Post by darknovashin on Jun 25, 2024 15:30:57 GMT
Hey folks,
This is more of a precursor post to a larger project I’m planning to work on, but Angus Trim is one of the most prolific and well respected mechanist and sword maker of the current era and likely very well known either by reputation or direct friendship on this forum. Over his 30 year career (at least I think it’s 30?), he has worked on a large portion of the Oakshott typology as well as a smattering of Falchions, fantasy creations, and even a couple katana, and he’s still iterating and improving his technique. He primarily works in 5160 (a few 6150 as well in the past) and uses a mix of CNC and hand shaping with belts to refine and tune his blades. He is known for the “harmonic balance” of his weapons making highly effective cutters that handle better than nearly any other maker, going head to head with Albion as the preferred maker for cutting competitions. Adding to his legend is that he suffered a bad stoke in the 2010s and was able to come back and excel. He has recently made comments that he’s only got about another 18 months left in him before he will close up shop and retire, which is part of what motivated me to get going on this project rather than just musing about it it my head.
While I have admired his work on YouTube in the hands of Matthew Cross, Phillip Martin, Kane Shen, Matthew Jensen and others, I am primarily trained in Japanese and Chinese sword arts. But, his work (along with Peter Johnson’s) on tuning the handling of a weapon has been a fascination of mine for about a decade. When I was learning and even today among my friend group, “balance” was backweighting of a weapon till the point of balance was near or at the crossguard no matter the amount of weight you had to add (admittedly a large portion of said friends are SCA, HEMA, and larpers without cutting experience, though which a goodly amount of combat experience in duel and melee settings).What makes a sword feel like a sword and how small changes in weight and its distribution can completely change it is a valuable skill, and sadly a rare one. Given his upcoming retirement, I would like to keep a record of what he’s learned along the way.
While I don’t yet personally have any of his blades in hand, I have several getting scabbards and a sharpen with Matthew Cross. My original plan was to take my collection of Angus Trim (also my Howard Clark Katana and LK Chen Jian) through the weapons dynamic computer to give myself a better understanding of how the graphs translate to how I feel them in use, but given the shear size (and consistency) of Angus Trim’s work, I thought it would be a good project to collect the opinions and reviews of his works from the internet and collate them into a single resource that others can draw on. The more measurements the better as those can help teach and inspire current makers. This is a large amount of information to gather, I am hoping to get some help from the community here.
Step 1 is going to be a google doc collating information from reviews/comments here on SBG, Gus’s own Facebook, and YouTube (with links) broken into typology and model number. His older works have their own numbering system that I honestly don’t fully understand so they will get their own section and use the Wayback machine on his old website. If there are those of you here who own, have owned, use or used any of his blades and are willing to add your own descriptions and opinions that would be great. Once the doc is up, feel free to add them there (you will need to ask for permission to edit just to prevent junk accounts messing with it) or you can post here and I will copy them into the appropriate section. Pics of your own collections would also be great to header each model.
Step 2 for me is going to wait till I have the models I have in hand and taking them through the weapons dynamic calculator. If any one is willing to do the same and help me fill out the catalog of graphs, that would be immensely appreciated and provide a great point of comparison between models without individual preferences. This is a time consuming step, so I will probably be at this for a bit just for the ones I have (xiiic.3, xviiib.16, xviiib.17, xviiib.19, and 2H French Falchion), so help would be greatly appreciated. For those unfamiliar I will make a second post of links to the computer and some instructional information here and in the document.
Step 3 is definitely going to depend on community memory. I am hoping to collect information (and pics/video if they exist) of Atrims in competition. This is primarily a way to give some prestige to Angus Trim himself to show how respected his skills are in the community that he is the go to for so many competitions.
I am unfortunately both ADHD and have a terrible schedule so I don’t think this going to be done in a reasonable timeframe if at all, but it’s a task I feel worth attempting as a way to honor Gus’ work. Again, any help that can be provided will be appreciated and I will be putting a second post up with the doc and relevant links for the weapons dynamics in the next couple days (and update this post). Thank in advance!
