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The Hobbit Hole XXXVI - O! Water cold we may pour at need...

Posted on 05/03/2008 8:48:06 AM PDT by HairOfTheDog

Welcome to The Hobbit Hole!

Sing hey! for the bath at close of day
That washes the weary mud away!
A loon is he that will not sing:
O! Water Hot is anoble thing!

O! Sweet is the sound of falling rain.
and the brook that leaps from hill to plain;
but better than rain or rippling streams
is Water Hot that smokes and steams.

O! Water cold we may pour at need
down a thirsty throat and be glad indeed;
but better is Beer, if drink we lack,
and Water Hot poured down the back.

O! Water is fair that leaps on high
in a fountain white beneath the sky;
but never did fountain sound so sweet
as splashing Hot Water with my feet!

See also: http://freeper.the-hobbit-hole.net

Web page for our moot reports and troop support information!





TOPICS: The Hobbit Hole
KEYWORDS: aprilbabyhobbit; bahfailedagain; coldshower; congratulations; icanhaspopcorn; icanhazbaby; inoticed; lastkittehstanding; newthreadsmell; saintisidorehelpus; verysubtlehobbitses; weretheycatholic; willtheynotice
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To: Corin Stormhands

Yes, I think that qualifies ;~)


4,781 posted on 08/19/2008 8:11:55 PM PDT by HairOfTheDog
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To: Corin Stormhands

Particularly the hat.


4,782 posted on 08/19/2008 8:12:31 PM PDT by HairOfTheDog
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To: HairOfTheDog; ecurbh; 300winmag
Just so you don't even think of it (and you probably wouldn't want to anyway... really...) here's the next couple of things on my shopping list, and I'll probably get them in the next month or so...

There's lots of sword makers out there. Most of them are pretty bad, including a couple that I already own. In those cases I let my enthusiasm get in front of my knowledge. It happens.

There's swordsmiths around that make one-of-a-kind masterpieces that are simply far better than anything off the shelf, but nobody (and that would include me) can afford them. They start at several thousand and go up from there. Some reach deep into five figures. I'm not going there. Ever. That would be silly.

But there's one "off the shelf" sword maker that stands head and shoulders above all the others. Nobody else is even close. They make stuff that's simply astounding for the price. I've gotten the chance to handle a couple of them and they just come alive in your hand. Very different. Obvious excellence. That's "Albion Swords".

So here's your Tuesday night sword pron.

First is the "blunt" I want for practice. The "Liechtenauer", named for the German master that formed the basis of most known early longsword technique. I've handled a couple of these and they're just magic:

Next is the "sharp", along the same line but not for practice:

The "Baron". Just... nice.

I've been eyeing this next one for weeks, and almost pulled the trigger a couple of times. Now I see that it's sold out and I'm really bummed. They're all made in limited editions and I waited too long:

The Valkyrja. Dang it. Missed it by -> <- that much. It really is an exceptional piece.

4,783 posted on 08/19/2008 8:30:12 PM PDT by Ramius (Personally, I give us... one chance in three. More tea?)
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To: HairOfTheDog; Corin Stormhands

The hat is particularly over the top.

The boots might work. :-)


4,784 posted on 08/19/2008 8:31:43 PM PDT by Ramius (Personally, I give us... one chance in three. More tea?)
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To: Ramius

Whoa...that’s very cool! Sounds like a great hobby to me!


4,785 posted on 08/19/2008 8:34:00 PM PDT by RosieCotton
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To: Ramius
Huh, that's pretty cool!
4,786 posted on 08/19/2008 8:40:56 PM PDT by Bear_in_RoseBear (Slide.)
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To: HairOfTheDog
Congrats. Now you're ready to move on to bigger and better things:

cat
more cat pictures

4,787 posted on 08/19/2008 8:52:36 PM PDT by 300winmag (Deterrence is an activity, Destruction is a profession)
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To: Corin Stormhands

He’s carrying a rapier (then pronounced “ray-Peer”, not “Ray-pi-er”).

The rapier was really perfected by the Italians in the renaissance, by Fiore, in particular. It was easy to carry in social situations and was commonplace in dresswear. Often more an accessory than a weapon. Good for self defense, though, against the occasional ruffian. Unless he had a longsword. People with rapiers were pretty routinely killed by those with longswords. The rapier is thin and light and flexible. Almost useless against anything other than a penknife or another rapier.

One of the Masters, George Silver in his “Paradoxes of Defense”, c. 1599, ranted at length about how much he despised the rapier.

So, there’s that.


