Cutting Day 2009

 

With our newly arrived and very cherished Albion live blades in hand and after a few small informal cutting sessions within our group we decided to host an open cutting day where we invited every sword practitioner we thought might be interested in joining us. We held the gathering at my home and shop in Brookline, VT on october 25th.

(As an aside, I thought our signs placed along the road to get here were awesome.)

 

Attendance was good and an educational and fun time was had by all.

Next year we intend to cast an even wider net in the hopes of collaborating with the many longsword schools around New England.

 

Our targets were Mugen Dachi tatami mats and bamboo poles from 3/4" to 1.5" in width. Some of the mats were wrapped around the bamboo.

 

The most interesting portion of the day was when we wrapped old T-shirts around a single mat and tried cutting. It is impressive how much a simple layer of cloth resists cutting. We then strapped on small sections of gambeson material consisting of cotton batting quilted between layers of mid-weight linen. At that point most of our sword cuts failed to cut entirely through (though some of the larger knives made it without issue). We finished off by adding a layer of 5-6oz. leather on top of all of our cloth at which point even penetrating the "armour" became difficult with straight blades, let alone cutting into the mat itself. This is likely due in part to the lack of rigidity in our targets but hints towards the effectiveness of even "light" armour in resisting cuts. See a picture of the target here.

 

It was a very interesting experiment that will likely become a regular feature at our cutting days in the future.

 

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