Reddit Reddit reviews The Art of the Dueling Sabre

We found 4 Reddit comments about The Art of the Dueling Sabre. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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4 Reddit comments about The Art of the Dueling Sabre:

u/olorin1984 · 4 pointsr/wma

Hi, where are you located? The nice thing about sabre is that it is still a living tradition, and there are a lot of people around that can teach it to you. Depending on where you are, you could probably learn quite a lot from a modern club. Ideally though, you'd probably get more out of a more classically-oriented group because sabre has changed a lot in recent years, and a lot of things that will be useful for heavier weight sabres (circular cuts, low line parries, expulsions, etc...) aren't really used anymore.

I was trained in classical Italian sabre, which is well documented and still has a living tradition. The earliest basis for this system comes from Radaelli, who method was written down by Settimo Del Frate and recently translated by Chris Holzman, who added a lot of his own material that would help someone get started. You can get it here:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Dueling-Sabre-Christopher-Holzman/dp/0978902262

Masaniello Parise also wrote about sabre in his book from 1883, and while his book was chosen to be the basis of all military training, most people preferred Radaelli's method, and he ended up hiring a number of his students to teach at the newly formed Scuola Magistrale in Rome. Some of those students, Pecoraro and Pessina cowrote their own book on sabre which was basically Radaelli's system but with an organization more consistent with what was already being taught in Rome. Barbasetti, also did something similar. Unfortunately, Parise's and Pecoraro's and Pessina's book haven't been translated to English yet. Barbasetti's book is available in English (http://medievalswordmanship.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/the-art-of-the-sabre-and-the-epee.pdf)

My training came through Maestro William Guagler's (who trained under Pessina's son, Giorgio and was a graduate of the program in Rome) program which was based on this same method. The sabre in his book, The Science of Fencing (http://www.amazon.com/The-Science-Fencing-Comprehensive-Instruction/dp/1884528058) , is very similar to Pecoraro and Pessina's book and is an excellent overview of the theory. If you look at this one, Barbasetti, and Chris's translation, you can get a pretty good picture of what 19th century Italian sabre would have been like.

u/mmhg · 3 pointsr/wma

I have a pair of these sabers (one each of the Radaellian and Hutton guard styles) and have been using them for the past year in my local classical fencing club as we studied the Radaellian school of Italian duelling saber. The Darkwood sabers are much lighter than a heavy cavalry saber, but are close enough to the 20 oz weight mentioned in Holzman's book to be effective for learning the style. The blade is not a great replica of Radaelli's preferred blade as the curve of the Darkwood blades is closer to the tip than the center and is not quite deep enough to match the descriptions given in the book. Holzman discusses the weight and shape of the blade with more context in this thread. The swords are holding up moderately well after a year of use. I found that the blades tended to loosen significantly in the assembled hilt, and required quite a bit of tightening. You can see the protrusion of the threaded tang on the Radaelli hilt in this photo. We spar in standard fencing gear (mask, jacket, plastron, glove) and supplement only with soft elbow guards and occasionally forearm guards. The blades leave some nice bruises, but we've had no serious injuries. We primarily fight these blades against each other, or similar sabers like the Hanwei Hutton, although some of our younger fencers use sport saber blades as they are significantly lighter. The sabers have held up relatively well(edge on top) after a year of use (with regular deburring), although they are showing signs of wear. For the price I think the amount of wear is reasonable considering we practiced 3-4 hours per week with them, although I imagine they would hold up a little less with regular use against heavier sabers.

My personal view is that these are acceptable, relatively affordable duelling sabers, but they could do with a significant amount of improvement. The blades, as previously mentioned, could be made to more closely represent the specifications indicated in Radaelli's original work. It is worth noting that the bell on the Radelli style is wider than that on the Hutton, although the top of the guard on the Hutton protrudes more (see previous image). The edges of the bell guard tend to notch and need to be regularly deburred. Rolling these edges or using slightly thicker steel would help here. I'm not a huge fan of the nylon-wrapped grip, finding it slippery against a leather glove, although it's not hard to rewrap with grip tape or some other cord. I do like the size of the grip though. It's wider than the Hanwei, and is easy to keep in hand even when the blade takes a beating. On the Radaellian-style guard, I find that the ring tends to get beat a little out of shape with heavy use - especially as the base of the ring is not fixed, but slides through a small riveted assembly. Fixing the ring would provide more structural support and would deform less. I also would like to see the rounded heel of the grip that the Hanwei saber has. I agree with the reviewer that the blades could be stiffer. These are decent sabers considering the alternatives, but they could be improved. I hope that as the HEMA, WMA, and classical fencing communities grow, that we will see more vendors offering swords of this type and time period.

tl;dr: some historical inaccuracies and with room for improvement, but recommend as good weapons for classical fencers especially considering the lack of affordable alternatives

u/TheNewDavout · 1 pointr/wma

Chris Holzman's book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Dueling-Sabre-Christopher-Holzman/dp/0978902262

https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Art-of-the-Dueling-Sabre/219564354782848

The facebook page even has some videos of Chris teaching from it. A very good book, and very well defined system.

u/thoughthorizon · 1 pointr/wma

I'd avoid synthetics in general, especially anything rawlings - they're just too slippery and flex in strange ways, so you end up training some bad habits. If you're insistent upon synthetics, though, just get blackfencers.

If you're wiling to pick up steel trainers, the darkwood armories hutton sabre are pretty good for the price, though you'll need to fit them with some kind of button/point protection.

In terms of sources, if you've done Olympic sabre then Hutton dovetails nicely into a lot of what you've already done. He also has some nice drills in there which go back and forth between fencers. From Hutton you can also trace backward in time through Waite and Roworth, so you can basically follow a continuing "style" back to an era and style you find that suits you.

Radaelli is interestic and has some noteworthy stylistic differences; especially the backward passing steps for low guards. The definitive resource for the style is:

http://www.amazon.com/Art-Dueling-Sabre-Christopher-Holzman/dp/0978902262

Then there's the polish etc. which have already been mentioned, which is much earlier period and uses a different style of blade and hilt entirely (so you'd need training weapons specific to that purpose).