The Cold Steel Colichemarde: Initial Impressions and Handling

All right, so I wanted to give you an initial impressions review of a recent acquisition, and this is a sword I wasn't sure I was gonna buy because I'm not sure it really suits my taste. Now, my taste in European swords, yes, is still developing. As I've mentioned in other videos, I've only really been training HEMA hardcore for the last, well, not quite two years. So I've been studying and collecting the classics, not only watching videos and communicating with you guys on YouTube here, but, you know, collecting the necessary works, shall we say. So Silver, Hutton, McBain, yes, I have Joaquin Meyer. Finding this stuff just really easy to adapt to what I already know from other kinds of martial arts and swordsmanships. Make it a lot sense to me. I'm really liking it. I've recently acquired a couple of the classic Italian masters, so Capo Ferro and Gigante, and yes, I'm still expanding my library. And this is also why you haven't seen me do a lot of videos recently, because I've been doing a lot of studying and a lot of training. I do some reading, I put it into action. Do some more reading, put it into action. It's kind of become a daily habit, and hopefully my idea is that then I will have more content worth putting on video, hopefully sometime in the near future. So that's where my time is going. But as I've discussed in other videos, I kind of have a preference for cut and thrust swords that are straight bladed as compared to curved sabers. So a bit of a surprise to me, but yeah, I've spent a lot of time with the Chinese gen. Now, that means arming sword, side sword, rapier. And yes, I've spent time with the long swords I've acquired, but they tend to require that I go outside and have that kind of room to practice with safely. And the weather really has not been cooperating with me for, well, pretty much all this time. So I don't get very much time to take those swords out. So swords that I could use in smaller spaces. Now, when it comes to thrusting swords, as long as I've got length in a room, I can train pretty freely and we'll get stab him out here in a minute, set up, stab him as a good, you know, target pal. I can get a lot of use out of those. I don't have to worry about, you know, horizontal cuts hitting the walls and the furniture and vertical cuts hitting the ceiling. So they get a lot more practice, I find, than other kinds of swords. Now, in my study of some of these classic masters, they do refer to, especially in the more modern era, the small sword and yes, eventually the foil. But I do tend to like a blade that's got a little bit more blade presence, a little bit more cutting ability, even if it is thrust centric. So I wasn't sure the small sword was going to appeal to me, but a number of my YouTube friends strongly recommended as a small sword, the Cold Steel Kalishmard. So I want to talk about, well, general specs, take a look at how it performs a little bit anyway, things that I like about it, things that surprised me about it. And like I said, there's not a lot of reviews out here. I didn't have a lot to go on other than, you know, my friend's recommendations and why I might or might not keep it. And also why I might not have a choice in that decision. And we'll talk about that as well, but let's get into it. All right, you guys are probably going to need to see this first. Get in the frame here. Okay. So specs first, let's get these out of the way. Blade, 32 and three eighths inches. And you've got that classic Kalishmard design feature where you've got a wide fort. And it starts at an inch and a quarter wide, and it's a quarter of an inch thick at its thickest point. And then just about a third of the way up, you've got the sudden taper down to the thin foible rest of the sword, the thrusting component of the sword. But there are a lot of things I wasn't expecting about this. And I really couldn't tell from the photographs I saw on the websites. Now I got this one at Chicago Knife Works, and I really can't recommend Chicago Knife Works enough. That probably sounded weird. I recommend Chicago Knife Works highly. If you can find something at Chicago Knife Works, I got this for about 270 bucks on sale. Yeah. And really fast shipping even in the holiday season. Yeah, I've been able to find some fantastic deals at Chicago Knife Works. So I definitely recommend checking them out. I'll probably put the link to this particular sword in the description. But any of your knife or sword needs, check them out, especially your knife needs. They have a very good selection of knives. I've been getting a lot of stuff from them lately. Definitely giving Amazon a run for its money. But back to the sword. Okay, that quick little paper demo you saw, which was not necessarily very impressive, but it was very unexpected for me. This blade is sharp. It has been sharpened, strangely, all of it. Now I could understand maybe sharpening the tip on a thrust-centric sword like this, but this has got a diamond cross-section. It's not triangular like other small swords. It's a steep diamond. It kind of reminds me, and we will do some comparisons to the Cold Steel Cavalier Rapier that I reviewed, and I really liked that one as a thrusting sword. But yeah, it can't hold an edge. They managed to get a semi-functional edge on this thing. It's a little bit ragged and toothy, but I wouldn't want to try to grab it. And it can do some slashing. It can do a little bit of slashing. I wouldn't take it to, you know, expect it to do much to Tommy, but, you know, giving somebody a superficial cut, discouraging people from grabbing your blade, absolutely. Yeah. But they managed to sharpen it all the way down the fork, so that's even sharp. Yeah, that wasn't expected. What else isn't expected? Well, you can see that it has a pretty pronounced central ridge, but it's not really an elevated central ridge. Look at it from the side. What you've got is a thick quarter-inch thick fort that is then hollowed out with two deep fullers. So then you've got an edge that's a little bit thinner within a pretty steep, but sharp secondary bevel