Hi,

Over the last couple of weeks I have been diving into the “organise The Sword Guy material” project. It really needs a better working title. I’m leaning towards “Lessons from The Sword Guy”, what do you think?

It is turning into a much harder project than I anticipated. It turns out 2.4 million words is a bit much for most search functions to actually search reliably! I had to learn how to generate a markup file of all 200 or so transcripts. And even then, given that most people don’t talk in reliable search terms, it can be quite tricky to find the relevant bits from the relevant interviews. The goal is to turn five years of conversations with historians, swordsmiths, martial artists and authors into practical guides on topics like improving freeplay, learning faster, or writing better fight scenes.

It would help to make a firm decision on exactly which topic to produce for the first issue, and exactly what format each issue will take. It’s not really in my nature to think a project through in detail, then act on it. I tend to just figure out the first step, do that, and then work from there. So designing a format or template for all (probably) 30 issues that will work for all topics is really difficult.

What would you like to see?

Parry like it’s 1482!

I mentioned new t-shirt designs last time… mine is here!

You probably recall I’ve got a new book out, the companion volume to the Vadi facsimile. And I mentioned that my daughter created sketches of all the images in the treatise, to get around pesky Italian copyright contrarianism. The excellent Katie Mackenzie took one of those sketches, coloured it in, and created awesome t-shirts from the results. You can get your own (in a range of colours) by clicking on the link below:

You can parry like it’s 1482… or lunge like it’s 1763 with the:

Foundations of Smallsword Webinar

I’m very much looking forward to tomorrow evening: Smallsword Mechanics for the Win! (Not the official webinar title).

Every martial art is a way of moving and a set of tactical preferences. The tactical preferences require safety equipment and a training partner, but you can train the way of moving alone, with little or no gear.

You can sign up below for access to the live classes, and a 20-page class handout which includes the relevant images and text from The School of Fencing. I’ll also email out the zoom links to all attendees on the day.

Foundations of Smallsword: The Mechanics of Domenico Angelo’s School of Fencing

This class is designed for solo practice. No partner is required (or previous experience: beginners are welcome!).

To make the workshop accessible across multiple time zones, it will be taught twice:

• Saturday July 4th, 7pm UK time
• Saturday July 11th, 8am UK time

Register once and attend either session or both. All registered participants will receive recordings of both classes.

I’ve spent quite a bit of time working on the technical set-up so that those coming live will get the best possible video and audio, and it can also be recorded locally (because Zoom will drastically reduce the resolution before transmitting it). The recordings will be in full HD shot with an excellent camera, and the sound recorded with a lavalier mike. This will not be the usual crappy webinar recording, it’ll be the same technical quality as on my online courses.

This is the first time I’m using this set-up, so it could all go horribly wrong. If that happens, we’ll record the crappy zoom video, and I’ll re-shoot the whole thing in HD etc. and add that to the package.

New on The Sword Guy: Forging Swords in the Steel City, with Katie McCats

In this episode I’m with Katie McCats, who is a sword maker, historical cutler and co-founder of Crucible Armoury in Sheffield, England, possibly England's youngest armoury company.

Katie got into making swords through a traineeship at Lancaster Armoury, after leaving a career in the NHS, and along with fellow trainee Horatio, they set up Crucible Armoury in Sheffield, with Katie doing the blades and Horatio doing the armour.

We talk about making different types of crazy swords, running a profitable business, how blades were made before power tools, and the dream business of creating an armoury within a pub (or a pub within an armoury).

Thanks for reading, and do let me know what you think of the “Lessons from the Sword Guy” project.

yours,

Guy
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