Effectiveness of flexible blades?

Wai Jia: The Kung Fu Forum Southern Chinese Kung Fu
21

flimsy swords

I’m with both FT and Ego.

I like the sound, the way it pops if you put ging into it, the way is whistles through the air, but other than that, they are worthless weapons, great for demos and wu-shu kind of stuff, but “Apparatus” as someone said earlier. I would find it hard to believe they aren’t an invention of our generation for sport.

Granted, the Chinese have a long history of metalurgy, but look at other weapons of the past, Damascus Scimitars, Samuri Swords, English Broadswords… Not lots of flexible technology, but some really hard steel…

Dao are mass produced military weapons, not handcrafted pieces like Japanese Katana, is that accurate? Gim were the masters’ pieces, aristocratic…

The “Dragon” brand, so common worldwide are pretty good. I’ve never seen two exactly the same though…between us we have two sets of doubles, and 3 singles and a chrome plated one. Granted the Doubles match their partner, but the sets are different size and wt, the 3 singles are all different and the plated one is yet different again.

The plated ones are nice and heavy <grin>. We have a double width “executioners” sword that is really f-ing heavy, and it has holes in it so it sings. Training heavy is my preference. A cricket bat makes a good option.

As for application, it goes beyond the weapon. It comes down to your skills. A cane can be used like a Dao, a shovel like a Kwan Dao, or a mob (I’m thinking Jackie Chan here…)

Mushashi, the Japanese hero swordsman, fought challenges with odd things; with a wooden sword, a oar , a stick as well as a Katana. Thats part of his mythology. The skill was within him, not the weapon.

Anybody ever seen a flimsy Kwan Dao?

22

yum cha

yes, ive seen a flimsy kwan dao in compitions! not a good look..:slight_smile:

long time no see or hear? redneck has gone home now, back to normal life.hehehe

later
GARRY

23

Red Neck

LOL…yea, you got a little more peace and quiet now, eh?

M

24

Hey Ego,

That is the first time I’ve seen Babaylon 5 and Darn Do mentioned in the same sentence man. You must put some crazy stuff on your cornie flakes for breakfast :smiley: Must be that crazy Bak Siulum your on :wink:

There is historical records japanese blades were imported at one stage by the chinese, but not for all the soldiers. Also, a text exists in china and japan, •Œ|}•ˆ’ÊŽu, which depicts chinese warriors training with jin, do and japanese blades. More stuff for you that you never needed to know!

BTW, does anyone know who the best chinese swordmakers were north and south?

SF

25

Fiercetiger:

Is that a multiple choice question? If so it is a trick question. The answer depends on who is nominated to be captain of the ship.

I don’t have a heavy sword or a flimsy sword. I used to train with a metal pipe. Hey how often would you be carrying a broad sword around. Maybe to the YKM convention, like I will carry a phase pistol to a Star Trek convention.

Yum Cha:

You know what. I wish companies like Nike go into sword making. Imagine with the technology today. Yeah… for extra weight and strength, my broadsword will be woven strands of depleated uranium, titanium and carbon fibres. Perhaps the cutting edge should be of smart nano tech material. It would sense my rise in chi as I detect danger and go extra sharp. Otherwise it would saty blunt for training purposes.

My sword would be a reserve weapon, the weapon of choice will be none other than a Q switched, mode locked, solid state laser that emits an intense pulse of light just above infrared spectrum. Also made by Nike!

Sing Fu:

I’m on the good stuff man!

26

Flexible blades are used in dueling, and then only the strait sword or gim. Im speaking mainly form an internal arts perspective as thats where my blade work lies.

This is very similar to western fencing and the use of the blade is actualy quite similar as well. A lot of thrusting parrying tight circling with active footwork. With a slightly flexible blade extra touque and speed can be added to the strikes which can enable attacks to come from odd angles and with odd effects.

The reasons i say this is a dueling weapon are obvious, in this situation such things can be advantages in skilled hands. See olympic style fencing if you wish further reference. On the battle feild however we all know that same western fencer would stand little chance against a English Knight weilding a double handed claymore and in full armour.
Who ever said that these blades are for horse back riding should really do a little research. Infact most strait blades where basicaly frowned upon as battlefield weapons including gims of basicaly any varity.
If you wish ill be brutal as to why :smiley:

When you cut with a strait sword if you actualy make good impact the sword my stick in bone. If you then wish to withdraw your sword you will need to yank it towards your self in a slicing motion to actualy get your opponent off your blade. If you yank it the opposite direction its unlikely it will actualy come out cleanly, You need to litteraly cut your blade out. In a battle this is useless as by then someone else would have taken your head off. When strait thrusts are used there is also a strong chance of suction on the blade causing a delay with removing it. A skilled swordsman may twist the blade slightly on impact to make a little ‘room’ but not all are skilled.

