Quote Originally Posted by yoippari
Ok, so the portland meet thread got me thinking. How many knife guys do we have on this board? Or even better, how many sword guys do we have?
I'm a user - I am a member of the Association for Rennaissance Martial Arts, which (IMHO) is the foremost organization for the re-creation of the martial arts of medieval and rennaissance Europe. Our goal is to re-create these arts using the most realistic methods possible, while keeping safety at the top of our list of priorities. We work to re-discover the sword and armed arts (armored and un-armored), as well as the combat grappling of those ages. We use translations of the original manuals by the masters of the day in our work and have made a great deal of progress.

I've been doing it for a couple of years now, though I've always been interested in the era. I've been on hiatus from it lately, due to the birth of our first child.

As far as swords I own, I have two wooden wasters (practice swords), a couple of homemade padded sparring swords, and a Paul Chen Practical Austrian Longsword, which is a blunt but has excellent weight, and is great for light free-play and solo drills/floryshing.

If you're interested in this, let me know and I'll try to hook you up with a group in your area. ARMA is a very martially-oriented group - no titles or role-playing involved whatsoever. We are interested simply in the fighting arts of the era.