Page 109 of 115

Five Reasons to Pick Up Sword Fighting

April 5, 2011 / Tim / 156 Comments

This post is the first in a week-long series about swords in conjunction with our first Cutting Edge product give-away. Place a comment responding to this post or any other between today and midnight on Sunday and you’ll be entered to win a 51-inch William Wallace replica sword ($119 value, pictured below).

Picture this: It’s an ordinary Saturday afternoon around your house and your wife is about to leave for bridge club.

“Do you have any plans, honey,” she inquires in a condescending tone, expecting you to have none.

“Actually, I do,” you announce, pulling a 30-inch Katana sword from the sheath affixed to your belt. “I’m going to my sword fighting club.”

All around the world. ordinary dudes like yourself are living exciting lives by participating in sword fighting. Don’t believe me? Here’s a huge list of sword fighting clubs across the U.S.

Not convinced that sword fighting is for you? Here are a few reasons to give it a shot.

Sword Fighting is a Primal Right of Manhood

Have you ever felt like you’ve missed your destiny? Have you ever considered that in a former life you were a swashbuckling pirate or a knight in shining armor who sliced through his foes?

If you have, then you may be completely delusional. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t pick up a sword fighting hobby that’s exciting, healthy and just downright macho.

Sword fighting exhibitions are held every year in locations across the world and you can be a participant. Why sit on the couch twiddling your thumbs when you could be donning armor and fighting it out on the field while living your medieval fantasy

Sword fighting makes you buff

As long as you don’t stabbed through the heart. Have you ever seen a fat Samurai? No, you haven’t, and that’s because there aren’t any.

Sword fighting sheds fat, burns calories and can chisel your body. There are also numerous sword fighting classes available throughout the Hollywood and Manhattan areas, but if by some freakish reason you don’t live in these bastions of new-age exercise, there is no reason to worry. I have a solution for you.

There are books on sword fighting

Seriously. Not only are there books, but there are sword fighting E-books, which means that you can sit in your basement on your laptop and learn to sword fight better then William Wallace.

What could be better than reading an ordinary E-book? How about reading one on sword fighting!

Sword fighting helps you appreciate history

A history book? Yeah, that sounds like a really great way to pass time. But, what if medieval history, had, dare I say, a bit more of an edge to it?

It does. From Lancelot to Miyamoto Musashi, sword fighters have been revered throughout history. Oh, what’s that, you don’t know who Miyamato Musashi is?

He’s an ancient Japanese warrior who won hundreds of duels; In the most infamous, he killed a man with a weapon that he constructed from an oar on the boat-ride over.

Sword fighting is steeped in the tradition and the history of Europe and Asia, which means that in order to fully appreciate it, you’ll want to digest some ancient manuals on the craft. By doing so, you will appear to be much more educated than you are.

Buying a sword is easy

Don’t worry, you don’t need to scour your local sporting goods store for a proper blade. Ninja swords and accessories are available from a number of online retailers and are quite affordable.

Don’t wait any longer. The time has come for you to claim your destiny. Buy a sword (and a sheath) and become the man you’ve always wanted to be.

Want to win a 51-inch William Wallace replica sword ($119 value)? If so, leave a comment below with one reason (no matter how weird) why you’d be proud to own this sword. Everyone who leaves a comment on a Cutting Edge blog post through Sunday will be entered and a winner will be chosen at random.

Make Your Own Knife for Fun or Survival

April 5, 2011 / Tim / 6 Comments

If you’re serious about knives, then there’s no doubt you’ve looked into how knives are made and have maybe even yearned to make your own.

About a month ago, I wrote a post on how to make your own knife out of a file. While making a knife that way is definitely legitimate, it requires some less common tools and machinery, which you would never find in the wilderness.

There’s actually a much simpler way to make a cool looking knife by flintknapping, which can also come in handy during survival situations.

For anyone not familiar with knapping, it dates back to prehistoric times and is often done with flint, obsidian, chert or other specific stones. Basically what you do is take something like copper cylinders, hammer away material and flake off the ends to make it sharp. Then affix a handle and you’re finished.

