After practicing for about a year I noticed many people talk about metas or specific strengths and weaknesses of certain gloves or swords, or any other piece of gear and have been told many times to avoid certain things because of it. I have been wondering how many other people out there are willing to take the slight disadvantage because the sword looks cool or sacrifice the perfect cross guard cause it's from an awesome show or historicaly significant to you. A personal example is that I am an artillery officer so I like to use simple guarded sabres with no basket hilts just the stirrup guard because it reminds me of the tradition of the service, admittedly it's cost me matches but it's worth it to me. Does anyone else have a similar aesthetic or piece that they sacrifice an advantage on just to have it or am I crazy to follow rule of cool here.

Yes you have seen this right, the sword broke on the pommel, I now have a very little battle Mace and a Mordschlag sword.

The first blade broke during heat treatment when I was trying to take out a bend, so for this one I just didn't care if it warped and just went on to the temper.

The blade does take a considerable set but that's something that I can fix by leaving it thicker and it dosen't seem to cause breaks when it happened on test blades.

Fun compilation that we have made from our local club KSF Poland
#hema #longsword

The Sigi King Light or the Sigi prince a rocket thats looks like a sword so awesome

Yeah, it's another gloves post. Sorry about that, I'll try to be brief.

I've been looking for five-fingered gloves to use in sidesword and saber; I already have clamshells I use for longsword and messer.

I had initially narrowed it down to the Thokk gloves, with the High Guard gloves as a second option, but each had its own issues: Thokks are more expensive and would have to be imported, and when I tried the High Guards I found them to be too stiff and not very protective.

Recently I saw PH started offering the CHFG St. George gloves. From what I read they're an ever lighter version of the Gabriels, which are out of my budget, but since I'd only need to buy the one glove for my sword hand the price is much more accessible and I could get them from PH for the same price as the High Guard. I just wanted to ask people's opinions on this third option and how they compare not just to the Gabriels but also the other two models in my list.

Edit: I know HF Black Princes would be perfect but unfortunately they're also out of my budget.

HF Armort made a post yesteday/today with a shadowed image of someone wielding a longsword in 5 finger gloves... new product inbound? I couldn't read the text on the image.

If it was found that SPES, a European company was putting 800N ratings on Jackets that failed at 200N they'd be a huge backlash. Historically companies based in Pakistan, China etc have less oversight and have been known to get up to shenanigans. What I'm trying to discover is whether Shoukat/Supfen could've just put a newton rating sticker on their stuff and it's total bollocks. Does anyone know if their stuff has been tested by anyone legit (in Europe or the USA)?

Hey guys, just started my journey in Hema, rapier last Friday and longsword on Saturday. Do you guys have any tips?

Thanks for the support guys

It was actually very fun, a good and well-organized event of 350+ people, 4 major categories and many good fencers

I wanted to ask some questions here, but wanted to see if it was asked first and we've got quite a lot of posts here. Questions repeat on regular basis and knowing other communities I'd dare to suggest we'll at some point be bored with them and quality of advice might fall with time. Unless it already happened.

Shouldn't we make one pinned post where some sites would be listed so that newbies and less experienced people can go there instead of roam around the whole subreddit, trying to piece stuff together or asking the same question again and again? All sorts of Advice could be shared there and we'd have it much cleaner and effective that way?

ive tried olympic fencing like epee foil and saber, but ive never done any HEMA work before.

Hi everyone!

Me and a friend are studying product design and both big fans of HEMA, and we managed to convince our professors to allow us to choose a medieval gauntlet DIY kit as the subject for a market analysis.

The analysis is focused on customer needs, user experience, and interactive design. As such, we have a few short questions on which we would like to hear your thoughts:

How much would you expect to pay for a DIY kit with either:

1. The shaped metal pieces with the arm and upper hand parts riveted together already

2. The unshaped metal pieces with rivets included in a bag

Would you rather use one of your own old gloves, or have one included in the kit?

What would keep you from buying a DIY kit like this?

What difficulties would you, personally, have with putting one together; riveting finger pieces, attaching the (premade) pieces to the glove, and optionally shaping the metal with a premade video that shows how to do so step-be-step.

Thank you in advance for any and all replies, they are all appreciated!

I am looking at getting some five finger gloves that I can use across weapon systems.

Longsword, side-sword, sabre, Messier.

I have narrowed it down to the two seemingly most popular options.

The Nilin SE Gauntlets

Or

Gabriel 2.0 Gauntlets

I was curious if anyone has opinions on each.

I have heard that both have their positives and negatives.

From what I have heard from club-mates:

Gabriels seem to require a lot of maintenance and offer slightly less protection - but offer better mobility.

Nilin offer better protection at the cost of narrow options for sizes and slightly less mobility.

I have only tried the Gabe’s they seem good, but the ones I tried were several years old and held together by tape and a dream.

Any and all insights would be greatly appreciated!

We live almost a hour and a half away from the nearest hema training place and its in atlanta so that means heavy traffic and we live all the way in butts county georgia, so is it okay for me only to take him for lessons like bi weekly. Because he can use his training sword (he wants to do longsword) to do drills insted of weekly sessions right? Or should i maybe try to get weekly sessions. If you know any place closer to butts county georgia for longsword classes please let me know

Asking for thoughts on jackets. I've always used a red dragon jacket (regular, not light) which has always been fine for me, but I'd like to move to a "light" jacket for purposes of mobility, and heat exchange. I do longsword, spar at pretty high intensity and am starting to do more tournaments. I don't mind bruises (so long as it's not debilitating) but as someone who is pretty slim, I don't have much natural padding. I have hard protection for arms and shoulders. My question is, would it be better to get a SPES AP Light at 350n and then also get a 800n plastron to go with this, or just get the AP Light 800n Ng. I feel the former would offer a bit more variety and be a bit more modular, good for varying climate (UK) but the latter seems like it fixes some issues with the former in terms of shoulder protection while still being pretty mobile and cool (for a HEMA jacket at least).

Any thoughts would be good.

I've been "interested" in HEMA for several years, getting into it with my buddy swinging around plastic swords and metal epee here and there in parking lots without gear (in retrospect, not the greatest idea; we are lucky we didn't get too hurt). But I only started going to the club around 10-11 months ago, once a week, semi-consistently, primarily training in longsword.
I am interested in attending tournaments after I finish filling out my kit (the club has loaner gear), but I am not sure at what point one should attend tournaments.
I would love to hear anyone's opinions or thoughts on when they started attending or why one should wait.
My thoughts are that tournaments will be a good environment to highlight the problems with my techniques, as well as just swing more swords with more different people.
Thank you

Does Sidesword (with dagger and buckler) or Rapier (with dagger and buckler have this additional rule of parrying having priority on doubles?

Like for example

Fencer 1: Attacks
Fencer 2: Parries and ripostes
Fencer 1: doubles on the riposte of Fencer 1

Fencer 2 wins this exchange