The Realm of the Dark Blade

When I think of Feng Shui, the Chinese system of organizing your environment in order to maximize positive Chi (aka Qi/Chakra/Energy) flow, the last thing that comes to mind is an axe. However, I suppose, from my admittedly limited knowledge of how it works, there doesn’t seem to be anything in the rulebooks that says Feng Shui cannot work through an axe.

In fact, it seems kind of implicit that an axe should affect the feng shui of any environment, it is in, depending on it’s placement. But now I’m just rambling…

The topic of this post, obviously, is an interesting little axe I ran into a while back. Ostensibly called the Chinese Feng Shui Axe:

Chinese Feng Shui Axe

As you can see, it’s an unusual little, all metal axe, fairly simple in design, with a relatively small (as axes go) crescent shaped head, a contoured gourd shaped pommel, and a spike on top. And, or course, the requisite red hair tassel to redirect the blood that might result from employing a little “Feng Shui” reorganization of someones face with said axe..

Hey, I kid, I kid… For the record, I do not condone the arbitrary reorganization of other peoples faces with axes, or, for that matter, any other kind of weapon. Except scalpels. In which case you must be a plastic surgeon, and the person must have been absolutely hideous to start with. But I digress.

This axe actually looks kinda cool, and seems like it would be a little heavy, but fairly effective. But it is, in fact, supposed to frighten bad Chi away. At least according to the website I found it on. Me personally, I think I’d employ a much larger, quite a lot more intimidating axe for that particular task.

I mean seriously. Have you seen the sheer amount of bad Chi floating around nowadays?

Chinese Feng Shui Axe – [Online Oriental]

A while back, there was an interesting discussion on the Exotic Automatic Forums (http://exoticautomatic.com) about a rather cool weapon, or set of weapons, called Emeici or Emei Piercers (aka Emei Daggers). they are basically a set of steel rods, with sharp broadhead-like points on each end and a finger ring on a pivot attached at the center. Looky here:

Emei Piercers

Emeici are a traditional Chinese martial arts weapon, most notably practiced in Wu-Shu. The primary purpose of these weapons is obviously to speedily inflict deep puncture wounds, and in that regard, they are excellently designed.  The rods are of an extremely efficient design, in my opinion, very strong, but still extremely light and quick. I cannot fault that aspects of the design.

I’ve known of these weapons for a long time, and between the mechanical aspects of it’s design, and the rather visually impressive techniques typically used when wielding them, I cannot, argue they aren’t really, really cool. However in typical DarkBlader fashion, I cannot help but ask myself… What percentage of this kind of this “second kind” of cool is actually useful?

I have a lot of respect of traditional martial arts, the vast majority of my experience has been in TMAs, and so I see value in many of the traditional ways of doing things. *However* I have always found TMAs to have a rather unfortunate tendency towards the retention of outdated techniques and ideologies, and this weapon seems to be no exception.

Besides the obvious snafu of having an overenthusiastic martial artist pretty much admitting, on a nationally syndicated television series, that he is prone to the colloquial *bloodrage*,   my point of contention is this: Does allowing the weapon to spin actually add any useful value to the use of the weapon besides the cool or intimidation factor? Or is it just for show?

If you ask a TMA what the practical benefits of being able to spin emeici around are, they will tell you it is helpful for confusing your opponent. They will argue that it allows quick switch ups, changes in direction, etc. And to some degree, this is true of most knives. The grip, the position of the edge or edges, the orientation of the point, etc. tell you things about how and where your opponent might strike.

But while the quick change-up explanation has merit, there are really only two grips that you can use with a set of emeici, between which you can perform any strike, to any target. So while this all sounds good in theory, I wouldn’t be looking predominantly at the position of the weapon to try and figure out where the next attack was going.

For spinning, double-ended stabbing weapons, since the spinning, by itself, does not really change any of those factors, methinks it would not matter so much. I don’t think I would be any more confused by the spinning than if it were being held still. I have yet to spar an Emeici wielding opponent, so my analysis may turn out to be entirely wrong, but…

What do you think? Anyone feel like weighing in on this one? Spinning Emeici: Mostly Show? Or Absolutely Go?

Emeici – [Chinatown Shop]

I have always found Chinese weapons quite interesting. Unlike most of their Japanese counter parts, whose forms seemed to more or less always follow function, Chinese blades always seem, to me at least, to possess a level of aesthetic that supersedes it’s function. Or is highly influenced by it.

