[Michael Edelson]

In my study of HES, I have often come across longsword fencers who, when bouting, will lure an opponent just within their range and then strike quickly without stepping, letting go of the right hand to increase reach. Such strikes are a gamble, for if they do not succeed they leave the fencer unable to respond in time to prevent an instant and catastrophic counter attack. What happens when these strikes succeed, however, is something I have often wondered about. Would such an off-hand attack have sufficient power to cause an injury serious enough to stop the fight? In an effort to find out, I have conducted a series of tests on targets that simulate a human arm, with and without clothing. This article contains the surprising results of these tests.


TARGETS
---------

To simulate a human arm as closely as possible, I decided to use pig’s feet. Complete with skin and bones, these eerie appendages are a very close approximation of a human forearm and wrist.



In an effort to measure the effect of such off-hand cuts on both unprotected flesh and an arm covered in some common protective garments, I used all four of the pig’s feet configured in varying layers of defensive materials.

Target 1 was a bare human arm.

Target 2 was a human arm covered by a light leather glove.



Target 3 was a human arm covered by a leather glove and gambeson or other heavy garment.



Target 4 was a human arm covered by a gambeson, but no glove.

To simulate the glove, I used chrome tanned 1oz garment leather.



To simulate a gambeson, I used a pair of sleeves from Revival Clothing’s cotton gambeson. This is a heavy duty garment with a stout cotton canvas shell, two layers of cotton batting and a cotton inner liner.




THE SWORD
-----------------

The sword I used is the Angus Trim 1508. This sword weighs 2lbs 15ozs, has a 9" handle, a 36" blade, is 47.5" overall and has a point of balance 3.5" from the cross. It’s edge is very sharp, but not overly so. The edge suffered no damage or dulling from cutting the bones in the pig’s feet.

[img] http://www.kingstonarms.com/swords/1508.2.2.jpg [/img]


PREPARATIONS
----------------------

To make the handling of the targets a little less distasteful, I covered each pig’s foot in a layer of plastic wrap and numbered them according to their configuration:

1 - bare flesh
2 - leather glove
3 - leather glove + gambeson
4 - gambeson




I then wrapped each target in its respective defensive garments, leaving no. 1 bare.



Once the targets were prepared, I went outside and setup the target stand, a three piece modular design that can be joined with pegs for stability or layered without pegs to create more give.



I decided to assemble the stand without using the pegs, which will enable it to collapse under the force of the cut like a human arm would.

[Michael Edelson]

THE TEST
--------------

The test was conducted in a very straight forward fashion. Each target was placed on the stand, in sequence, and was cut several times. Each cut was initiated with both hands, but the right hand was released after the sword was in motion to extend range as shown below.



Target 1 - Bare Flesh

The results of this test were not surprising, though a bit disturbing. I cut four times, each with escalating levels of force. The first cut was little more than a drop of the sword onto the target and resulted in a deep gash:



The second cut had a little more power and scored on the knuckle, severing the pig’s toe.



The third cut was a little more powerful than the last, but struck a thicker bone.



The forth cut was the most powerful (relatively speaking; it had very little power compared to a normal two handed cut) and inflicted a deep wound.



Target 2 - Leather Glove

I cut this target twice, and was a little surprised to find that the glove offered very little protection to the target. The cuts were not as wide as those on unprotected flesh, but were almost as deep.

[Michael Edelson]

Target 3 - Glove and Gambeson
The results of this test were quite startling. The gambeson and glove offered very little protection to the target. I was expecting not to be able to penetrate this target as these off-hand cuts are not particularly powerful, but the results speak for themselves.







Like the gloved target, the cuts were not as wide as those on unprotected flesh, but were almost as deep.

Target 4 - Gambeson Only

No surprises here; this target fared just as badly as Target 3.






CONCLUSION
-------------------

Although I was hoping to learn otherwise, quick-off hand cuts can inflict serious injuries even to a swordsman wearing thick protective garments. The real question remains, however; would such injuries be sufficient to stop the victim long enough for his opponent to finish him off, or would a swordsman pumped up on adrenaline not even notice such wounds until after he had struck his attacker on the head, taking advantage of the opening created by an off-hand cut?

I have suffered a wound that resembles some of the grizzlier images above, and I experienced no pain and no immediate loss of motion. I would be tempted to say that even though such a cut would in fact cause severe injuries, the risk to the attacker may not be worth it, as the victim would more than likely strike a lethal blow before noticing his own wounds. I will, however, leave that conclusion to those readers with medical experience and knowledge of anatomy.

[Jean Henri Chandler]

Interesting and a little disturbing. I would be interested to see you do some similar tests cutting full force with two hands.

We cut a turkey with my albion constable but I didn't get any photos or video, I may try it again this weekend.

J

[Rodolfo Martínez]

Michael, What type of sword is your two handed longsword?

I heard that tatamis ar more dense than human arms, so, if with medium force you can cut a tatami, you will be able to cut a human arm too. Intresting experience, thanks for sharing your cut tests with us.

