Medieval/Renaissance Dagger demo

[MA-Caver]

MA-Caver: I understand your reluctance to grab a knife blade. This is only sensible. But to reject it out of hand as disabling in all cases goes against the weight of the evidence.

First, you assume an incorrect method of performing the disarm. You don’t grab the blade and pull. As you note, pulling on the blade more likely than not will cause your hand to slide along the edge. You will then be cut, no doubt about it. I have students who, in their enthusiasm, try this method all the time. When that happens, I usually trot out a live blade, put it in their hands, and ask them if they want to continue with that nonsense.

No, the way to do it is clear from the old manuals: either put pressure on the flat, or if you cannot do that, press against the edge and rotate the point toward the forearm. Either way, the weapon will pop out of the bad guy’s hand and you stand a better than 50 pct chance (more like 70, I think) of not being cut. If you had read my previous post, you would understand that we have subjected this technique to empirical analysis and experiment.

Second, your post disregards the established medical evidence. While you can be grievously wounded by a deep cut on the hand, you can fight on. The medical and historical literature documents many such instances. For instance, in Spada 2, p. 10, Swinney and Crawford recount a knife attack in which the victim managed a blade grab defense despite suffering serious debilitating injury which one of the authors observed first hand:

A 27 year old female was attacked by her husband with a type of serrated butcher knife. She was knocked to the floor where her husband sat on her abdomen and repeatedly attempted to stab her in the neck and chest. Despite her incredibly vulnerable position, the patient fended off multiple stab wounds, repeatedly grabbing the butcher knife by the blade. Her larger attacker repeatedly jerked the blade from her grasp inflicting multiple severe hand wounds.
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Ultimately, the patient managed to wrench the extremely sharp serrated butcher knife from her assailant by the blade. She shen made her escape and called for help.

During the attack, the patient sustained seventeen separate wounds to the fronts and backs of her hands and lost the grasping function in three of her fingers due to tendon lacerations. In performing a through examination of her hands, I noted that the patient was also unable to flex her superficially injured right small finger.

When asked, the patient sheepishly explained that the LAST time her husband had tried to stab her with a butcher knife (several months before), she had taken the knife away from by the blade much sooner.

As illustrated, even severe tendon lacerations may not keep an injured bare hand from being used to disarm an opponent employing the blade grabbing technique.
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Because knife defense is surrounded by so many urban legends which people pass on as gospel technique, it is imperative that any claim or teaching be soundly grounded in the facts.

Yeah, okay.

 

[Cryozombie]

FWIW, when that question comes up, I have seen demos in our Dojo where my teacher trots out a live blade, does a blade grab defense that we use, and asks the student holding the handle to pull the blade from his hand. In the 5 years I have been training with him, I have seen him get cut once, and it was a superfical cut, which happened (like most of our minor accidents) when he was demonstrating how NOT to do it.

There is a definate technique, (and almost a trick to it) but if done right its hard to get cut as I have seen first hand numerous times.

 

[arnisador]

This is not a high-margin-of-error technique and I'd be loathe to use it, but it can work and with a knife you're in a bad spot anyway!

Here's a grab-the-blade success story. Here's another. Neither were martial artists, and both suffered non-trivial injuries.

 

[hafoc]

This is not a high-margin-of-error technique and I'd be loathe to use it, but it can work and with a knife you're in a bad spot anyway!

Here's a grab-the-blade success story. Here's another. Neither were martial artists, and both suffered non-trivial injuries.

Thanks for sharing.

 

[Jeff Richardson]

Those are rondells. Travis is correct in this, they were made for punching through chain usually. Triangular cross section blades that are mostly intended for thrusting and only really sharp enough in many cases to discourage grabbing with a bare hand. Heck sometimes a rondel was even just a big round spike.

As long as the blade does not slide in your hand it won't do much damage.

 

[lklawson]

According to pictoral evidence, Rondells were carried as a general belt knife even when unarmored.

There has be a great deal of specualtion on why this was. The speculation that I (personally) favor most is that the Little Ice Age saw people wearing a lot of heavy clothing which is far easier to penetrate with that type of blade configuration in a thrust as opposed to slashing or chopping with some other sort of knife.

I'm sure there was also a solid element of social trend to it as well.

Peace favor your sword,
Kirk

 

[Langenschwert]

The guys at MEMAG have also put out a video of some of their dagger stuff... a lot of Talhoffer in there for the interested.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1M4nqBb0sQ&feature=channel_page

Best regards,

-Mark

 

[chinto]

of course they work! the men who developed them were looking at use of bladed weapons every day! the men who wrote the manuals and trained men at arms of the period dealt in death by the blade, dagger, spear axe sword or knife on the battle field or in the street. The unarmed techniques of the western european in 1500 was as developed as any thing in asia is now or was then.

 

[arnisador]

Yes, but it's a legitimate question as to how well we understand the techniques from (only) the manuals.