You can see this difference in their martial arts. Just compare the fluidity and nature based motion of five animal style Chinese Kung-Fu, to, for instance, the direct, and purely functional approach of Japanese Shotokan Karate. Granted, each of these styles tend to gravitate towards one another in directness/fluidity and vice versa as you progress in skill, but where they each start from is still worlds apart. The difference in their perspective weapon designs are no different.

A typical example is the Black Ronin Ninja Ring I posted about a while back. While it was referred to as a “Ninja” weapon, the design was hardly Japanese in nature, but rather had a lot more in common with the Chinese Deer Horn knife, or Sun and Moon Ring. You will also notice how even the names of many Chinese weapons are based on things that occur in nature.

You can almost always see the influence of this mindset in the design of their weapons. Whereas, in contrast, with little more than a quick glance, you can see exactly where the design of a Japanese Katana, came from, and I can almost certainly guarantee you that neither Bambi, the man in the moon, the sun, or any beasty of any type had anything to do with it.

But today, I thought I’d post about a specific Chinese weapon that I have always found intriguing, primarily because it seems, on the surface, a very wacky design, however it is at the same time, quite a versatile weapon. Almost a Swiss army knife of swords. In trademark Chinese weapon kind of way. I speak of none other than the Chinese Hook Sword, aka the Tiger Hook Sword, aka the Heaven and Sun Moon Sword:

Chinese Hook Sword Set - Black (Red Cord Grips)

Nobody really seems to be sure where or when the Chinese hook sword was first made and used. Very little information exists about it, and what little that does seems to be fairly recent, in comparison to many other Chinese sword designs. But what we do know was that it was designed to be used in quite a bit different fashion from any other sword of the day.

This sword incorporates many different design features, many of which I thought were rather clever. Take the hilt for instance. Instead of a pommel cap, like every other sword, the Chinese hook sword has… another point! In fact some traditional designs actually put a full fledged double edged knife/dagger down there. This is not a sword you want to get butt stroked with.

And then there’s the guard. No square or round guard here, rather, there is a full finger guard, consisting of two steel standoffs at the top and bottom of the cord wrapped grip, at the end of which there is… You guessed it! A half moon blade. Yep. A crescent moon shaped edge sits on the outside of the finger guard. Sporting two points and a blade in between, this is, again, a sword you reeeeaaaallly don’t want to get punched in the face with.

From the hilt up, we have the standard, single edged, straight sword affair, all up until we get to the point. Which, for reasons I will explain a bit later, someone thought would be cool to force into a swift a u-turn. For this reason, the point pulls a 180, and curves back down towards the hilt. With a fancy little outward pointing curlicue at the end.

“What’s this?” You cry “No point?” No, my friends, sadly it has no real point. But that is besides the point. (Yes, yes, my point puns are getting old, I know. But if I can’t make the occasional (read: to death) point puns, what’s the point? ) The point here is that this weapon was designed for a much different purpose than thrusting.

This sword was designed for flexibility of use, and it’s point was sacrificed in order to allow it to be used in a way that a straight sword can’t. Specifically, this sword was designed to allow better hooking (obviously) opponent weapon and limb trapping, and… Surprise, surprise, reach extension!! Yes, you read right. *Reach* extension.

OK so here’s the thing. The traditional practitioners of the hook sword generally used them in pairs. And they did so for very good reason. They actually practiced using them with one sword hooked to the end of the other sword, and swing it around like a flail! In fact, they still do. Using them this way extends the wielders reach to roughly 5 ft.

Except, as you can imagine, with a point on the pommel, and a crescent blade guard, this flail has got at least three nasty points and at least one blade. All swinging around at speeds that are wickedly fast, and itching to leave a mark somewhere.That’s not to say they aren’t evil enough by themselves.

Each hook sword has a blade with an edge that is sharpened from just above the hilt, until just before the hook, much like a regular sword, and, of course, that little curlicue at the end of the hook is also sharpened, (and very pointy!) so that it is still a potent sword in it’s own right.

So, to recap. Blade on the pommel, blade and points on the grip/guard,  blade on the blade…   a hook, blade on the front of the hook, aaaaaaand a point. Seems to me like they got almost all of the important points covered…

Twin Chinese Hook Swords – Black – [True Swords]

Welcome to the next installment of my miniseries about second gen replicas that are think are improvements of ones I have already posted about. Today we take a look at yet another Zanpakuto from the anime Bleach, Specifically that of Kisuke Urahara. This is another great weapon found by Mozza (thanks again!) called Benihime – The Crimson Princess:

Kisuke Urahara's Zanpakuto - Benihime (Crimson Princess) Shikai

This sword is the Shikai form of Kisukes Zanpakuto Benihime (Crimson Princess), which is a sword cane with a curved handle in its unawakened form. In an earlier post, I had talked a little bit about how I thought this particular design actually had a lot of good practical design point.