Document Link: docs.google.com/document/d/1gQMciv7Gtqj8NnfWfYc_rOv4k8kcrZ-7YwFTXg6b5vk/edit?usp=sharing
Weapons Dynamic Computer: subcaelo.net/ensis/dynamics-computer/
Weapon Dynamics Walkthrough: subcaelo.net/ensis/dynamics-computer/walkThrough.html
Weapon Dynamics Computer introduction: blog.subcaelo.net/ensis/documenting-dynamics-of-swords/
Weapon Dynamics Computer Video by Dlatrex:
This is more of a precursor post to a larger project I’m planning to work on, but Angus Trim is one of the most prolific and well respected mechanist and sword maker of the current era and likely very well known either by reputation or direct friendship on this forum. Over his 30 year career (at least I think it’s 30?), he has worked on a large portion of the Oakshott typology as well as a smattering of Falchions, fantasy creations, and even a couple katana, and he’s still iterating and improving his technique. He primarily works in 5160 (a few 6150 as well in the past) and uses a mix of CNC and hand shaping with belts to refine and tune his blades. He is known for the “harmonic balance” of his weapons making highly effective cutters that handle better than nearly any other maker, going head to head with Albion as the preferred maker for cutting competitions. Adding to his legend is that he suffered a bad stoke in the 2010s and was able to come back and excel. He has recently made comments that he’s only got about another 18 months left in him before he will close up shop and retire, which is part of what motivated me to get going on this project rather than just musing about it it my head.
While I have admired his work on YouTube in the hands of Matthew Cross, Phillip Martin, Kane Shen, Matthew Jensen and others, I am primarily trained in Japanese and Chinese sword arts. But, his work (along with Peter Johnson’s) on tuning the handling of a weapon has been a fascination of mine for about a decade. When I was learning and even today among my friend group, “balance” was backweighting of a weapon till the point of balance was near or at the crossguard no matter the amount of weight you had to add (admittedly a large portion of said friends are SCA, HEMA, and larpers without cutting experience, though which a goodly amount of combat experience in duel and melee settings).What makes a sword feel like a sword and how small changes in weight and its distribution can completely change it is a valuable skill, and sadly a rare one. Given his upcoming retirement, I would like to keep a record of what he’s learned along the way.
While I don’t yet personally have any of his blades in hand, I have several getting scabbards and a sharpen with Matthew Cross. My original plan was to take my collection of Angus Trim (also my Howard Clark Katana and LK Chen Jian) through the weapons dynamic computer to give myself a better understanding of how the graphs translate to how I feel them in use, but given the shear size (and consistency) of Angus Trim’s work, I thought it would be a good project to collect the opinions and reviews of his works from the internet and collate them into a single resource that others can draw on. The more measurements the better as those can help teach and inspire current makers. This is a large amount of information to gather, I am hoping to get some help from the community here.
Step 1 is going to be a google doc collating information from reviews/comments here on SBG, Gus’s own Facebook, and YouTube (with links) broken into typology and model number. His older works have their own numbering system that I honestly don’t fully understand so they will get their own section and use the Wayback machine on his old website. If there are those of you here who own, have owned, use or used any of his blades and are willing to add your own descriptions and opinions that would be great. Once the doc is up, feel free to add them there (you will need to ask for permission to edit just to prevent junk accounts messing with it) or you can post here and I will copy them into the appropriate section. Pics of your own collections would also be great to header each model.
Step 2 for me is going to wait till I have the models I have in hand and taking them through the weapons dynamic calculator. If any one is willing to do the same and help me fill out the catalog of graphs, that would be immensely appreciated and provide a great point of comparison between models without individual preferences. This is a time consuming step, so I will probably be at this for a bit just for the ones I have (xiiic.3, xviiib.16, xviiib.17, xviiib.19, and 2H French Falchion), so help would be greatly appreciated. For those unfamiliar I will make a second post of links to the computer and some instructional information here and in the document.
Step 3 is definitely going to depend on community memory. I am hoping to collect information (and pics/video if they exist) of Atrims in competition. This is primarily a way to give some prestige to Angus Trim himself to show how respected his skills are in the community that he is the go to for so many competitions.
I am unfortunately both ADHD and have a terrible schedule so I don’t think this going to be done in a reasonable timeframe if at all, but it’s a task I feel worth attempting as a way to honor Gus’ work. Again, any help that can be provided will be appreciated and I will be putting a second post up with the doc and relevant links for the weapons dynamics in the next couple days (and update this post). Thank in advance!
Document Link: docs.google.com/document/d/1gQMciv7Gtqj8NnfWfYc_rOv4k8kcrZ-7YwFTXg6b5vk/edit?usp=sharing
Weapons Dynamic Computer: subcaelo.net/ensis/dynamics-computer/
Weapon Dynamics Walkthrough: subcaelo.net/ensis/dynamics-computer/walkThrough.html
Weapon Dynamics Computer introduction: blog.subcaelo.net/ensis/documenting-dynamics-of-swords/
Weapon Dynamics Computer Video by Dlatrex: