Opening Practice for 2003 with "chille, patte, Kel's Ale, cheese and sharp weapons!" January 5, 2003

Christmas and the New Year's celebration are over, and now it's time to turn our attention back to training. What better way to begin the new year's training with a sharp sword cutting practice, good food, good ale and other assorted weapons. Once the students arrived, both schollers and recruits took to the sharpened longsword and each began to destroy the facsimile human targets or FHTs which were prepared the day before. For more information on the FHT and sharpened longsword, click the sharp sword cutting article entitled "Study of the Destructive Capabilities of the European Longsword".

Below is a table of images behind which are short video segments ranging in size from 340Kb to 1MB. It is recommended that you have high-speed internet connection. Secondly, you will need QuickTime to view the video clips. QuickTime is freely available and downloadable from QuickTime.

Brian takes a cut at the FHT	Chris takes his shot	Paul makes an easy cut	David also makes an easy cut
Frank destroys the FHT and supporter	Joey takes his shot	James makes easy work of the FHT	Kel knocks the cr*p out of the FHT
Jeff kills the FHT	And so does Luis	Lilith is about to take to the air	Lilith redeems herself in a second strike
Joe, our favourite chef, makes an easy cut	Matt takes his shot	Miguel takes one too	Dave makes an easy cut
Shawn delivers heavy damage to the FHT	James kills the FHT	Sophia delivers an easy cut	John destroys the FHT
In the end, a good day was had by all. Good food, good ale, weapons galour - life just couldn't get any better.

References

1. AEMMA. Arming Sword (spada) and Unarmoured Longsword (spada longa) Training @ AEMMA. June 12, 2003.
2. Flos Duellatorum (Pisani-Dossi MS): F. Novati, Flos duellatorum: Il Fior di battaglia di maestro Fiore dei Liberi da Premariacco (Bergamo, 1902)
3. David M. Cvet. Study of the Destructive Capabilities of the European Longsword. Journal of Western Martial Art. February 2002. (An article describing the destructive capabilities of the sword, using a facsimile target composed of rolled up tatamit mats, and illustrations on the structure of the target).