Rings on a sword

I thought it was a thing for practice blades. So it makes more noise and its easier to follow.

1. Distraction. More noise can throw your opponent off. Same reason they have those red flags on the handle/in their other hand (throw it at someone and blind them for a sec).

2. If someone has a spear, you can catch or divert the thrust with the rings as you dodge. Takes opponent off balance or pulls their weapon away.

It adds weight while keeping blade flexibility.

It's not a terrible method imo.

I was told rings add additional weight, adding more power to a swing.

Please stop this. Both of those reasons you listed are stupid and impractical.
1. The sound and din of a fight is no more distracting than a fancy tambourin on the back of your sword. No one will be distracted by a noise which emenates from where your blade happens to be.

2. Doing that with your sword is literally worse than parrying a spear with your hand. If you're in distance to turn the back of your blade up to try to parry, you can parry with your off-hand.

It's literally just a contrivance to spice up wushu performances and add a precussion dimension to the act.

It's not just a wushu thing. Believe me, I did legit kung fu for a while.

You aren't really focusing on catching the opponent's weapon. You fight how you normally fight, and if the opportunity arises you can break their grip.

Also note that eastern and western martial arts are very different. There's not really a lot of non-weapon technique with HEMA stuff. To Asian martial arts, a weapon is not really your primary means of fighting in an individual circumstance. It's a secondary tool, unless you're on the battlefield where you need to fight in formation and all that jazz. But then, you aren't using broadswords--it's staves, spears, and bows.

>There's not really a lot of non-weapon technique with HEMA stuff.

Well, aside from wrestling.

You know. That thing we had been doing since the greeks.

Yeah, but wrestling sucks for actually trying to fight and kill people.

You know what you do when someone tries to charge at you and grapple your legs? Knee them in the face. Or punch them in the throat if they go for a bear hug up high.

Grappling in armor is another thing entirely, but if we're just talking streets, you don't have that (especially if we have already limited this discussion to unarmed).

*streetfighting

>Yeah, but wrestling sucks for actually trying to fight and kill people.

You are thinking of sports wrestling. HEMA wrestling is vicious as shit.

Resisting takedowns or grappling requires a lot more than "knee em in the face" and "punch em in the throat". Your experience on the playground does not make you an expert.

Which is why the vast majority of asian martial arts are horribly impractical and inefficient when it actually comes to fighting.

Please do not think that guy and whatever kung fu he does is representative of Asian martial arts.

Thanks.

This is why most MMA fights end up on the ground, with either submissions or pounds... You are a walking teleports behind you meme, please stop.

Hey you take that back. I'm sure user has a lot of experience being kneed in the face and punched in the throat on the playground.

While I'm not the nothin personnel guy who thinks grappling is useless, most MMA fights ending on the ground is a meme, unless you count "get nearly knocked out standing and get fully knocked out from ground and pound" as a ground thing.

>2. If someone has a spear, you can catch or divert the thrust with the rings as you dodge. Takes opponent off balance or pulls their weapon away.

FINALLY, A DEVICE THAT'LL ALLOW ME TO DIVERT AN ENEMY SPEAR THROUGH SEVERAL GUIDING RINGS DIRECTLY INTO MY CHEST

Wushu has a 'performance' side to it like some other martial arts, the rings make noise as part of that and don't have a practical function in actual combat

It's so you can attach it to your keys so you don't lose it.

Combine it with boobplate for the ultimate defense!

It's so when you fire your shotgun in their chest you can hear the bells jingle to the tune of your unmatched superiority.

It's about blade harmonics.

Blades vibrate, and this is almost as undesirable on a sword as it is on an airplane wing.You don't want a blade oscillating in the air, so the rings act as unfixed counterweights to keep the blade moving perfectly straight, while also serving in a manner not dissimilar to bow string dampeners. They counter vibrations at different points of the blade, transmitting energy through themselves rather than continuing through the blade.

For the most part, it's nigh imperceptible for most people, but when swinging similar blades, with rings and without, at even modest speeds there is a tangible difference.

My first guess would be that those prevent the enemy weapon from sliding down your blade, although I don't know enough about fencing to say if this is a good thing or not.

You're supposed to tie ribbons to them, they're purely decorative.