Hence typicaly you do one of three things in battle.
1 You either make the blade shorter and thicker for use in one hand usualy with a shield.
2 You make the blade thicker and two handed allowing you to ‘hopefully’ cut right through.
3 Most effectively of all, you just curve the darn blade - see samurai swords and dao broadswords.
If the blade is curved you alliveate nearly all of the problems that arise when you actualy ‘cut’ something. You can notice most cooking knifes have some sort of curve to them for the exact same reason.

Strait long one handed blades of any sort are poor in battle.
Strait one handed long soft blades can be very usefull in dueling if you know what your doing with them.
The idea of trying to cut inbetween armour slots with a soft blade has to be the most rediculous thing ive heard for a while.

27

Jon,

Thanks for your insights - the necessities of the battlefield opposed to the speed and agility of dueling certainly earn the do and gim their titles of ‘soldiers’ and ‘gentlemens’ weapons. Keep it coming!:slight_smile:

28

Jon

HELLO MATE,

I have a Gim that is thick and real and i also have another one that is still thick but has some flexability but not much, but still a very nice weight, its pretty used and old looking but its not like wushu flimsy.:slight_smile:

Ego,

I think you have been smoking to much Opium in your pipe dude! What hung gar masters was on the red boat?:slight_smile:

FT:p

29

Thanks for the good oil Jon. Makes a lot of sense.

Ego, I kinda like the light sabre myself…“Don’t make Yoda drop his cane!”

Piece of pipe works for me…baseball bat. Broken pool cue even has a point…

Anybody out there fight with the short sticks? How different is that to a Dao, or two…

30

Yummy

All sword forms have the figure 8 and and what i call the X’s small and large, which has the disarms and slicing methods etc

Very similar to the Kali or escrima i suppose i never have done it but they have a heaven and earth drill that looks like alot of YKM type sword/blade work. Not to mention all the angles like on a clock or baqua that the blade weapons follow.:slight_smile:

FT

31

I almost fell off my chair laughing reading the good points to ‘flexi-blades’.

I am blushing at the fact that I must agree with my mortal enemy Ego Extrodinaire or the north on this one.

You should all be ashamed at yourselves for even discussing those foil toys as if they were real weapons. They are TOYS. They are for practice and exhibition with NO martial use whatsoever.

In old China there were no floppy blades because they hadn’t figured out how to make aluminum implements yet. There were flexible weapons but they are used COMPLETELY differently. The jian is flexible the way sprung steel is flexible. It won’t snap. It isn’t brittle. It can bend. A samurai katana is also flexible. You can take a good one place the flat of the blade on one persons shoulder and the handle on you own and pull down on the blade. It will bend and then snap back into shape, but it is HARD to bend it.

Fiercest Tiger,

Ego may be an idiot about Hung Gar and fighting but he seems to be up on his history. I get confused my self about the red boat guys. Opera singers or something. I thought they were wing chun guys but Hong could easily be mistaken to mean red. (the same sound, different characters)

32

FT:

They all were on the same boat. They got the students to do static stances and practiced with flexi weapons so they didn’t do harm to others or themselves.

I used to train with a metal pipe I found in a construction yard. Than the cops saw me training in the field near the kids play ground. It was a cold winters day so I had a black jumper on and a balaclava. I got arrested and it was quite an embaressing incident.

Jon:

You’re right, the straight sword is much better for duelling. Much faster weapon to deploy. But the metellaulogy in China at that stage was such that they also weren’t as reliable for heavy chopping. In fact you don’t want to do that with a straight sword. In battle best to have a broad sword. I would love to have a team of archers on my side to soften up the opposition first. It’s always good to have a few easy kills to warm up and get the adrinaline flowing as you ride on through and chop down the stragglers.

omarthefish:

So you’ll play along again! Yes you’re right, there is a bit of flex in those straight swords, but not so flexible that it resambles doing the ribbon dance like some of those wu shu chics do. I think we agree on this point.

I’m also right on the points about Hung Gar. The cramped hulls of those boats didn’t have much head room. So the had wide open hirse stances. Didn’t train too hard because imagine 40 guys training so hard - all that sweat would stink the place out.

33

Namecalling, Ego? How absolutely childish.
Well, sir, I got my information from a number of historical references, up to and including actual demonstrations performed ON horseback, displaying how spring steel and other flexible blades cut through people much more effectively. I guess actually seeing it in action doesn’t qualify as fact with you. Well, how about this. Why don’t you, oh great harbinger of wisdom, hop in a horse, and go running full speed at a dummy with a good, thick blade. And be sure to get a picture of you holding that blade bent at a 90 degree angle once you get dismounted. btw… can you even ride a horse?
The katana was not made for high speed horseback strikes, and neither were a number of large blades.
I’m not suggesting the blade be a slinky, but I AM saying you need a flexible blade for high speed horseback strikes. Simple physics.