4,788 posted on 08/19/2008 8:52:48 PM PDT by Ramius (Personally, I give us... one chance in three. More tea?)
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To: Ramius
Good luck on your sword work. From what I understand, no matter how much martial arts training one had, when it got down to the nitty gritty it was pretty much street fighting style with a sword rather than a shiv.

I don't know what possessed me, but I downloaded a 36MB PDF yesterday. "Hans Talhoffer, Medieval Combat, 15th Century Manual of Sword Fighting". Interested?

I'm only beginning to realize how much of a "strategic metal" iron was up until the last few hundred years. The Romans considered iron their most important "strategic metal", even above gold. All iron ore was kept in military warehouses until an authorized ironsmith picked it up. Our common steels of today would seem almost magical even 200 years ago.

And we still have "magic steel" today, in the form of single-crystal superalloys. My nephew is working on that stuff for his PhD at Georgia Tech, trying to turn it from "black art" to something that can be simulated with a computer.

4,789 posted on 08/19/2008 9:07:54 PM PDT by 300winmag (Deterrence is an activity, Destruction is a profession)
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To: Bear_in_RoseBear; RosieCotton

Thanks! I’m enjoying it thoroughly.

There’s so much more to it than I ever imagined. I’m still of course very much a newbie, as was made painfully clear in the free-sparring I did with the instructors on Saturday. They’re good at keeping ya humble. Really humble.

I’m trying to plow through an enormous library of material. Maybe in a couple of years I’ll be ready to pretend to be authoritative. :-)

As an aside... while this organization has a certain process to work one’s way up from novice to “scholar” and perhaps to “instructor”... there are no “Masters” in the present day, and there may not be for a great long while, or ever. Not even the Director of the organization will call himself a “Master” even though he’s been studying this stuff for over twenty years and can pretty much kick anybody around that needs kicking around.

Of the various people you might see on the Internet that hold themselves out as “Master so-and-so, of Medieval Martial Arts”... take from that a great grain of salt...

The idea there is that the old Masters: Liechtenauer, Ringeck, Fiore, Dobringer and others... the guys that wrote the books and taught as “Masters” in Medieval/Renaissance Europe... they actually used these techiniques in real combat. For their lives. Often. That’s why they were considered “Masters” and why they were hired to teach others.

Nobody today is really ever going to be fighting for their very life with a sword, against another swordsman. Nomatter how realistic you try to make your practices... it’s just not going to ever have that essential element of the fight to the death. In that way, nobody in the modern world can ever really be qualified to take the title “Master” with a sword.

An interesting, and useful distinction, I think.


4,790 posted on 08/19/2008 9:29:12 PM PDT by Ramius (Personally, I give us... one chance in three. More tea?)
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To: 300winmag

Hey Mister Mag... Cool! Though... I do already have a copy of Talhoffer. Haven’t gotten to it yet. But Hans Talhoffer is certainly one of the reference standards. I know that it’s good stuff just from the comments I’ve seen on it from others so far. I’ll be getting to that soon.

Right now I’m still studying Liechtenauer and Ringeck, more or less in parallel, but Talhoffer is supposed to be an excellent companion to those.

Good choice if you want a primer in the use of the sword.

Speaking of iron and steel:

I think we often underestmate the metallurgical skills of our priors. Of course in this last century we’ve advanced metallurgy far beyond what our ancestors could possibly have done. But they did some pretty impressive stuff back then, too. Only lately have we figured out what “damascus” steel really probably was. And we have precious few examples left from those days. Steel just doesn’t survive after that many centuries. Bronze does. That’s why we have more hilts in museums than blades. The hilts were often bronze, and the blades were steel. Steel just dissolves over those centuries. Bronze lasts.

But for example, the concept of folding a steel blade many times and reforging and re-pounding the layers into one piece perhaps 300 layers deep has been around in Europe for far more than a thousand years. There are 8th and 9th century Viking swords made in this way that have survived. Those guys travelled. And they bought stuff.

But don’t tell that to the Japanese samurai dudes.

:-)


4,791 posted on 08/19/2008 10:11:34 PM PDT by Ramius (Personally, I give us... one chance in three. More tea?)
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To: 300winmag
From what I understand, no matter how much martial arts training one had, when it got down to the nitty gritty it was pretty much street fighting style with a sword rather than a shiv...

It's true that most of the sword techniques often ended up in "grappling" or wrestling sorts of techniques. This involved some "half-swording" or if all failed then dagger or just plain wrestling. Many sword techniques end up in the "winden" or "bind", after which the wrestling match begins...

4,792 posted on 08/19/2008 10:28:22 PM PDT by Ramius (Personally, I give us... one chance in three. More tea?)
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To: Ramius

Since I was out of shape before I got even more out of shape, about the only thing I could ever have had a chance with against a ‘man at arms’ with a sword was a poleaxe. Anyone in your group using that? (Saw a bit of this on the History Channel today).