It actually only takes a few materials and tools to make a great looking knife that’s extremely sharp and functional.

If you’re good at flintknapping, you can also make some money. In a recent article in the Newark Advocate, writer Dick Martin said he knows a guy who sells his work at arts and crafts shows for $10 an inch.

So, if you’re interested in making your own knife whether for money or sale, here are some basic instructions on how to go about doing it.

Continue reading

Want to Toughen Up? Go To Roman Gladiator School

April 4, 2011 / Tim / 1 Comment

Does strapping on Roman armor and facing off with adversaries armed with swords and tridents appeal to you?

If so, you should check out the Gladiator School of Rome, where wannabe warriors don ancient attire and learn the ways of the gladiator.

The Italian school offers lessons in Roman-era combat, complete, of course, with togas, shields and combat skirts.

A recent Bloomberg article reported that the training was especially popular among CEOs, who feel the lessons in combat beef up their business acumen.

Giovanni Bonmartai, the CEO of Europe’s largest printing-supply store, said the skills he picks up in the gladiator’s ring transfer to corporate negotiations.

“Business is still hand-to-hand warfare,” Bonmartini says. “And it’s all encapsulated in the body: anger, excitement, challenge. That’s why I come to the arena. This is an invigorating perspective and perfect preparation for the negotiating table.”

If you happen to be in Rome, a two-hour session at the school will run you 30 Euros ($42). Not convinced? Check out the video below.

Knives Save Lives: Steve Wilder

April 1, 2011 / Tim / 6 Comments

Imagine waking up in the middle of the night unable to breath. Your throat has swollen shut, and absolutely no air is getting into your body. What would you do?

Call 911? There’s not enough time. Give yourself CPR? Good idea but it wouldn’t solve this problem. Grab a knife? Bingo.

That was the first instinct of Steve Wilder when this exact scenario happened to him in 2008. The then 55-year-old man woke up to find his air passage had completely swollen shut and did what he thought was the best way to save himself. He ran to the kitchen, grabbed a knife and performed a tracheotomy on himself.

For anyone who doesn’t know what a tracheotomy is, you can check out an animation of what the surgery looks like here. It’s basically cutting a hole at the front of your neck to create an alternate air passage.

Since these are typically done in surgery or at least by another person, the fact that Steve Wilder did it to himself while most likely panicking from the lack of oxygen makes this even more impressive.

Continue reading

Bored on Your Lunch Break? Consider Electric Sword Fighting

March 31, 2011 / Tim / 2 Comments

You most likely spend your lunch breaks eating a pastrami sandwich around the water cooler, but it appears a few Russian factory workers have a different idea about what constitutes an exciting hour off. Check out this video via Buzzfeed of two steel-headed combatants dueling it out with electrified swords.

Not surprisingly, the end result is a small fire.

The Machete Slingshot: Crazy or Awesome?

March 30, 2011 / Tim / 9 Comments

Are you tired of those regular kids slingshots that only shoot tiny pellets? If so, one slingshot enthusiast has the thing for you: a slingshot that shoots machetes.

Yes, Jörg Sprave, who runs The Slingshot Channel over at YouTube, constructed this massive, six-foot long slingshot designed to launch giant machetes.

While some are criticizing this cool contraption as dangerous and impractical, others are praising it as the weapon of choice in the event of an inevitable Zombie Apocalypse. Since it probably doesn’t have any real use, zombie decapitation is most likely all it’s good for.

Although I don’t recommend you create one of these weapons for obvious reasons (i.e. machete in the face), it is surprisingly easy to build. All Sprave did was construct a sort of wooden crossbow/rifle about six-feet long, and on one end put two reinforced points to hold the band. On the other end, he put a notch for the machete to rest and a lever to lift it up over the notch. He used an old crossbow rubber band and placed it on an incision he made in the blade to propel the machete.

