Guest Instructor August 16 & 23

I will be out of town August 16 and 23, so my guest instructor, Daniel, will be running class. Do not scare him off, OK?

Longbows vs Harness (plate mail).

Regarding yesterday's admittedly silly post. Some fine folks have, quite understandably, wondered how bows would have dealt with harness (aka plate mail). Well, here is a test. There are others, but you will see a theme.

You will see that any penetration is pretty minor, less than an inch, and this is at point-blank range with a completely solid hit. Considering that there was likely mail and an arming doublet underneath, it shows that bows are not much use against harness. In the battles of Agincourt and Crecy, where bows were historically used to great effect, it was not because bows could penetrate harness. It was mostly injuries to horses or more lightly armored troops, as most troops did not have harness. Harness was extremely expensive.

How will modern soldiers fare against knights?

"So we want to see what the epic ending to a battle between two of time's most deadly warriors will be? Actually, it's not that interesting. The Marine, my chosen analog for this question, loses, and that is actually not all that surprising."

Link.

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Hema supplies should be available in Sacramento soon!

Pretty soon, perhaps within the month of August, Randy’s House of Games should have products for HEMA. Wasters, blunt swords, gloves, masks, jackets, books, all of these things should be available. Anyone who needs supplies now can get in on the initial order. Let me know, and I will get the folks at Randy’s to contact you.

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Business cards on the way!

I just ordered new business cards, and I used the image below as the background. They should look great.

This is from Hector Paulus Mair's treatise. He hires swordsman and artists to complete his book, and was later hanged for embezzlement. I suppose he had to pay for it somehow.

A sword taking

The detail I want to show here is that if your opponent's pommel comes up between their wrists, instead of outside their wrists, it is easier to get them to release the sword.

From Pseudo-Peter von Danzig:

Mark, when he parries or otherwise binds on your sword, then grip both swords in the middle with the left hand on the blades, and hold them both fast together, and with the right hand drive with the pommel below through in front over both his hands, and press therewith upwards on your right side. Then you remain with both swords.

We have joined the larger HEMA community in Sacramento!

Last weekend, Kevin Murakoshi visited and invited me to participate with the larger Sacramento Hema community. I went to one of his classes and a sparring event.

I believe that studying with a larger group will improve my HEMA game and thus improve the instruction for my students.