Hi!

Safety in HMA

There has been an especially egregious rash of HMA injuries lately: one friend losing a chunk of her bicep through blunt force trauma; an internet-famous stabbing in a rapier tournament; a(nother) re-enactor getting a sword in their skull through an ocular (the eye-hole in a historical closed-face helmet). What do these all have in common? The idea that it’s the equipment that keeps you safe. I have two main takeaways:

1. Do not trust your equipment. Sport fencers can (these days, generally) because they are using incredibly light and very flexible weapons. It’s really difficult to put a lot of force into a target with a foil, epee, or sabre, but the move towards the sportification of HMA has lead to a similar idea of making the gear safe enough that you can just fight without regard to impact, like a sport fencer. Or a boxer. But boxers are famous for traumatic brain injuries…

There is no way to armour the human head well enough that it is safe to hit it multiple times with a steel bar. Full plate armour withstands a little; a Terry Tindill style mask withstands less. Something built on a fencing mask foundation withstands nothing. (Full marks if you can spot the precise Fiore reference there).

The only reasonably safe approach is to fence with control, so much so that a minor mishap can be absorbed by the equipment. There is no way to make it safe to hit someone hard with a four foot long steel bar. It doesn’t help matters that most modern fencing gauntlets don’t allow you to hold the sword correctly, which means that it’s almost impossible to control the impact except through gross motor control. It’s simply insane to expect to fence safely when you are not fully in control of your weapon.

2. Use plastic blunts on all swords. All of them. No exceptions unless you’re training with actual sharps. The penetration tests done by Historical Fencing Research confirmed what we’ve known for at least 15 years: blunt steel points, rolled points, etc. all go through whatever you put in front of them. (To be fair the bicep injury was not a thrust: tipping the sword would have made no difference. Striking with reasonable control would have made all the difference.)

Then, thrust with the flexibility of your weapon fully understood. If it’s very bendy, you can stab a bit harder. But only a bit.

The argument that blunts cause concussion is monstrously stupid. Even if they do increase the risk of concussion by some small amount, I’d rather have a mild concussion than four inches of steel inside my skin. And if the blade is hitting a mask hard enough to cause concussion, the problem is the level of force, not the slightly-more-sticky point making it a bit more likely that the force will be transferred into the mask.

The only exception I would make to this in competitive play is fencing in full (I mean, “mail voiders in the armpits” full) armour, with an unhistorical mesh inside the visor. Because if a point can slip through, eventually it will slip through. But even then I’d much rather see plastic points on the swords. So actually, no. Plastic points on armoured combat weapons too.

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What I’m Reading

I’m just back from a beach holiday, so I’ve got quite a lot of reading done…

The 15th life of Harry August, by Claire North is really interesting. It’s another take on immortality through being reborn in the same time and place as before, and getting to relive your life over and over. Which doesn’t sound like so much fun until you realise there are many others out there like you doing the same thing… and someone is killing them off. It’s not sci-fi, fantasy, or horror, so I’m not sure what genre I’d put it in, but it’s well worth a read.

I followed that with re-reading David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks. It’s awesome. It reads sort of like a series of short stories, with a strong narrative thread running through it. This was the third time I’ve read it, so that’ll tell you what I really think! It involves magic of a sort, and a bunch of decent immortals trying to stop the evil immortals from harvesting people to gain their immortality. I’m not selling it well, but if you can stomach a bit of magic with your storytelling, it’s definitely worth a try.

I’ve read M.R. Carey’s Book of Koli trilogy at least twice, so thought I’d try his new Infinity Gate. It’s classic sci-fi in which there are billions of multi-verse Earths, some of which can interact. It’s by far the most interesting play on the multiverse-hopping idea, and the only criticism I have of this one is that it’s volume 1 of a series, and the rest aren’t out yet. But I want to know what happens next!! That’s not to say the book doesn’t resolve its main plot arc, but I want more time with these characters.

Given how much I liked Claire North’s Harry August, I went for her series of short novels combined into one book, Gameshouse. The plane was delayed on the way home today so I got through the first two, and they are a) completely different to Harry, and b) beautifully written. As well as being a compelling idea- a kind of magical casino in which the advanced players play in real life for weird and wonderful prizes. Hide and Seek with the whole of Thailand as your hiding options? Yes please. Shenanigans in 16th century Venice? absolutely.

Holidays!

I’m still on holiday: a road trip with daughter #2 starts this weekend, so I’ll be much less responsive than usual. If you’re having technical trouble with a product you’ve bought (logging in to a course, for example), please send a message to help@swordschool.com which will be monitored. Anything else, please be patient; I’ll be back at my keyboard around the 25th.

cheers,

Guy