[Michael Edelson]

[Jean Thibodeau]

[Ben C.]

there are a few problems with these types of cut tests. The 1st of which is that your collasable post still does not accurately represent hitting an arm and is still adding considerably to the impact. A real arm will move with the force of the blow where as it would appear that your post will collapse after the limb has already absorbed most of the impact. Using some type of suspension system would probably give a more accurate result in this respect.

The 2nd problem is that dead flesh has considerably different properties to living tissue. Scientists and researchers now often use a type of ballistic gel and ceramic bones to represent humans when simulating injury tests due to the inaccuracy of using dead animal parts. Living muscle and tissue can be quite dense and provides a lot more resistance both to cutting and for the surrounding materials (i.e. armour). The ARMA site has some good examples of how a more dense object (in their case a punching bag) beneath the armour makes it considerably more difficult to penetrate than just pig limbs covered in armour and braced against the ground.

It would be quite interesting if someone could get a hold of several of these models to test the effectiveness of different weapons and techniques against a variety of armour. I think the results would be quite different to the results of our current tests and be a lot different to our assumptions. Unfortunetly I doubt this is really a feasable option due to price.

[Lancelot Chan]

According to my experience of getting hit and hitting somebody in weaponry sparring, the guy being hit usually doesn't have time to give away any impact force to make any differece, be it fingers or body that was hit. The impact just happen too fast for anyone I've seen, including myself, to pull away from the blow. Unless he was originally in an action that was getting away from the blow already. Otherwise I would feel as if I have hit something just as dead as the meat on the post.

Plus, it was many's believe that the dead flesh and bone were actually tougher than the living tissues. Hence, many believed cutting dead pork bone was a sword abuse. Also, pig's skin, fat and bone are considerably thicker than the human's respective parts, dead or alive.

I would dare to say the actual effect, if landed on a living human, would be even more devastating than what's shown here.

I've plenty experience in cutting pork arms, free hanging or put on cardboard boxes. I've also done off-handed cut with longsword against clothed/leather wrapped pork arms. The result was not good.... for the pork arm. Would have been worse for the human....

[Michael Edelson]

[Randall Pleasant]

Michael Edelson

Nasty gash! And nice tests. I fully agree with you that the test is more than accurate enough.

Ran Plasant
ARMA DFW

[Mike Nericcio]

Michael,
I think that your tests proved exactly what YOU were looking for. Yes, you can still inflict a good amount of damage with that particular shot. It still doesn't sound like a good technique, letting go with your bottom hand is one thing....
Great job getting out there and trying!!!

Mike

[Michael Edelson]

[Joe Fults]

I commend the efforts to document methodology.

Are there problems with the test, sure, but one thing you can do is go out and recreate it to see if the results can be duplicated. Always a plus in my book, and getting locked in on what this test does not do misses the point.

[Michael Edelson]

[Bryce Felperin]

[Michael Edelson]

[Felix R.]

This was a very interesting test setup yue used. I was thinking wether there was any damage when doing these off-hand cuts. So it is quite impressive to so this damage when doing a downward stroke. But how would this be compared to any other arch. If there wouldn´t a perpendicular movin blad, but at an arch. Or if you would use a Unterhau, striking to the hands in an upward motion?

[Michael Edelson]

[Bill Grandy]

First off, I want to commend Mike on a very well thought out and well written test.

The technique Mike refers to is actually seen in manuscripts as a thrust, not a cut. For example, Talhoffer's 1467 manuscript shows this on taffel 10 where he describes the movement as a "spring" that strikes the opponent in the foot. The word "technique" may be a bit of a strong description for it, though, as it appears more as a "trick" that you can pull off once and a while. It is also something that leaves the user very exposed: It doesn't close off any line of attack, and the sword can easily be battered aside if it doesn't succeed. It's kind of an "all or nothing" type of attack.

Now, that said, such wounds are nothing to be laughed at, either. But it is always very difficult to say if a wound would have stopped a fight or not. Many techniques are intended to have follow up attacks that solve this very dilema. For instance, the techniques in the Liechtenauer tradition that involve slicing at the hand almost always are followed up by something else. For example, the opponent lifts his arms to strike downward, you lift your longsword into his hands as you step aside, but then you drive the hands down before making a killing strike. In fact, there's a messer play in Talhoffer where the counterattack was an under cut that completely slices the hand off, but the move isn't finished until the person has taken a second strike to the person's head.

An excellent article to read, if anyone's interested in the subject of wound pathology, is in SPADA II. I believe it's called "The Reality of Historical Wounds", or something along those lines. The authors compiled a list of examples, both historic and modern, of people who were wounded in ways that most would consider fight enders, and yet they still functioned long afterwards. (Including a modern example of a man who lost his hand, and stopped to get coffee before finally going to the hospital, for instance.) This doesn't mean that anyone will laugh off such a nasty cut to the hand that these tests show, but it does mean that some people don't immediately stop right away as is often expected when people do free fencing.