Consulting Swordsman
Guy Windsor Hi yesterday I sent an AMA email out to my mailing list, and got inundated with questions. The first two are answered in this video. https://youtu.be/V3i18qzPgEo I hope you like the intro-outro music. If you want to put questions to me, then join the list and drop me a line!
I’ve had my woodworking bench for twelve years now. It’s been a good workhorse, small enough to fit into my bijou little workshop spaces but big enough to be useful. It first lived in a corner in the old salle, then the tatami shed in the ‘new’ salle: then my garage in Ipswich, and now … Read more
We in the historical swordsmanship community are often asked about drawing the sword. I wrote a short chapter on it in my book Swordfighting. The chapter was short because there isn’t much information in the sources! I think this is because most sources are concerned with swordsmanship for the duel in a European culture, which … Read more
If you have been following The Fiore Translation Project from the beginning, you may recall that I gave myself permission to skip about in the treatise as the whimsy takes me. I had a nagging feeling that I ought to include the plays of the dagger against the sword, and the sword in the scabbard … Read more
The Fiore Translation Project is growing apace; I’m almost through the zogho largo section already. I compiled the translation, transcription, commentary and video clips for the Sword in One Hand plays into a pdf some time ago: you can get it free as a PDF by subscribing to my mailing list below this post. But … Read more
The seventh play of the sword in two hands in zogho largo punishes the opponent for offences against geometry. Pythagoras is widely credited with establishing the relationship between the lengths of the sides of a right angled triangle (though I think the Babylonians got there centuries earlier). In short, the square of the length of … Read more
As we saw in the 10th play of the Sword in One Hand, the solution to overwhelming force is to let it go by, while preventing it from following you. The “Peasant’s Blow”, or colpo di villano, does this by meeting the incoming sword and yielding to it, while stepping out of the way. This … Read more
A week after moving house I jetted off to Helsinki for the photo shoot for the German edition of The Duellist’s Companion, which is being published by Wieland (as was The Swordsman’s Companion, and The Medieval Longsword.) Somewhere in the mists of time the original photos for The Duellist’s Companion got lost, and as you … Read more
Back in the saddle again… It might be more accurate to say, ensconced in the new study and actually getting some work done instead of unpacking boxes… Sadly, no horses involved. Let’s continue where we left off, with the next two plays of the master of the zogho largo crossed at the middle of the … Read more
It’s been quite a month. I’ve spent half of it in the USA, and the other half moving house. Both of those projects went splendidly, but left very little room for anything like writing- even writing a blog post like this. I really ought to do a post-seminar-review-post for my first ever Boston seminar (the … Read more