Jian & Throwing Knife

[Tashi James]

I am aware this is kinda off topic, well it's relative I guess, military arts are known for there use of projectiles..We should do historical archery.. {mounted} lol..



Thanks for those links.. I have found that with a flick of the wrist so the shank spins out from off the tip of a finger, {hard to explain} that while there is minimal spin, it sticks quite deep in the trunk {of tree!}. Some of the deepest actually; I do get more spin sometimes though, usually 1 1/2 rotations depending on the distance.

[Dan Fleet]

...

Typical use of throwing weapons is as a distraction or a hinderance. It could be a very usefull thing in a life or death encounter.

...

Which raises the intriguing question --- does it have to be a knife? Is there any evidence for some sort of shorter range distracting projectile, simply to create an opening? Delivery of irritating agents?

[Tashi James]

in ninjutsu i was taught to use adaptations

[Scott M. Rodell]

...We should do historical archery.. {mounted} lol...

Archery certainly was an important part of a soldier's training well into the Qing dynasty. In respect to historical swordsmanship, we should consider what defence was employed when arrows came raining down. No doubt one reason why paintings of Qing battles show about half the men on the field not actively involved with shoot something back at the enemy are armed with tengpai (rattan shields) is to deal with arrows.

[Tashi James]

which are the curved rattan shields?

[Scott M. Rodell]

which are the curved rattan shields?

Yes...

[Peter Dekker]

Bows might even have been more dangerous than taken credit for. Recent studies show that an arrow does not even have to penetrate to kill. I quote this post from the admin on the forum of the Society of Archer Antiquaries:

Even if this does not happen, I have seen huge powerful men taken right off their feet by the blow from a (blunt) arrow, and I have seen a man in armour vainly and unsuccesfully trying to get to his feet after falling into the mud. There are records of knights suffocating in the mud because they were unable to rise. There is (as they might have said at the time) more than one way of killing a Frenchman.

Such tests with blunt arrows against men in armor have been done more often in England, and stories of men getting shot off their feet by them are more numerous than this account only.

Knowing this was a heavy longbow, and not a Manchu composite recurve bow, we might get an idea of the impact of arrows in Qing times: Manchu bows used longer, heavier arrows and unlike common Eurocentric myth, composite recurve bows were more efficient than longbows. Efficient as in: more kinetic energy per pound of draw weight is transferred into the arrow and thus into the target on impact.

Of course, these are direct hits from relatively short distances but many commanders of the Ming and Qing (among them Qi Jiguang) ordered their men to wait and shoot until the enemy was pretty close as to ensure a kill. Mounted archers also often shot from relative short distances because no matter how skilled, sitting atop a galloping horse still compromised their accuracy.

-Peter