I won’t go over its detailed physical attributes again, but I will point out that the other sword was not so much a sucky sword as much as it was not as detailed, accurate and meticulously finished as this one. In this design, you can see a lot more effort has been put into giving it more depth and character.

In this one the canted pommel is much more prominently featured, as is the unusual ricasso. The little triangles attached to the ricasso actually hang from a tassel in the anime, but I suppose it’s a minor detail that is not of much structural significance.

It is difficult to tell from this pic whether this shares the same full tang construction of the first Benihime I posted about, but if it does not it would be an inferior design, though it would make for an interesting contrast. Shame that the pictures are not particularly clear about how well put together this weapon is at a physical level.

If I were a betting creature, I would guess this build is structurally of lesser quality than the other. Which makes this kind of a bittersweet weapon to post about, since even though the it is a much more “accurate” reproduction compared to the other, the other one appeared to be constructed in a way that would still make a superior weapon.

So while It’s aesthetically clearly superior, and gets a good grade on accuracy, fit and finish, the practicality and the durability of it’s construction may leave something to be desired.

Why does it seem like there is always a trade off somewhere… ?

Kisuke Urahara’s Zanpakuto: Benihime Shikai – [Anime Castle]

A buddy of mine, Sinza who started the Exotic Automatic forum we run together (you should go check it out: http://exoticautomatic.com) sent in a link to an interesting weapon a while back. It’s basically a pushdagger, to be exact, and a rather ornate one at that, but this one gets brownie points because it just so happens that it bears my name:

Fire Blade

Ok, so we don’t have exactly the same name, but it’s close enough. Go figure, a genuine Fire Blade! And, the cool thing is, unlike the many other really flashy but useless pieces I run into all the time, this one is actually usable. Ergonomically designed even… Yay for our side!!

So what we have here is a really flashy punch dagger design, with basically has three blades, all attached to the an ornately cast “T” shaped grip, with the center blade attached to the center stem of the “T” which expands out into a smaller, internal sub guard over the center finger area, and each additional blade attached to either side of the main grip.

As grips go, this one is very elaborately designed, with an organic, almost coral like motif cast into the surface of the entire grip. At either side of the palm side of the grip, extend what looks like little set of branches arcing upwards towards the wielder.

Moving down past that we see the ends of the grip both angle down towards the front blade, while, from the center of the grip, extends a short stalk. And at the ends of each of these points, we have our blades. An unusual feature of this grip is that it has multiple choils, of finger guides, along the front, theoretically to give you a better grip. Ergonomics at work.

But it is the blades where the magic happens. Most notably on the side blades. Each side blade is cut into an interesting Asian flame pattern, with the flame front sporting a rather wicked looking edge on either side. the center blade is less obviously flame patterned, featuring two side licking flames, and a split center blade.

All in all, a rather flamboyant design, but not too bad in the practicality department either. The side blades appear to be fairly sturdily attached, and assuming they have more than a short stub tang embedded in the handle casting, should be fairly strong, and take side slashing duty fairly effortlessly.

The center blade, well, I’d much have preferred to see a slightly thicker center stem, however for thrust duty, (again assuming a more than minimal tang) it should suffice. I Just wouldn’t try anything that might place shearing forces on that particular joint. It’s a design flaw that seem very common with decorative push dagger designs.

Overall, this design is a little overboard on the fancy flash factor for yours truly, but it’s certainly a practically feasible design. And given it’s name, it just had to get a post… Call me biased…

Fire Blade – [Ninja-Weapons]

Exotic Automatic – [http://exoticautomatic.com]

So today we have a weapon with some rather familiar lines:

Chinese Barbarian Sword

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Now this is a pretty hefty sword design. But contrary to how this is described, it is not really a “barbarians” sword. I think the medieval Chinese were way more cultured than their western counterparts. But I digress. This is, in fact, a variation of a design commonly referred to as the Chinese War sword design, distinguishable by their medium length blade, with a wide, very scimitar-like blade profile, the simple straight guard, straight grip and the large ring shaped pommel. In black. My favorite shade of steel.

