1895 Pattern Gymnasium Sword - With Hanwei Pecoraro Comparison

Hey folks, Matt Easton here, Scholar Gladiatorian, just to talk a little bit, fairly briefly for me, about the 1895 Pattern Gymnasium Sabre. So firstly, as mentioned in previous videos on this, both incidentally on the public channel and on Patreon, if you're interested in seeing more videos I do churn out three more videos a month on Patreon and I have been talking about and showing this sabre on there. But to add to what I've said, an important part to note is that these are really interesting gymnasium sabres that aren't really being replicated in the modern world at the moment. I hope that they will be. There is a Hanway model, okay, that is wrongly named, it should be called the Masiello model incidentally, but because it's the Masiello model of gymnasium sabre, but there is a Hanway version of this. Unfortunately, the Hanway is horrible, okay, it has some issues. Now, that's not to say all Hanway stuff is horrible, I've had some great stuff from Hanway. Hanway can be a bit hit and miss, some of their models are better than others, some of their models have improved, okay, so the Hanway Fetish Fet for example was totally crap to begin with and is now a bit better than it used to be. But in terms of this gymnasium sabre, there isn't unfortunately a really good replica of it, but it does have some really good things going for it, which I think would make it very worthwhile any modern maker replicating. I'm just going to go through a few of those. So number one is it has a straight braid. So yes, in my definition of what sabres are, technically this is a sword, not a sabre. Yes, yes, okay. In Italy and France, this would be chabala or sabre, so therefore they would call it a sabre, okay. Why do they call it a sabre in Italy and France? Well, the exact logic of that is lost in the mists of time. I believe that in both countries originally sabre meant a curved sword, but came to be known, came to be applied to the military sword with that kind of hilt. So incidentally, many Americans I've noticed will refer to anything with a sabre hilt as a sabre, regardless of what blade it has on it. I can see both sides of the coin. Historically, you do indeed see straight swords referred to as sabres. So whatever, let's leave that topic aside. But it has a straight blade, so that's relatively easy to manufacture. Next up, it has a symmetrical blade, okay. That means that it has a fuller for about two thirds of the length. The fuller starts there, which is about 10 centimetres, I guess, from the guard, and finishes there, which is about 20 centimetres from the point. After that, it becomes a centrally flat section, okay. In this section where it's fullered, okay, which is essentially the part that you're going to be binding and parrying with, the fuller is in the middle of the blade. So it doesn't have a wedge section blade where you're going to be hitting your training partner or your buddy or your competition opponent with a thin edge. Instead, you're going to be, if you're hitting them with this part, which you shouldn't really be, but you're going to be hitting them with the broadest edge possible. But more importantly, perhaps, you're going to be parrying with a nice thick edge. So you're not going to take edge damage down here because there is no edge, okay. And that somewhat parallels the 1892 pattern blade that was actually in service. So essentially, you've got that portion of the blade down is for guarding, and then this portion of the blade up is for hitting. Now up here, it's good for hitting because it's light, okay. It's nice and flexible, and it has, let's just have a little look at the tip. Get to focus on that. Come on, focus. Do it. Do your thing. No, it's not going to comply. Maybe you can see there. There we go. So you can see that it has a end that's square this way. So you've got a nice long flat bit, no pointy or rounded bits. So it's going to hit evenly there, and it's gone out of focus again with a rounded blob at the end. So I think that is a great type of point, okay. Very, very safe. It doesn't have to be rolled, so you don't have to be forging stuff and worrying about heat treatment issues. Some of the Regulier tips, by coincidence, I happen to have one here, do unfortunately, this is one that I'm going to attempt to fix. Unfortunately, sometimes the rolled tips do crack, break off, get caught on things. This doesn't have that problem. It is solid. An advantage of the rolled tip is it's hollow, so it doesn't add weight at the tip. This does add weight at the tip, but as you can see, it's pretty small, so it's not really a problem. And it doesn't have the advantage of added on or applied points, such as rubber tips or bullet casings or whatever at the end. It's all one homogenous, solid piece. It's not going to fall off. You don't have to change it, and it's perfectly safe. The blade is quite flexible for the thrust, as you can see, but perfectly stiff for cutting because it's light. Because it's light at the tip, you can quite happily cut and change direction with it without it wobbling around too much. So it's very responsive. It's nice and quick, flexible, doesn't hit with an awful lot of force. So that's the blade. I think the blade's got all kinds of advantages for safe, modern military sabre practice. Secondly, it's got a weighted, I would argue, because it's very thick disc there. Let's call it a washer, although in this case it's not really a washer. It does serve a dual function. Partly it's to protect the blade from wearing through the guard, so the guard from breaking the hole that goes around the tang, the edges from breaking away, so it protects from that. But additionally, it adds weight in front of the hand. So when you hold it, if you took that disc away, you absolutely would notice the difference. And as mentioned in my previous video, on the later 1907 pattern, they make that disc even heavier, partly because they've made the blade even thinner and lighter. So that is a weight. And for any of you who remember the where we used to take shinai, put cross guards over them and put a weight above, it's the same principle. You're putting a weight above the guard, so you're not hitting someone with that weight, but you can feel the weight in your hands and the sword now moves more like a real sword, or more like the real weight of a real military sword. So that's a weight there. The guard. The guard is excellent and protective. Look at the amount of protection that offers, from the side, from in front, in every direction. Things coming down here are all going to get caught and it even goes out quite a long way at the back with the rear quillon, which protects the thumb most importantly. You could say the