I have the best readers. They are forever coming up with great ideas that I would never have thought of myself, and then sharing them with me. For instance, a while ago, Alex Beaudet contacted me with the suggestion of creating versions of illustrated fencing treatises in the format used for the ebook version of comic books and graphic novels. This is obviously better than the standard pdf or epub because it is precisely designed for distributing books made up of image files, rather than text.

But it's something I know absolutely nothing about, so I replied along the lines of ‘great idea, but not something I can do myself'. And so Alex kindly volunteered to do it.

We started with Vadi's De Arte Gladiatoria Dimicandi, which has come out beautifully. It's free, but feel free to pay something for it if you want to support this kind of work. You can see it for yourself here:

De Arte Gladiatoria

And we have Capoferro in the works!

You may also notice that the mailing list sign-up form below every post has changed… do you have a copy of Swordfighting yet?

I got back from a wonderful trip to Swordsquatch last week, and am writing it up… but at some point there has been yet another technical snafu with PrettyLink, and my blog's urls- for instance it's just lucky that I'm already signed in to the back-end of the website, because the url for the login is now going to a 404 error message.

Most critically, this means that some or all of the links in my workbooks and the Fiore Translation Project books are not working. I will get them fixed of course, but I don't know how long it will take. All the videos are currently hosted on Youtube, but they are ‘unlisted', so can't be found without a direct link. But as I'm in the process of transferring all my videos to Vimeo, at the moment all of them can be found with a bit of searching on my Vimeo account. They are totally unorganised, but they are there if you look… my Vimeo account is here: https://vimeo.com/swordschool

For those of you frustratedly pointing your phone's QR code scanner at a book of mine and wondering where the hell your videos have gone, I can only apologise, and say “I'm working on it”. I'm also paying competent people to work on it, so there's light at the end of the tunnel…

 

If you have two hands, and only one of them is holding the sword, you might as well have a second weapon. The most common companion weapon for the rapier is the dagger. Rapier and dagger fencing is fast, complex, and fun. In this workbook you will learn how to quickly develop the knack of parrying with the dagger while striking with the sword, using a series of games. You will then be taught a selection of rapier and dagger sequences from Capoferro’s Gran Simulacro, and develop from these sequences into freeplay.

We also cover the use of the cloak as a secondary weapon, drawing from Capoferro and Alfieri, teaching you how to use the cloak to parry attacks, to weigh down your opponent’s weapon before you attack, and even to blind them prior to running them through.

These workbooks are laid out in right-handed and left-handed versions, we recommend choosing the one that suits you. All technical exercises are shown in the videos for both right-handers and left-handers. You can buy the workbook from our distribution partner Fallen Rook Press:

Right Handed Layout

Left Handed Layout

Pro tip: use the coupon code PART4 to get 25% off!

[UPDATE:

ALL FIXED NOW. PrettyLink support staff went into the back-end of my site and got it done within a few hours of the problem being brought to my attention.]

Both my Rapier Workbook series and my Fiore Translation Project series depend on a system called PrettyLinks, where links in the text of the books direct through this website, and are redirected to the target video (or anywhere else). This means that I can update the video, and redirect the link, without having to change the book.

Awesome.

But while I was away on holiday, something happened and literally the entire list of pretty links, over 300 of them, disappeared from the site and stopped working. I have no idea what happened, but I have enlisted tech support, and even, ironically, upgraded to the ‘pro' version of the plugin to get access to their customer support.

Yes, I have backups. Yes, if necessary, I can recreate the entire fucking list by hand.

But we're currently working on other solutions…

The irony of giving the company money when their product has just trashed my publishing output for the last year is not lost on me. [see update though- money well spent]

Technology is awesome, isn't it?

I don't normally use my blog to spread other people's work or ideas; that's not what it's for. But every now and then I come across some things that are too cool, interesting, or important, to keep to myself.

Treatises available free online:

My friend Jaakko Tahkokallio is head of the special collection at the Helsinki National Library, and they have recently digitised their small but important collection of fencing treatises. You can find them here:

https://www.doria.fi/handle/10024/168836

Yes, the site is in Finnish (doh! it's a Finnish site!) but you should have no trouble clicking on images.

 

Sharpness and sharpening:

Secondly, I have been fascinated by sharpness and sharpening my whole life. Shiny sharp steel… oh my. If you don't know much about sharpening, the best book by far (though aimed at woodworkers) is Ron Hock's fabulous ‘The Perfect Edge‘. One of the things I love about the book is that he includes magnified images of the edges produced by various sharpening processes. If that sounds like your kind of thing, then you should also check out this blog: The Science of Sharp (from which I borrowed the image above).

Seriously geeky sharpening fun, which dispels many sharpening myths.

 

Benevolent Sexism:

This article, Benevolent Sexism & Chivalry: Tales From A Modern Medieval Warrior Woman, by Marie Vibbert tells the fascinating but awful story of how she got into armoured fighting in the SCA, and why she eventually quit.

https://www.argotmagazine.com/first-person-and-perspectives/benevolent-sexism-chivalry

It's not my place to tell the SCA what to do, but I think that every HMA instructor ought to read this, because it details the pitfalls of treating all fighters the same. It seems like a good and fair approach, but the results are anything but. Kaja Sadowski discusses the same problem from a different perspective in her fantabulous book Fear is the Mind Killer, which you must buy and read if you haven't already.