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Post by Kilted Cossack on Feb 20, 2009 20:57:52 GMT
Gents and ladies:
I announce sweet, sweet victory! I can now hold my head high among swordsmen . . . or at least, not hang it so low. I have now cut bottles, and thus now I am a man. (Unless I'd been a girl before, in which case I would now be a woman.) Anyway, it's a minor milestone.
I owned in the past a SLO katana. Now I own two long daggers/short swords, each from Windlass: a kindjal and a qama. Each is about 18" of steel, full tang, riveted scale handles. I have been desultorily experimenting with bottle slicing, to little effect. With the qama, I have been able to tip slice fairly well, but that was tip slicing only, perhaps the last 1/2".
Today I gathered my two liter bottles and filled them with water, set them on the stand, and thought about the best way to go about this. I decided that I would use the forward portion of the qama, from tip to slightly behind the start of the taper to the point.
I was wearing my lucky "do it yourself" kilt, and barefoot, with my off hand tucked into the belt at the back of the kilt.
I went all "mind of no mind" and cut, near the top of the bottle. Whoosh! Splash! Topple! One recycled bottle of fizzy water got recycled.
"Once is chance, twice is happenstance, and three times is enemy action," said Auric Goldfinger, and I wasn't going to think there was anything but luck to my first bottle success.
Set bottle, tuck off hand, measure, inhale, exhale, "be the cut" . . . and a second bottle emulated the first, heading off into bifurcated heaven.
Third time, then, is the charm. Measure, tuck, inhale, exhale. In boot camp they told us "BRASS" when we were behind the trigger on the KD range, "breathe, relax, aim, slow steady squeeze" and I adapted, however imperfectly, the principle to a cold weapon.
Whoosh! Slide! Splash! Topple!
The crowd goes wild! (OK, there was no crowd.) I went wild! The qama comes through like a qama-qama-qama-qama-qama-chameleon! Slightly down and curving went the strokes, and the cuts came through clean and even. I have benefited from the cutting videos I've seen posted here, and my form while still horrid is now more or less functional.
I stand among you a proud man: I have cut water bottles!
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 20, 2009 20:58:55 GMT
Well supposedly we're all women before we're men....
Grats on your woman hood!
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Post by genocideseth on Feb 20, 2009 21:03:57 GMT
Con... Grats?
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Post by YlliwCir on Feb 20, 2009 21:05:25 GMT
Well done, KC. Tis indeed the rare man or women who perservere thru the frustration to get to the cut. +1
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Post by septofclansinclair on Feb 20, 2009 21:25:16 GMT
My first cut, I bent my first sword... it can be rough. Way to go, man!
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Post by Deleted on Feb 20, 2009 21:25:47 GMT
Way to go Kilted!! I have a couple of custom swords on the way, but the waiting got to me. So, I bought a katana off of a fellow SBG member today, and I can't wait for it to get here so I can cut my first bottles. I have a stack on the back steps of 2 liter bottles and big water jugs just waiting for my wrath. ;D
+1 to you for the taste of things to come!
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Post by genocideseth on Feb 20, 2009 21:47:38 GMT
My first cut, I bent my first sword... it can be rough. Way to go, man! Now that must have sucked! Sorry to hear... My first cut did not make it all the way through, but I was proud none the less.
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Post by YlliwCir on Feb 20, 2009 21:53:56 GMT
Ah, then you have learned the riddle of plastic.
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SlayerofDarkness
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"Always give everyone the benefit of the doubt."
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Post by SlayerofDarkness on Feb 21, 2009 1:03:54 GMT
...So, I bought a katana off of a fellow SBG member today, and... Hey, Zantetsuken! Which sword did you get? Oh, and congrats on your first cut, Cossack! I know that feeling... mine was only a mere 5 months ago, so I still remember it... (although afterwards was just a mad swirl of hacking and slashing dozens of bottles to oblivion! ;D Great fun! But don't forget to be safe, never forget the safety. ) -Slayer
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 21, 2009 1:10:13 GMT
$$ -Reading this made my evening.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 21, 2009 1:24:30 GMT
Ah, then you have learned the riddle of plastic. I literally LOLled! Thanks, Ric! And Kiltedcossack: congrats on your cut, fun isn't it!!! A nicely done cut is like getting all the pins at once at bowling (forgot the right term, a strike?), achieving a super trick-shot fluidly without thinking when playing pool...when it just flows...wow.
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ecovolo
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"Ich bin ein Landsknecht."
