then - you almost always use gloves which makes it not much of an issue.
Anyway you would have your blade lightly oiled or you wouldn't have cared much for the blade. Either way it is not really an issue.

To take the good analogy from Peter Johnsson - people today use their cars in all sorts of ways which makes them vulnerable to scratches and little dents. Just think of a parking lot.

Herbert

Hello Wolfgang et. al.,

I hate to be the nit-picker here, but the picture is actually of St. Michael, not St. George. He has wings, so he's the angelic character, not the mortal.

I've always loved that image.

All the best,

Christian

Good call on the Goliath manuscript. I've used the thumb on the flat of the grip myself from time to time to avoid getting hit on the fingers.

Hey Christian,
Is there an English translation of Goliath that's publically available? I've lurked on some of the discussion about Goliath on SFI, and find myself wishing I could just read it myself. :) There're a few things in it that seem like they'd either change some interpretations of mine, or support certain others, but I can't be sure without a closer look that I'm unable to do.

Thanks, Wolfgang!

Funny thing is that I've been to their page a million times for Meyer, and for whatever reason never looked at Goliath there. :)

Off to do some reading...

The position of the thumb is also much less critical to execution of some of these German style moves when sword grip length is increased to 8" or longer (which I like to believe actually was something of a trend for duelng style swords...i.e. the Albion Munich..... between 1300 to 1500 A.D..) It largely has to do with leverage or the torque/ moment between positions of the two hands that goes up dramatically with just a couple of extra inches in that grip length.

The angel shows just what I mean by a 'standerd grip' with the thumb over the crossguard, as opposed to the ochs "Thumb grip."

And whilst the angel is using gloves.... not everyone would be.

Has anybody actually tried to do a Zwerchhau or Krumphau with a sword having a thumb-ring? Is that even possible without taking the thumb out of the ring? :?:

Another theory: Maybe the complex-hilts (thumb- and finger rings, half and full baskets) where the reason why those master-strike like techniques dissapeared from fencing. On the other hand I know almost knothing about fencing with such swords, so I could be totally wrong. As far as I know Hungarian saber techniques include downward cuts with the (clipped) backedge. Just wild guessing on my part here ;)