A thoughtful question from Affiliate Rough ‘n’ Tumble Coach Mitch
Mitchell prompted me to offer the following advice regarding these two common items
of frontier weaponry.
First, the part of Coach Mitchell’s Question/Observation that
prompted what follows.
“Am I on the right track or holding my danged knife wrong?
Bowie designs are manifold. My personal preference falls toward a
flat spine knife with a half-guard because a spine-side guard or broken spine
jams up my thumb on a sincere stab in sabre grip. For me anyway, a nice,
straight, full-power stab with a hammer grip on the high line is impossible and
anyway it's is a wrist killer.”
His observation/complaint is common and one that leads to wisdom.
I will also point out that to discover that certain tactics and
grips are wrist killers can only be garnered via experience, that is, hard post
training.
If we stick with mirror play, shadow play, or tit for tat [zumbrada]
flow drills with a partner using mocks we would likely never stumble on the realities
of certain tactics.
Good on you, Coach Mitchell. Train real to find real.
On to my replied two-bits with an expansion.
·
Trade-knife
designs were myriad.
·
Tomahawk
designs were myriad.
·
That
is, beyond a knife being a knife and a ‘hawk being a ‘hawk, smooth machine produced
mass-manufactured perfectly weighted commercial ‘hawks and blades for the particular
purpose of combat was a rarity.
·
You
had a variety of designs and weights, lengths, guards, depth of back cut [or
none at all] etc.
·
One
had to be able to be facile with a variety of weapon/tool interfaces and to
fall into a “This is MY carry” mindset is to miss the point of
these historical items.
·
Blades
were tools first and foremost. Cutting rope, making fuzz sticks for campfires,
skinning game and all the myriad purposes of frontier survival.
·
The
blade as a weapon was a rarity and/or hoped for way down the list choice of
use.
·
The
same goes for the tomahawk, which we must never forget is first and foremost a
hatchet or camp ax. As in the case of trade-knives, it was a tool used daily
and one that was hoped never to be used in martial matters.
·
Today
we invert the tool choice pyramid and choose ‘hawks and blades for “cool
martial presentation” and wouldn’t dare dull their sheen on quotidian matters.
·
With
the eye on historical accuracy in mind, yes, I have pretty toys that I do not
ding, but I have a wide variety of fair-to-middlin’ but all mighty functional
blades and hatchets I’ve acquired in antique shops.
·
I
find it wise to use them as the tools they were intended to be AND to train martial
aspects with these self-same variously weighted, disparately lengthed tools to
find what tactics shake out as being in common across all tool/weapon interfaces
and thus of high utility, and what are specific to a single weapon—these tactics
need to be culled by my way of thinking.
·
Go
with the blade you dig in your own hand.
·
Toss
tactics that jam, hurt, or make you simply feel uncomfy for if, God
forbid, you ever had to do it for real, you won't do it with conviction.
forbid, you ever had to do it for real, you won't do it with conviction.
·
It's
perfectly OK to not know or use every trick in the book.
·
It's
never OK to keep things just to feel complete or check off a list.
Never lose sight of the fact that tomahawks were hatchets, knives
were
knives. They were used for work and fighting was blip on the radar.
knives. They were used for work and fighting was blip on the radar.
Today we buy expensive toys for fake fighting and lose sight of daily
utility.
[For techniques, tactics,
and strategies of Rough and Tumble Combat, Old-School Boxing, Mean-Ass
Wrestling, Street-Ready Frontier Scrapping & Indigenous Ability culled from
the historical record see the RAW Subscription Service, or stay on the corral
fence with the other dandified dudes and city-slickers. http://www.extremeselfprotection.com
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