As you can see from the pic, it has a serviceable point, but because of the width of the blade, it would not have been a particularly good thrusting weapon. No. This, ladies and germs, is a cutting and cleaving weapon. The deep belly of the blade would make for an excellent close quarters slashing weapon, and it’s weight and the strength of that extra wide blade would have brought a terribly chop happy smile to the face of any Chinese barbarian (or for that matter, any scurvy Pirate) that happened to be in a foul mood on any given battlefield day…

Chinese Barbarian Sword – [True Swords]

In my last post I lamented the fate of simplicity in decorative sword design. I may have been being unreasonable, since in actuality the only thing a decorative sword has going for it is it’s aesthetics, but I ran across this sword below, and was reminded that beautiful swords need not be so ornate, nor so finely detailed:

Emperor Kang-Xi Sword

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Ok, so in the vacuous area between my ears that conceptually constitutes my mind, this swords simplicity represents a thing of great beauty. Yes, yes, I know. The scabbard is afflicted with a bad case of “look-at-me-itis”. Never you mind about that, we will simply have to just ignore the scabbard for the duration of this post. But what I do want to draw your attention to is the sword. Oh sweet simplicity. Thou has a name. And thy name is the Emperor Kang-Xi sword…

This sword is a veritable epitome of simplicity. A simple, almost straight blade of continuous width. A simple round guard. An equally simple ridged cylindrical grip, and, again, a simple round pommel. It doesn’t get much more simple than that. Even Ninjaken, one of my favorite swords, are generally more complex in design than this, due to the design of the grip and the blade.

However Ninjaken are also a lot more user friendly and functionally versatile. You’ll notice that the point (if you can call it that) of the Emperor Kang-Xi sword is more or less almost flat. Unlike Ninjaken, this would not make for a good thrusting weapon. However because of the slight curve, it would be a pretty good slashing/cutting weapon. On the other hand, the grip, while cool, is a metal cylinder. This is a baaaaad battlefield weapon design.

A metal cylinder provides no real gripping surface (those ridges ain’t gonna cut it against sweat or blood) provides no sense of blade position (a cylinder is not directional), and the metal will transmit every impact directly to the wielders hands. (Ouch!) Ninjaken borrow their complex, but very effective grip design from traditional Japanese Katana grips.

While not the simplest, the traditional Japanese grip is probably one of the best, perhaps  bested only by the most modern grip materials. A Japanese katana’s tsuka (grip) is oval in cross section, and traditionally comprises three important parts.

First comes the wood shell around the tang, followed by bumpy ray skin scales, which is all bound together by a strategically folded cord wrap. This combination provides excellent shock absorption, a firm grip, lots of comfort and good tactile feedback to boot. Definitely can’t say that about the Emperor Kang-Xi sword. So I guess sheer simplicity is not the way to go. Unless aesthetics is your primary goal. Which, in my case, is not really so.

However there is always a happy medium. If we were to take the slightly curved, full-tang blade of the emperor Kang-Xi sword, put a westernized tanto point on it, and apply a simpler version of the traditional oval Japanese grip using modern materials… Well the result would be… Hmmm. How shall I put this. Let’s just say that in my book, such a sword would be worth dieing killing for…

Emperor Kang-Xi Sword – [Red Dragon Sword CO.]

If you’re a regular at this blog, you’ve probably all heard me poke fun at various anime swords at one point or another, usually due to unrealistic sizes, or features, or functionality, etc., regardless of their cool factor. However today, I thought I’d review an anime based sword that has a decidedly down to earth bent to it’s design:

Urahara Kisuke Zanpakuto

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Now this sword is from the Anime Bleach, and is a Zanpakuto, or “soul slaying” sword. The Zanpakuto swords of bleach are unique because each sword actually possesses a sentient spirit. An interesting twist to be sure, but not what we are here to talk about today.

I posted this sword because, for once, it is actually a sword I might have blogged about even if it wasn’t an anime reproduction. The reason for this is two fold. First off, while this sword looks Japanese on the surface, it actually incorporates some design features that are not seen in traditional Japanese sword designs.

First off, and one of my favorite features, is the cool black blade, with the black coat on the edge ground out to where the hamon should be. This is interesting because although the blade of this sword has a mild curve that might indicate a differential temper, I was unable to detect an actual hamon. I’d be willing to bet there was none. Also, you will notice that the edge is ground straight across to the end of the straight section of the blade, but not up to the tip of the sword, which is atypical of Japanese design.