wrist, but really more the thumb. So it's an excellent degree of hand protection. Now, there's a feature which a lot of people miss, and that is these flanges. We love flanges, and these flanges are very important ones. They, again, provide two important features. Number one feature is this thin part of the guard is necessary so that you can hold the sword like this. Notice my hand comes past the guard. Something like a mortuary hilt or a highland basket hilt has bars coming out the side. You can't hold it in direct line or even beyond the line like you can with a sabre, because those side bars would be in the way. With this sword, even my little finger can come down towards the pommel, as you'll see there, and the back of the hand can go past the pommel on this side. So I can get the point on line in any way I like, and I can cut over the top of someone's guard. If I'm doing something like Christmann or Muller, one of the German sources, and I'm cutting in this almost Scheitelhau type way that they cut in German sources, lifting the hand up high and coming over the top. So I've got a lot of ability to change how the hand is on the grip and move it right the way down, which leaves plenty of space, incidentally, for the thumb upwards as well. I'll talk more about the grip in a second. So that has to be narrow there, but being narrow there means that any blows coming down here or even here are going to force this thin bit to bend, but not with a flange, and not with two flanges. You put a couple of flanges up here and it stiffens that whole section. So the first important thing that that does is this thin bridge, essentially. It puts sides to that bridge, a bit like an I or H beam, and it strengthens that girder there. But the second important thing, which I think some people, especially if you don't do sabre, might miss, is that when you're holding a sword like this, one vulnerable part of the hand, as I once found out myself, is that little finger there. That little finger can get broken, and one way that that happens is if you're parrying or guarding with the hilt up and the point down, the opponent's blade comes in here, slides around the guard and hits you in the little finger. Now, that flange doesn't entirely prevent that from happening. In fact, there is another type of Italian guard with a ring around, which does prevent that happening. But that flange does help protect it a bit more, because what it does is, if you look, it lifts up and further away. So it's more likely to hit the bottom of the hand rather than the front of the little finger, which is your weakest finger and the most likely to snap, unfortunately. But secondly, it might get stuck on this rise up here, anything that slides around here, and even if it doesn't, it rides up here. It's more likely to hit the pommel and the bottom of the hand rather than the actual little finger. So protectiveness and strength to the guard. Finally, the grip. The grip is excellent. We've got a normal British military style sword grip with chagrin and wire, ridged, good grip, nice flare at the bottom so you can get that pistol grip. The back strap is checkered for fully half of it there, and checkered again at the pommel, and it's flat. Super important. So I believe, despite the fact I like earlier period swords, I believe that the back straps that come onto British swords from 1895 onwards are functionally the best back straps because they're flat. Just grab an 1895 pattern here, you'll notice that up here it's rounded for comfort, but here it's completely rectangular. So this cross section, if you cut through the grip there, the cross section would be D section, flat at the back, round at the front. That means that the thumb sits completely securely and flatly on that checkering and doesn't roll off the side. If I grab a US military sabre, so for example a US cavalry sabre, you'll notice that this has a normal oval grip, great for a hammer grip, but as soon as you stick the thumb up, the thumb doesn't have a lot of comfortable space to rest on. Yeah, you can do it with the thumb up and the French happily did, but personally I think the British back strap, which is flat, is a more secure sort of basis for the thumb and the thumb, and from practice I find this, is more likely to slide off this type of grip. Okay, so we've got essentially three things in the Masiello gymnasium sabre that make for a really good training implement. Is it that similar to mid-Victorian swords? No, it's not. It's more like swords of the end of the 19th century, admittedly, and that's why most of our gymnasium sabres, because we're looking at more mid-Victorian, earlier mid-Victorian sources, are based on the 1864 gymnasium sabre, because that's more similar to the swords from our period. But if you just want a tool for learning military sabre, this has so much going for it. It hits more lightly, it's got a brilliant safe point, nice and flexible, you don't need to wear as much gear as you do with the earlier heavier sabres, it's got a very protective hand guard, which means you can probably get away with wearing a lighter glove, possibly even just a glove which has just protection in the bits which are exposed, very protective guard, good protection for the little finger, good grip, good back strap for the thumb. So it's got a lot going for it, and unfortunately the Hanwei, if it was better made and more accurate to the original, really they're too light and too flimsy, the grips are too thin, all kinds of problems. In fact, just to run down what is wrong with the Hanwei, the blade is too light, it's prone to breaking, the quality control is not great, but the blade's too light, that's the problem with the design. It doesn't really have this disc as a weighted disc, it's just there as a washer. The guard is too thin and prone to bending, and the grip is too narrow, the back strap is too light and too thinly made and doesn't have enough weight to it. So generally speaking overall, the problem with the Hanwei compared to the original is it's just too light and flimsy, and when you add to that quality control issues as well, I wouldn't recommend wasting your money on one. If we can find someone, a company out there, to replicate the actual 1895 Masiello sabre, which Masiello was using from the 1880s incidentally, but in Britain the 1895 pattern, then that would be great, and I think this would be a great tool for lots of people to more safely and easily, and with less bruises, get into military sabre. Not just British, but French, Italian, whatever. I hope it's been somewhat interesting, and I'll see you for my next video. Cheers folks! Thanks for watching, we've got extra videos on Patreon, please give our Facebook a like and subscribe if you haven't already. Cheers folks!