4,793 posted on 08/19/2008 10:52:50 PM PDT by Lucius Cornelius Sulla (DEATH TO PUTIN!)
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To: Ramius
But don’t tell that to the Japanese samurai dudes.

I watched a special on Nova about making Japanese swords the old way, in modern Japan. There's only one ironmaker who makes a batch of iron for the "artisan" swordsmiths each year. Ore from one particular location has just the right amount of "other" trace elements to make a superior steel. He builds a single-use blast furnace, and works 48 hours straight to produce the melt. Then the furnace is busted open, and he hands out chunks of "hard" and "soft" iron to the lucky smiths.

They then build these ragged pieces into bars by heating and hammering them together. A piece of soft iron is wrapped around the hard iron, and a soft iron tang is hammered onto one end. After that it's heat-hammer-shape many times until the sword blank is heated one last time and hardened by the dunk into cold water (oil would work better, but they didn't have oil). The differing properties of the hard core and soft backing produces the curve of the blade.

I think it was the differential tempering that set Japanese swords apart. That left the cutting edge crystal hard, while everything else got softer and more flexible. I think it took longer to polish and sharpen the blade than it took to forge it.

And I guess there's a lot of interest in swords in Japan even today. Of course, the "artisan swords" are never sharpened. They're there only to admire the skill of the smiths, and those who produce the elegant and expensive decorations. Martial arts groups use unsharpened aluminum swords. I takes a special government license to possess "live steel".

I also notice, from my time at Nissan, is the Japanese (at least the engineers) are fascinated by our "gun culture". Those with green cards buy guns like us folks. Those on temporary visas learn to hang around Japanese or Americans who own guns. For all I know, when they go back home, they probably denounce us to their fellow citizens as "clinging to their guns and religion". Where have I heard that before?

4,794 posted on 08/19/2008 10:53:50 PM PDT by 300winmag (Deterrence is an activity, Destruction is a profession)
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To: Lucius Cornelius Sulla

The poleaxe is a terrifying weapon, used properly. Pole arms in general have an advatange: range. Keeping thy enemy far away is pretty much always better.

There are some of the Masters that refer to the mere quarterstaff as the prince of weapons. They often waited until a student had mastered the study of longsword and all other weapons first. Showing mastery of everything else then they would demonstrate and teach to the student the quarterstaff.

Properly done, the simple staff can defeat all others.


4,795 posted on 08/19/2008 11:10:02 PM PDT by Ramius (Personally, I give us... one chance in three. More tea?)
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To: Ramius
Properly done, the simple staff can defeat all others

I found that out when I read the 'Tales of Robin Hood, more than 50 years ago.

4,796 posted on 08/19/2008 11:36:05 PM PDT by Lucius Cornelius Sulla (DEATH TO PUTIN!)
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To: 300winmag

As part of our Saturday event, we had allowed the sensei of the dojo we “borrowed”(er... rented) that day to partake in our class. He was, of course, a student of some thirty-plus years of asian martial arts of various kinds.

Near the end of the day, after our “free-play” exercises, he was naturally curious to see if his decades of training in martial arts would ~work~ against the longsword stuff he’d seen that day. So he picked up a practice Katana, and our Instructor picked up a practice longsword.

It wasn’t pretty. Poor guy didn’t stand a chance.

Clearly, the big difference was that the asian MA focus is about form over function. It has to look good before it has to work well. The European martial art tradition is that much more about killing, and ruthlessly.


4,797 posted on 08/19/2008 11:41:39 PM PDT by Ramius (Personally, I give us... one chance in three. More tea?)
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To: 300winmag; Ramius

In the show I saw on the History Channel, the folks they were using, who were re-enacters at those medeival dinner theatres around the country, were using titanium swords, because steel swords are too likely to shatter and injuring people with their shards.


4,798 posted on 08/19/2008 11:44:29 PM PDT by Lucius Cornelius Sulla (DEATH TO PUTIN!)
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To: Lucius Cornelius Sulla

I saw that show.

[sigh]

Don’t know where to begin.


4,799 posted on 08/19/2008 11:48:20 PM PDT by Ramius (Personally, I give us... one chance in three. More tea?)
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To: Ramius
By the way, have you ever seen the movie ‘the Prince of Foxes’. starring Tyrone Power and Orson Welles (as Caesare Borgia)? The dueling techniques they used (unfortunately with the rapier) were like nothing I've seen in other movies, and seemed rather realistic and not too pretty.
4,800 posted on 08/19/2008 11:51:33 PM PDT by Lucius Cornelius Sulla (DEATH TO PUTIN!)
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