Lost my fucking shit in public, well done user.

The chinese sabres?

Apparently it was meant to hook or dull an opponents weapon.

My guess tho is that they are decorations adopted from folk-dances that included swords.

The chinese and indians (hindu) tried a lot of experimental weapon designs during their many wars, always hoping to discover something giving them an edge over their opponents.

Many of these gimmicks fail to serve as intended.

As has been said many times, they rattle and distracting make noise.
Also, your are /supposed/ to run cloth through them, which, coupled with motion blur, makes it marginally harder to follow the weapon.

Like everything else in the Badlands, it's purpose is to make sunny look awesome

The fuck is a blade harmonic.

Jesus Christ there's some bad info in this thread. There is no purpose besides decoration. They won't help you "capture a spear point", they won't be distracting, they don't make a sword swing straighter, and they don't dull another persons weapon.

Adding weight to a sword tip doesn't make it better either. If they wanted a heavier tip, they'd forge it like that, not attach some rings.

It is purely decorative.

It's adjustable weight adding.

Also the rings only apply the weight to the tip when swung while distributing the excess weight toward the grip/neutral while guarding upright.

It's a minor thing.

Did you even read user's post? I mean, I doubt that's what they're for, but blade vibrations were a very real thing, that's what Parierhaken were for, to transmit vibrations to your opponent's blade in a clash, which happened more frequently with larger two-handed weapons.

>Yeah, but wrestling sucks for actually trying to fight and kill people.
People actually believe this.

>Yeah, but wrestling sucks for actually trying to fight and kill people.

>casually breaking people's limbs totes suuucks for serious fighting. Better punch a dude in the face twenty times until he gets a nosebleed.

Suure.

Not to mention fishhooking, gouging, ear busting, pretty much half the shit that's fucking banned in le "real" MMA. Also:
>gloves
>rounds

Holy shit this thread is full of retarded shit.

These kinds of responses are the only ones that make any kind of sense.

user, a stick with two weights on either end doesn't move like an acutally properly shaped sword. The weight percentage distribution over its whole dimension is a lot more important than the relationship between its most extreme points.

Those rings are very unlikely to make a proper sword better or fix a bad one.

Parierhaken don't distribute shock, they give you additional secure play surfarce in the bind and the winden.

This.
If there were any significant advantage in having blade rings, you'd see them all over the place.

I does kind of suck, if you're trying to fight and kill armed people.

Swords flex, they don't produce vibrations to the degree you're imagining-that would come with blades that were unusually stiff, which would in turn make them prone to breaking. Furthermore those secondary guards are there for that reason, zweihanders were often gripped along the "blade" itself for more leverage. They offer protection and another surface to catch blades.

Materia slots.

The rings are magic.

>zweihanders were often gripped along the "blade" itself for more leverage
oh god, don't bring renaissance armored combat into it, these guys are confused enough already

>Materia slots.
/thread

>bow string dampeners.
we put a silencer on your bow, bro!

>The fuck is a blade harmonic.
It's what you hit with an inverse tachyon pulse.

Your skills are inferior

So you never been in a fight then

It's kung fu myth, the rings are supposed to be used to parry, they're supposed to shatter your opponents sword, like a flameberge. Can't remember the specifics.

It's about as real as Berserkers actually being fire-proof and Samurais using Nodachis.

Some guy on the tube who got a flamberg-style longsword said that the main difference was that it made it fiendishly different for other people to properly bind his blade. Apparently they tend to get stuck wherever they make first contact and can't slide properly, giving him a chance to take control of the situation and get into a bind favourable to himself.

...

They're for blocking slashing weapons but cannot block bodkin arrows.

Gloves hurt more in my experience not sure if they do more real harm than hands but the certainly hurt

Gloves are to protect your hands and make it slightly less likely to cut your face open. They don't do much/anything to reduce the damage caused by a fist knocking your head.

the rings are an ancient form of today's tactical rail, smaller swords can be fit onto the sword to increase damage, torches could be mounted for low light/home defense, tactical grips for added leverage with swings ect

Now I wanna play a blacksmith artificer who has no idea what he's doing.