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Post by ecovolo on Feb 21, 2009 1:59:39 GMT
I stand among you a proud man: I have cut water bottles! Congratulations on your (insert gender of choice here)-hood. You get karma for three reasons: 1) Anyone who references James Bond --not only that, a James Bond *villain*-- is okay in my book, 2) A reference to an 80's pop song, and 3) This was damned funny to read . --Edward
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 21, 2009 2:24:26 GMT
Gratz on popping your cherry....err..I mean bottle..)
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Post by Deleted on Feb 21, 2009 4:51:42 GMT
Nice going kiltedcossack. Now the addiction really begins ;D
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Post by ShooterMike on Feb 21, 2009 5:10:36 GMT
Congratz. Before long you will have to be recording your cutting, posting videos, sharing feedback and doing all kinds of "demented" things like some of the rest of us. ;D And unfortunately, you will find yourself rummaging through recycling bins everywhere, pilfering to get your "plastic fix."
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 21, 2009 5:49:01 GMT
...So, I bought a katana off of a fellow SBG member today, and... Hey, Omega! Which sword did you get? -Slayer An Oni Forge katana with shobu zukuri from Shadowhowler, Check out a great review of a sword just like it by our friend Kenpachi, here /index.cgi?action=display&board=swordreviews&thread=7363&page=1 I'm looking forward to it!
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Post by Kilted Cossack on Feb 21, 2009 12:17:54 GMT
. . . and then he got a little cocky.
Isn't it always the way? You sit down and work your way through something, you say to yourself, "Heck I've seen the review team do this with style and panache" and puzzle your way through it, you figure out where you want the blade to strike the bottle and the angle and the foot placement.
And then its time to show off.
When my daughters got home from school, my eldest saw the (neatly) sliced bottles laying around the cutting stand and thought they were the coolest things ever. My wife and my daughters and my dogs (and even one of the cats, although I think he was just there for company) all wanted to "see Daddy cut!"
Pride, they say, goeth before the fall, and I was strutting around feeling, as ZZTop once put it, "badder than Shaft, Superfly, James Bond and Kung-Fu all rolled into one." We organize everyone into a safe observation spot, I set up the bottle . . . and the dog we're taking care of for a friend comes gallumphing over. He thinks water is fun, and he wants in on it as well. So there are starts and stops while we get him corraled in a place safely out of reach, and then its time to show off.
Think Ty Cobb. Think Jose Canseco. Think Mark McGwire and A-Roid. Man, I batted that bottle halfway across the yard!
"Daddy" says my eldest, "was it supposed to do that?"
"No, baby, it wasn't."
Sigh.
My angle was wrong, the swing was overpowered, I wasn't in the mind of no mind, I might as well have been using a Louisville Slugger, or a cricket bat. But the second time, now . . . that was different. The second time I concentrated right, or didn't concentrate (but the right way), I wasn't worried about showing off: swish, slice, splash, topple. Then I decided it was getting cool enough that it was time to go indoors.
Thoughts and conclusions? I can do it now. It's funny how you can "concentrate" by "letting go of concentration" but it probably helped that, as I lined up the second slice I remembered Hemingway writing about "freezing yourself into that stable place you shoot from." Batting the bottle was probably a good thing, a reminder to focus on form and the cut itself, not to get cocky. Was it von Clausewitz who said that in cutting everything is simple but even the simplest things are hard?
I do like the qama. It's not a gladius but you can see the derivation from the gladius. I like the horn handles, and I've even come to like the studs on one side. It's very light and manueverable, and for under $70 sharpened and delivered from KoA, I think it's hard to beat, and it can make you feel like a Roman legionary, or Uhtred Ragnarson in a shield wall, or Kirby O'Donnell from some of Howard's short stories. As a nugget, I really like the full tang construction; I'm sure the thinner tangs on many European swords work just fine (which is, after all, probably why European swords HAD thinner tangs) but I like the qama just fine. While it's not the cutter some other blades are, it can cut just fine, and I'm reasonably confident that practice with the qama will be transferrable to a longer blade.
So there you go: some good cuts, and a little batting practice.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 21, 2009 17:48:55 GMT
You've learned a good lesson. A sword and a bottle can be as good as a bat and a ball without the correct angle
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 21, 2009 18:03:26 GMT
Very entertaining posts, I am not the sort of person who gives out karma, this will be my second award but I love the grammatical correctness and the entertainment value of your post so +1 well earned my friend and don't worry about the pesky bottle, don't even think about the cut, just step up and cut. As my sensei used to say "The best cuts occur when you cut" meaning stop over thinking it and just go with it;)
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Post by shadowhowler on Feb 21, 2009 21:57:34 GMT
Very entertaining posts, I am not the sort of person who gives out karma, this will be my second award but I love the grammatical correctness and the entertainment value of your post so +1 well earned my friend Ah... so you like things like grammar and proper spelling and whatnot? No WONDER I never get any karma from you... ;D
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