on each side, and then the somewhat thicker central ridge, which allows you to insert this in either orientation into, yes, a rectangular slot scabbard. So the scabbard comes with, let's take a look at that really quick just to get that out of the way, pretty much standard cold steel fare, where you've got a leather cover and decent metal throat shape, nothing fancy, no real heavy decoration. It has a nice hook on it though. It's almost kind of a springy hook. One thing other reviewers pointed out that, yes, caught my attention is, at least in my head, and I might be wrong, if I've got some kind of a frog hook on a scabbard like this, I'm assuming it's going to be on the outside, not turned in towards my body. So I wasn't quite expecting the seam to be on that side, but I don't know. Let me know if you know anything else about that. Now the scabbard does have some wood lining, which again was something unexpected. I'm used to floppy cold steel scabbards. This one's rigid, which it kind of has to be because I'm almost afraid sometimes I'm going to put the sword through the scabbard. Now, once I line up the narrow part, and sometimes I do snag it on this sudden shelf here, fit is pretty snug. Yeah, that's not going anywhere. It'll probably break in. It's tight. I don't think it's too tight. I'm not going to do any fast drawing with it, but it holds the sword securely, and I think it's pretty well made. Again, most cold steel sword scabbards are pretty good. Not stunning, but quite functional and sturdy. Let's get back to functional and sturdy. Now, there are some arguments as to whether this is a 1060 or a 1055. Now, this is one of the swords that is made in China, not India, and when it comes to cold steel swords made in either country, I find the ones made in India tend to be beefier, like windless swords, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but then they don't tend to have the super keen edges that their Chinese swords come with. So, some of the swords I've gotten from cold steel that are made in China remind me very strongly of other Dalian-made weapons, or even, in some cases, katana. In terms of the lengths, they go to put an edge on it that has no secondary grind, and yeah, they put an edge on this thing, and there's no secondary grind. So, that's, yeah, that's impressive. Now, it is a threaded construction. I haven't tried to take it apart. The hilt is a number of cast components, and, you know, they're a little bit rough, specifically in this knuckle bow piece that goes into the finger rings and the ricasso, kind of, that reinforced, built-up ricasso section, and then you've got the two leaves, I guess, of the shell guard, which are pretty well cast. There are some rough spots here, and it came with some epoxy slop that it kind of oozed out that I had to, you know, take some fine steel wool and sandpaper and get off there, but otherwise, you know, it's not a huge grip. It's four inches inside. That makes any difference. Pommel, kind of small, but there's not a lot of blade weight to offset. How much does this thing weigh? About a pound, 10 ounces. So, yeah, it's a light sword, and it's supposed to be. Point of balance, two and three-quarter inches from the guard. So, enough to give it some blade presence, and again, we'll take a look at how it handles in a minute. Wire wrap grip, and this is my one nitpick about it, the thing I don't like that bothers me most persistently. You'll notice that the wire, you've got this, you know, the cross, the twisted one spiraling around the just straight wire. This is not tight wire wrapping. It shifts around in my grip, kind of like a slinky. So, it's not enough to make it unsecure in my grip, but it's enough that it consistently feels weird in my hand. It feels like it's moving and shifting, and it's like, okay. It's not coarse. There are no hot spots. It doesn't bite into my hand when I use it without gloves, and most of the time I'm practicing without gloves. Now, other interesting things about it. The finger rings are a tad larger than, say, some historic examples. So, for me, who does like rapier and side sword, and likes to finger my guard, yeah, I can. I know you're not supposed to do that with a small sword in proper form, but if I'm using this for taking, you know, that beefed up fort is designed to parry a heavier weapon. If you need to actually block something to defend your life, that's not another small sword. You've got enough beef in this blade to do it, and using just a little pinch grip that is often used with small sword and foil, I just don't feel confident being able to do that, or any of the cuts or slashes you might be able to do with this sword. Or, yeah, I just don't feel as sure in my accuracy and the thrust, and we'll take a look at that in a second. So, yeah, I've been at least partially fingering the guard, and this does allow me to do that. So, I have that option. That's nice, while still giving me a decent amount of hand coverage and protection. Solid blade, well balanced. Let's take a look at handling and thrusting. All right, let's start by talking blade flex, and also blade flex in the thrust. You guys remember Stab-Em? My old sword box, multiple layers of thick replacement cardboard backed up by tightly packed brown paper grocery bags. Something that I can thrust into with a lot of force, but I'm not going to penetrate it very far, so it gives me resistance, but hopefully it won't break the tip off a sword. Now, I usually have him mounted a little bit different, so he's a little bit higher, so I can get like a head and a chest shot. We're going to go a little bit low, but what I wanted to show you is, okay, let's take a look at flex of the Kalish Mard. From the side, you'll notice it does taper quite evenly, so you've got much more flex towards the tip, and that certainly makes sense, because the fort's so beefy. Now, let me compare it to the Cold Steel Cavalier, which is one of my favorite thrusting rapiers. She's a pretty stiff beast, has the same kind of transition in the way it flexes. Let's take a look at the thrusting, though. Now, I apologize for my crap form. I'll