>he doesn't harmonize his blades

That's half bullshit, The gloves are added to make punches more brutal. It's a psychological thing, your hands are protected from harm so you punch much harder, exactly like when a person wears boxing gloves. As for reducing damage, they don't, because people subconsciously punch harder while wearing gloves, so you had that right, if only partially.

What's the bullshit half? Gloves reduce hand injuries and reduce lacerations, but they increase traumatic brain injury.

That's what makes gloved fights worse. Along with the punching harder thing, gloves make hand injuries and cuts less common, which means fights last longer, which means more blunt trauma to the head and more fights ending via brain-damaging knockouts.

Boxing gloves, at least the ones used in officiated matches, usually weight about 8-10 oz, for training they can weigh up to 20 so they effectively add mass to your punches. It can get pretty brutal.

MMA gloves typical weigh around 4. They offer less protection for your hands than boxing gloves. Cutting someone with your punches is less likely in gloves, boxing gloves especially, but it can be done.

Old ass leather gloves, now those would cut somebody.

The same purpose rings play on someone's nose I guess. Calls attention and can sometimes get stuck some somewhere.

You know what, I'm not sure, if that was your post, perhaps I should have said somewhat inaccurate, rather than bullshit.

I guess I just prefer seeing people beat each other in Bare knuckle fights, because it's not nearly as brutal, and the fighters are smarter by far.

Why is my brain telling me this is wheel of Time art?

that show is great

Yeah... no. Go to asp with your CMA shit.

>The method of fighting an unarmed opponent really sucks against someone with a weapon
-T. retard

>It can be used as a super circumstantial sword I mean spear breaker!
>It causes noises that distract your opponent over the chaos of battle, their helmet that covers their ears, and any other ambient noise!
>It stabilizes the wuju blade harmonics of your sword!
>It adds weight for chopping strikes!
There are far better methods to do ANY of these things
Can you guys really not believe that they added something just because it looked cool?

Weapons like that exist in this world too, I admit it was probably for rule of cool factor, but I still want to know the real reason, even if it's just decoration.

Ah, I see (and appreciate) what ya did, there.

Adds weight and looks swag

Because it's pretty obviously Rand al Thor from Eye of the World?

I only use most harmonized of blades when preparing my activated almonds.

Keeps the sword from becomming too embedded in the wood of a shield. Often soldiers would soak their shields in water overnight , this makes any swords caught in the sink deep and stick there, impossible to get out. Rings on the blade keeps the sword from getting caught in the wet soggy wood and can be then pulled out easier.

Like said, gloves are meant to protect your own hands, not make fights safer. Since the introduction of boxing gloves the number of boxing related deaths have increased as combatants now can pound each other in the face and head without worrying about breaking their hands in the process.

You enchant the rings of course!

This.

To dull the edge of the enemy's sword when you parry it?

THE RINGS ARE THERE TO INDUCE FEAR

UNENDING FEAR

Getting suplexed into concrete is not pretty

I like you, user. Please continue to rise above and be an awesome person.

>If there were any significant advantage in having blade rings, you'd see them all over the place.

You are assuming that most weapons weren't mass produced as cheaply as possible to arm armies. You need to start thinking about optimization as a cost vs. reward problem.

Somebody post the screencap about dumb koreans putting rings on their swords, I can't find it for my life.

to be honest being properly suplexed into ANYTHING is not pretty

>Often soldiers would soak their shields in water overnight
Did anyone ever actually do this with wooden shield and not leather ones?

Biggest diference is that, when cutting into an enemy, the rings will stop you from cutting in too deep and getting your weapon stuck, which is more frequent than you might imagine.

This may take away some lethality, but is completely invaluable when outnumbered. It keeps the enemy from trading life for life with you.

>Samurais using Nodachis.

Well they most certainly did. It's a circumstantial weapon not too different from a Zweihänder.

PANKRATON
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I always assumed they were to prevent the weapon from getting stuck?

There's only one person who can look pretty getting suplexed, and his name is JOHNNNNNN CENNNNAAAA

Vikings weren't fireproof they just didn't give a fuck of they were on fire because that kept the ninjas off

Aren't they there so you can add fancy bushels and cloth bands on them to wave around and confuse your enemy visually because there's so much shit going on in in his face?