Okay, so I found this non-posted post in my drafts, so here's what you missed out on a fortnight ago!
I really need to think up some better titles for my posts. I mean really, Archery - honestly. Then again, it's 12:30am and I'm watching soppy movies.
Right. I mentioned archery, so I shall speak on archery! Now - as some of you readers might know, I'm a member of JOAS, the local medieval reenactment group. I think it stands for Juvenis of Accendo Sarcalogos.. and I've no idea what that means. Having said that, it's not relevant anyway. But our focus is on 13th century France at any rate, so our dream goal is to dress up like Frenchmen.
We also fight like them, which is fortunate. Back then the Franks didn't shy away from a fight. Now, our training days are on Sundays but we mostly train with melee weapons - swords, shields, daggers, spears, axes, etc. This Sunday (edit: a couple of weeks ago) was different however! We took the trip to the C monsters place (Craig and Cherilyn), set up some hay bails and started to launch arrows at them. We had a brief demonstration of the various bows, their weight (laymans terms - how strong the bow is), how to fire and how to aim. I, naturally, picked the most awkward bow I could to start off with.
A little bit of history - for the most part, combat archery is enacted using 30lb bows with blunted arrows. Very blunt. You know those rubber knobs on the bottom of some chairs? The arrows have those on 'em. So, we fire those at each other. A 30lb bow is pretty standard - there's enough weight to hit something hard, not enough to kill someone unless you're using field arrows. So.. a 55lb bow is fairly tough if you're not used to any real archery. Luckily, I didn't choose the 55lb bow. I chose the 80lb bow, and god my fingers were bleeding by the time I was done. Gah. Long story short, I gave up on that, stole somebody else's 30lb bow and had a shot at the crossbow that was dragged out.
OH! And we found a lucky lambs foot. Not so lucky for the lamb, I picked the damned thing up by the wet end. Ugh.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Update Thingy
Okay, time for an update. What's happened since the last one? Quite a bit, actually. I've purchased a second sword and helmet for myself from Manning Imperial.
The helmet is a 13th century French kettle hat, in the style shown by Goliath in the Maciejowski Bible. I decided to bling it up a bit - quite often helmets were painted, and a big reason for that was general maintenance. You don't need to polish it and keep it spotless, as the paint does the job for you. So, browsed through the bible and settled on a red and blue colour scheme. I think it looks quite nice.
I bought the sword second-hand, and considering it's about ten years old it's in surprisingly good condition. Any damage on it is purely cosmetic, luckily enough, and as far as I'm concerned just adds character. It's in the style of a Norman sword, but apparently the brazil nut pommel and the slightly curved crossguard were still in use in the 13th century. It handles like a dream, and I'm actually quite surprised how much fun it really is to use it in combat.
I'll cut this fairly short now, I'm about to head off for a photography trip (read: wandering around town with Mads and a camera) in a minute. I've been invited to four events! I'm not sure of the details of two - there's a festival in Maryborough in a week or two, and one in South Australia next May. The one in SA is a fairly large one and is held every year, so hopefully I'll have enough decent kit to go along. The other two events are at Kryal Castle on the weekend of October 2nd. That one should be a lot of fun, quite a few groups are going along, including my old reenactment club. Then there's the Timeline Faire in November, replacing MMFAT for this year. It'll be a very slack event, we haven't been asked to put on a show or display so we'll most likely sit around and look pretty for the masses.
Well, that's me done. More updates to continue, probably complaining about my bruises from the other day.
The helmet is a 13th century French kettle hat, in the style shown by Goliath in the Maciejowski Bible. I decided to bling it up a bit - quite often helmets were painted, and a big reason for that was general maintenance. You don't need to polish it and keep it spotless, as the paint does the job for you. So, browsed through the bible and settled on a red and blue colour scheme. I think it looks quite nice.
I bought the sword second-hand, and considering it's about ten years old it's in surprisingly good condition. Any damage on it is purely cosmetic, luckily enough, and as far as I'm concerned just adds character. It's in the style of a Norman sword, but apparently the brazil nut pommel and the slightly curved crossguard were still in use in the 13th century. It handles like a dream, and I'm actually quite surprised how much fun it really is to use it in combat.
I'll cut this fairly short now, I'm about to head off for a photography trip (read: wandering around town with Mads and a camera) in a minute. I've been invited to four events! I'm not sure of the details of two - there's a festival in Maryborough in a week or two, and one in South Australia next May. The one in SA is a fairly large one and is held every year, so hopefully I'll have enough decent kit to go along. The other two events are at Kryal Castle on the weekend of October 2nd. That one should be a lot of fun, quite a few groups are going along, including my old reenactment club. Then there's the Timeline Faire in November, replacing MMFAT for this year. It'll be a very slack event, we haven't been asked to put on a show or display so we'll most likely sit around and look pretty for the masses.
Well, that's me done. More updates to continue, probably complaining about my bruises from the other day.
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