Drake~

34

Drake,

I’m really interested in historical chinese warfare - if you wouldn’t mind, could you point me to any references regarding weapons and tactics on the battlefield? I’d appreciate it.

You were talking about the japanese sword being/not being used on the battlefield. While most of the sword we see today is either katana or tachi (both generally standing unarmoured/armoured weapons), generals did wear tachi and some schools still transmit the tactics for their use - though not as a charging weapon.

The nature of Japanese warfare meant that horses weren’t in the majority on the battlefield, so charges or hit-and-run attacks like we might have seen with mongolian tactics weren’t that common. That said, I think the likelyhood ‘do’ techniques as we know them today were formulated into the sets we see after feudal times is pretty high.

Another thought - is it possible flexible blades are the product of the peking opera?

35

Sing fu:

You’ll be correct to say that flexi-swords are the product of chinese opera. No one in their right mind would bring an aluminium foil to a battle field against cold hard steel. Make sense?

The Japanese sure had horses, they had equivalents of halbards (Kwon dos) for charging. They had the bow and arrow. Japanese steel is very tough, much tougher than a chinese broadsword but slower to deploy - 2 handed weapon. It could easily slice through armour of that time. You need a good solid cutting edge that is curved, not a foil. That is physics my friend, to think otherwise is foily (folly) or in Darke’s case a Goose, nucklehead or what ever name I decide to call him.

Drake: you are a fool.

36

Ego: you are a troll

37

Ego

You know that Idian style that wear the nappies and have a long flexible sword? The swrod they use isnt strong but like a coiled spring!!:slight_smile:

Can ego be right here?:eek:

Lol peace
FT:)

38

Too Rigid and it will break, too flexible and it’ll bend.

Swords have a balance to them.

Chinese broadswords in the ‘traditional’ sense were and are much heavier and more solid than that which most are acquainted with.

Japanese steel for a time had superior quality for a time than the average sword (but specialised chinese swords were and are still fantastic). In fact the Spaniards had excellent blades as well.

Chinese straight swords were also not as flexible or light and thin as the typically found sword nowadays. Each sword " form " to some only means new techniques but in reality every well known sword was meant to be used with a specifically designed sword: as examples - Kwun Wu Jian, Chao Yang Jian, Ba Xian Jian, Miao Dao, TaiHe Jian etc are differently made swords with there techniques associated with the actual design and balance etc…of the weapon. Each tool a use the ultimate tool is suited for the individual.

Regards
Wu Chan Long

PS : The Kalarayapiyat flexible blades are used more like a whip than as a cutting instrument/mechanism, so it is a different category of weapon it is more akin to the Whip, Chain whip and the like…with its own special qualities.

39

shaolin master

yes kalari use that spring sword and use it like a whip!

cheers
FT

40

Blade technology

I’m no metalurgist, but sword steel is one of early man’s great endeavours. It seems mankind is always taken to its limits by warfare.

Most everybody knows that the a Japanese Katana masterwork was metal pounded out, folded, pounded out, folded, etc, over and over. Perhaps hundreds of times? This gave the blade the required strength and flexibility to become the fearsome weapon it is. As SM said, too hard and it was brittle, and would break, too flexible and it couldn’t hold an edge, and would bend.

American Cavalry Sabres were softer steel, flexible to take the impact of a slash from horseback, and they distorted incredibly durning those fractions of a second, without breaking. But they didnt hold much of an edge, not like a Katana.

I’ve always been intrigued by Damascus Steel, the steel used in the scimitars of the Muslims that fought the crusaiders. It was said to be able to cut right through the Western European (English?) Armour. I’m working on loose memory traces here, but I seem to remember that they have analysed these relics and found carbon threads in them (as in modern high-carbon steel) yet they can’t reproduce them to this day, and some that are a thousand years old still carry their original edge.

I suspect that the Crusaiders broadswords were probably of the incredibly heavy variety that would smash through anything, like a Kwan Do.

I have seen some links to beautiful old Chinese Gim, but I suspect the steel was rather primitive, as with the Do. I would like to get my hands on a “Real” Do, but I’ve heard that the “Dragon” variety you buy these days is employed in the street to this day on occasion.

I know the “3 Musketeers” weapon, the epey (sp?) was basically a rod with a sharp end. It was solid enough it could parry a broadsword, not like the fencing foils of today. I would guess it was a bit flexible…

So SM, what was the story with the Spanish swords? As used by the New World Explorers, or?

I always liked the “Highlander” movies / series because it had different sword types used by the various characters, not that their technique was particularly significant, but then again, I’m not that particular <grin>.

That’s my brain dump, hope its interesting.