Thu, Jan 17, 1:55 AM
James,
In one of your crackpot podcasts, you mentioned a prototype belly knife that has some feature to prevent your fingers from slipping down over the blade. What does it look like?
I'm noticing that many of the knife attack victims on the blog are stabbed in the neck or threatened with stabbing in the neck. Out here, a cartel hitman stabbed a guy in the neck. I wonder if there's some sort of armor to prevent this. The Marines are called "Leathernecks" because they originally wore collars that prevented their heads from being chopped-off by sabers.
-Bryce Sharper
My best belly knife is a neck knife with the lariat strung from the right belt down into the front right pants pocket for a cross draw in reverse for ripping. See the Lancaster Agonistics You Tube channel for this. The blade in question has a simple iron bubble as part of the one piece tool in front of the fore finger or in back of the pinkie if held in a rip grip. A simple paracord binding also helps prevent slippage, especially if blood has been drawn.
Oh sharp one, this is a fitting topic.
Leather tends to make light steel bounce off if it is hit sideways with a blade, rather than with the edge on perfect along the leather grain. I have fought against leather strip armor, just hanging belt straps from a belt or face cage and bracers, with dull steel and sticks. If a blade does not bite true it will bounce out. Manny combat cuts are not perfectly true. To help your armor be reactive developing squirm reflexes and rolling while being hit in sparing is clutch important.
Beards work as throat protection if they are thick enough.
The best materials for collars against knives, which are deflected even by blue jean seams, are from best to worst:
-pleated canvas, which I wore to the bar tonight
-Oiled canvas
-lined suede
-leather
-denim
-turtle neck sweater
Anytime you combine two garments you double the effectiveness of each with the air pocket. Most importantly, your knife training and empty hand drills should include frequent passive hand to neck shielding on the left side, which saved my friend Jimmy Frederick from a throat slash when he merely thought he was blocking a sloppy hook.
Being a Bad Man in a Worse World
Fighting Smart: Boxing, Agonistics & Survival
THanks, James.
This provokes some more thoughts. Gloves are probably a good idea. Danes used to wear arm wrings and leather collars around their wrists. It's pretty obvious these were used to prevent injury when defending against sword, seaxe, and knife strokes and stabs. Despite all of the videos on how you can DEFEND AGAINST THE KNIFE BARE HANDED, I'm extremely skeptical. I think you need some armor or you're going to be swiss-cheese.
This seems like it would work:
amazon.com/gp/product/B0030IT76C/ref=ox_sc_saved_title_3?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1
The neck armor the Marines wore was leather boiled in wax. The leather absorbs the wax and it greatly increases the cut resistance.