Another interesting feature not present in Japanese swords is the presence of a ricasso, or unsharpened section of the blade, just above the hilt. The edges of the ricasso is actually sheathed in a metal shell, and runs straight into the grip without the benefit of a guard, which is also very atypical of japanese design.

The grip is equally anomalous, in the sense that while it employs the traditional Japanese rayskin wrapped wood handle, pinned to a full tang blade, it is covered by a leather wrap, instead of the traditional Japanese cord wrap. The pommel is also not of a traditional Japanese design, having a ridged cap and a tassel, instead of an oval cap with a flat bottom, which in fact, makes it look more Chinese in aesthetic than Japanese.

Overall, an interesting hybrid sword design I thought was worth a post…

Urahara Kisuke Zanpakuto – [True Swords]

A while back I found a picture of very ornate and painstakingly designed /created /decorated Katana on My Confined Space, a picture blog that I harass frequently:

Antique Katana

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Now normally this kind of sword is not my thing. But this one is too much a work of art for me to ignore. On many levels. And I thought this would be appropriate for the first weapon post of the year. There are so many unique and amazing points of fine aesthetic detail that went into the making of this sword, I really don’t think I can cover them all in a single post. So I’m just going to let you ogle the pic.

Aww, who am I kidding. I have to at least draw your attention to some of the less obvious traits of interest. Like the shape and the detail of the tsuba, or guard. While this sword conforms to traditional Japanese design, the guard carries a rather distinctive Chinese flair to it’s design, which makes this weapon all the more intriguing. The traditional ray skin grip with the brass overlay, tassels and fittings are excellently done. And though you can see one regular bamboo pin for the blade, it appears as though there were, at some point, two white pins, possibly of ivory, of which one is left. A very nice touch.

The details of the engravings on the butt cap and the tip of the saya or scabbard are extraordinary, as are the brass rings and purple ribbons to which the braided cord used to wear the sword is attached. Even the fittings to which the purple ribbons are attached to the saya are amazing. Not only are they beautiful, but they appear to also be hinged!! Mechanics and aesthetics in harmony. What more could one ask for?

Obviously, I can’t say much more about it than what we can all see in the picture, but I can say this. If a picture is a thousand words, this one is easily worth a cool million…

In a recent post I did about the Altairs retractable blade from Assassins Creed, I made mention of the the characteristics of the ideal fighting knife. While any knife will only be at it’s best when used in manner and environment it was the designed for, most small, fast fighting knives have very similar properties.

Today, I thought I’d talk about a classic example of one of the best engineered fighting knives of the last century or so. The British Commando knife, AKA the Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife:

Fairbairn-Sykes Fighting Knives

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Fighting knives have been around since the beginning of man. Blades such as daggers, dirks and stilettos have always been popular fighting tools, due to their speed and flexibility. However the Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife is a knife that has had a very profound influence of modern day combat fighting knife design. Developed in China, just prior to WWII, it was based on a design called the Shangai Knife:

The Shanghai Knife

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This basic design was developed specifically for closed quarters knife fighting speed, agility and effectiveness. In contrast to the many other fighting knife designs, this was focused on very specific things. This fighting knife was designed to meet a very specific set of criteria. For instance, it had to be slim enough to be thrust between the ribs of an opponent. It had to be long enough to penetrate several layers of heavy clothing (like winter greatcoats and such,) and still strike vital internal organs. It had to be relatively small and easy to conceal. And it needed to be light, fast, and well balanced. But it also had to have excellent thrusting and slashing ability.

The FS (Fairbairn-Sykes) fighting knife design was the end result. Featuring a strong but narrow tapering double edged blade, it was one of the most well designed fighting blades of it’s time. After being adopted by the British army, and later variants of it by American, many other armies, it has had a significant influence on numerous combat blade designs since. Even your common boot knife and push dagger share roots with the FS design:

Boot Knives

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USARA Dagger

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To be fair, the basic FS design is a revamp of a very old one. The idea of a strong, but slender, pointed, double edged blade has been around for a long time. However the FS design really brought it to the forefront of combat fighting knife design.

• The Shanghai Knife – [The Fairbairn-Sykes Fighting Knife]
• Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife (Sp. Ed.) – [True Swords]
• Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife – [True Swords]
• Bodyguard Boot Knife – [True Swords]
• Bodyguard Knife – [True Swords]
• USARA Dagger – [True Swords]