Continue reading

Knives Save Lives: D.J. Harper

March 28, 2011 / Tim / 1 Comment

In the third post of our series documenting how knives save lives, we see that tragedy can strike instantly at any time.

On July 19, 2009, even a routine drive became a frightening life or death situation for one family, after their SUV flipped on its side and burst into flames in Milwaukee, Wis.

Inside the car was a mother and two small children. Fortunately, the mother was able to escape with one of the children, but the second, D.J. Harper, was trapped inside the burning vehicle.

As you can seen from the footage below, the people watching were trying but failing to get the boy out and the SUV was rapidly filling with smoke and fire.

Remarkably, the wife of a firefighter was walking by the scene, so she called him to come down. Within a minute brothers John and Joel Rechlitz, two off duty firefighters, arrived at the scene and took control.

Even though they were getting burned, they bravely peeled back the shattered windshield and saw that then 4-year-old D.J. was strapped in by his seat belt. The first thing that popped into their head was to get a knife to cut him out, but that day they weren’t carrying their pocket knife as usual.

Continue reading

Buying Knives at the Chiang Mai Night Bazaar

March 24, 2011 / Tim / 2 Comments

CHIANG MAI, Thailand—The Chiang Mai night bazaar is a good place to buy a light-brown Chang Beer tank top for $6. There are also numerous silk robes for sale in the same price range, in case you’re looking for something more modest.

If you fancy neither of these items, then you can choose from the following: fake Rolex watches, ostrich-leather wallets (I have two), knock-off Tiffany jewelry, statues of the Buddha, cowboy hats, necklaces, flower-shaped lampshades, boxing shorts, or if you want to drop out of reality for a few weeks, the entire series of “The Sopranos.”

I walked through hundreds of these stands last night, buying nothing, until eventually I stumbled onto a cart stocked with an armory of knives, swords, throwing stars and machetes run by a very small man who drives a hard bargain and rarely tells the truth.

I had already been burned by buying counterfeit knives once on the Thailand-Burma border, where I bought a fake Dark Ops Stratofighter Stileto for $15. For this reason, I wasn’t particularly interested in buying any pocket knives, especially after the merchant selling them told me that a Browning pocket knife, which had USA clearly written on it, was produced in a village 10 km away.

Continue reading

Ceremonial Daggers Banned From Detroit School… Again

March 23, 2011 / Tim / 6 Comments

More than a month ago, I blogged about a decision by a Michigan school district to allow small ceremonial daggers in their schools. Now, after furious parents complained and legal debate engulfed the district, the daggers are once again banned.

The kirkpan, which is a small ceremonial dagger typically between 3 and 5 inches long, is considered a rite of passage for young baptized Sikh males to carry as a symbol of fighting evil and greed.

The district first faced the issue back in December when a fourth-grader brought one to school. After the district held meetings with Sikh groups, it ruled they were acceptable granted they follow strict guidelines: the blade must be dull, it must be sewn into its sheath so it can’t be taken out, it must be no bigger than 2 1/4 inches and it must not be visible.

Continue reading

Breast doctor by day, knife thrower by night

March 22, 2011 / Tim / 0 Comments

For anyone who thought knife throwing was only for die-hard outdoorsmen, you’re wrong.

A record-breaking doctor known by many for his breast augmentation surgery also spends his spare time throwing knives for sport. What makes this even more amazing is that he’s highly skilled at both.

Dr. Ted Eisenberg from Pennsylvania holds the Guinness World Record for most breast augmentation surgeries at 3,460, and he’s won multiple awards during tomahawk and knife-throwing competitions.

A few weeks ago, I posted about how to become skilled at knife throwing, and this just goes to show that knife throwing is such an enrapturing and peaceful sport that nearly anyone who starts instantly becomes hooked.

For Eisenberg though, it took him a little while to actually get started. After being inspired by the Crocodile Dundee and James Bond movies, he asked his wife for a throwing knife as a present.

The first time he thew it at a tree, he told AOL news he felt so bad that he even “went and hugged the tree.”

Continue reading