I don’t really want to go into the details about dussacks, what it is and what it isn’t, I will leave it to this excellent article by Roger Norling from 2012 on HROARR:
http://hroarr.com/the-dussack/
If you’ve never tried dussack fencing, give it a try if you have the chance 🙂 They are excellent teachers of distance and tempo, and also require very good footwork, to escape after delivering a blow to your opponent.
I recently borrowed these pair of Purpleheart Armoury Dussacks from a friend of mine (thanks to Peter Regenyei) to try them out, and possibly design some dussacks of my own based on these.
The length of these dussacks is 70 cm and they weigh 667 and 687 grams. They feel lighter in the hands, the people I asked to guess usually put them around 500 grams or less. They differ slightly in the shape of the wood on the inside, as you can see on the pictures. The one with the shorter wood core has a bit more floppy point, but otherwise I didn’t notice any big difference.
The point of balance is around 30 cm from the end of the weapon (marked with a red circle on the picture), around 13 cm-s from the index finger if held like this, thumb on the back of the blade. They feel really good in the hand, when striking, it’s really easy to put together nice combinations with them.
I used them several times to spar with and also did some solo drills with them. Currently I’m working on a bit longer design (around 80cm) with some form of hand protection as seen in some pictures from Meyer and Mair. Probably it will be a bit heavier but still safe to train with.
But back to the Purpleheart ones. In short summary, they are excellent tools for free sparring and practicing the techniques written in the sources. They don’t collapse under strikes, so you can parry with them, and give nice, but tolerable blows if exercising proper control. You can thrust with them safely too.
They can be used in different levels of intensity.
If the force level is lower and the main aim is to teach respect for the weapon and proper control, you can use them without much protection at all. Just make sure, that you and your partner both understand, these are training tools and not toys, so you should respect them. If you are foolish you can injure someone with these pretty badly, think of broken fingers, nose, teeth or stabs to the eye.
If the level of force is a bit higher I would advise using a fencing mask and some sort of padded gloves (like lacrosse gloves, or Red Dragon gloves) or even a hard protection for the elbow. Oh and a cup of course 🙂 (think of the children! 😀 ).
I don’t think that fully gearing up is right for these weapons, because then all fear for the strikes will be quickly gone and the sparring might become a smacking contest. Also the constraint the gear might impose of you is much less with the amount of protection listed above.
I’m planning on updating this post with some sparring videos of mine, but until then here are some clips showing some of the brothers of these bad boys in action (or sisters and girls, or whatever):
Without much protection:
Mask, gloves and elbow protection:
Kids tournament with dussacks:
Short video about the dussack in action (hungarian):
They are available at:
http://www.woodenswords.com/category_s/1846.htm
HEMA EQUIPMENT 