give you a quart and a second, so basically one with, you know, supinated versus pronated into the center of the target. I'm not going to lunge. I don't have enough room. I'm just going to extend my arm, put some weight behind it, and give it a good solid hit. So, first of all, supinated, right? And then, before the target falls over entirely, pronated. So, this one hits solidly and doesn't really flex that much. Let's compare it now to the Kalish Mard. Before I do that, I'm standing back up again. Place the weights that I've got him reinforced by. This is not his ideal location, as I said. I do have a better place to put him that he stays put while I'm doing extended training, but same thing. First, I'm going to use that pinstripe. I'm not going to put my finger through the ring, and I'll do it supinated first, and then I'll do it pronated. All right, you saw some flex, but not a lot. Now, I'm going to repeat it with my finger through the ring. Gives me a little bit more surety in the hit, at least for me, because I'm just more familiar with it. And I knocked him over, but definitely more, I guess we call it hypodermic-like penetration in a blade like this. Not a whole lot of undue flex. It's not really a floppy blade. It's got some other handling characteristics. All right, a couple of quick handling comparisons. Starting out with what I consider a full-size, full-weight rapier, and it's probably heavier than a lot of historic examples, but this is my Windlass Christus Imperate, which I've really come to enjoy now that I've modified it. I'll get back to that in another video, but you're talking about three pounds, one ounces with a balance point right at the shell. I mean, she's about two and a half inches ahead of the cross guard, but for me, if again, I haven't even decided what style I like the best, so I tend to mix and match still, depending on what I'm doing at the time, but just running through a couple of common guard positions and things like that, I can certainly come in with short sorts of cuts with this. It's got a lot of blade presence. It is a little bit hard to move like that, but in terms of setting up thrusts, disengages, cut-overs, de-robe, you know, things like that, it handles for me now pretty well, but yeah, it's fatiguing. It's a heavy monster, but it's a great workout, great physical therapy. Now, if I'm feeling lazy and I really just want to practice thrusts, I will go to the Cavalier. Great thrusting sword, two pounds, 11 ounces. It's nearly half a pound lighter. Point of balance is, well, very similar distance because you've got a shorter space between the cross guard and the shell, but yeah, this is quick, responsive, moves, transitions very well. I can move it quickly. I can extend it, keep it extended a lot easier, so if I'm using some sort of style that really does kind of require that I maintain this for a longer period of time, I can certainly do it with this sword, but I've been studying some of these classics where they are kind of designing these movements around a small sword to eventually what's going to be foil fencing, right? So, in that sense, it made sense to get a small sword, but I didn't just want any small sword. I mean, you guys gave me some fantastic recommendations. Thank you, but wow, two pounds, 11 ounces, one pound, 10 ounces. It's more than a pound lighter, and yeah, the quickness, the fine movements I can get out of this blade. I certainly don't necessarily feel super confident in any heavier kinds of parries. I feel like I could pull them off. That wouldn't be much of a problem, but the responsiveness is something like this. Yeah, my only real complaint and it's probably me because I'm not used to not fingering the guard. I don't feel like I have confident grip or confident aim with this blade unless I, as they say, seal those fingers, which again is not necessarily traditional small sword, certainly not for foil, but then, yeah, I feel like I've got a lot more. Can I come out with some quick slashing cuts as well if I happen to be doing something like that? Absolutely. Can I use it more back in here if I need to using that heavy fort? Absolutely. So, a very maneuverable weapon, it's very quick, doesn't fatigue me to the point where I actually feel like I'm cheating, like I'm kind of wimping out by using this, and I feel like I shouldn't be using it much because I need to keep up my work with the heavier weapons to, you know, I'm developing that muscle tone as we go. These heavier swords are getting to be at least lighter in feel for me all the time, so I'm definitely making some progress. I know my form still looks awful, but like I said, I haven't really been doing this very long, and I don't really know what I like the best yet in terms of, you know, any particular form or style or anything like that. You know, do I stick to something conservative like Capo Ferro, or do I go to something that's a little bit more modern like Hutton? I don't know yet. Maybe a combination of both. Anyway, this is Mike rambling. Why would I keep the sword? Well, because, yeah, it does seem to be a really essential part of complete HEMA sword training. So, yes, it's a good reason to keep it. A reason not to keep it is, I don't know, light thrust-centric swords. They're very thrust-centric. They just don't feel me, if that makes any sense. The other reason I might not keep it that might not be my choice is I did that review on the Windlass Black Marauder, the Black Pirate Robert sword, that similar length, similar weight, a little bit more cut potential, a little less hand protection, that my daughter, in her training, pirated and has become one of her main practice swords. Yeah, she's handled this, and it may wind up disappearing from my collection, at which point then I have to decide if I'm going to buy myself another one or just buy her one and keep this one. I don't know. Let's get our conversation going. If you have this sword or another small sword or have questions about any of the rapiers, yes, I'm going to do more videos on the rapiers. I promise. I just don't feel confident yet showing you anything useful. Hopefully, I'm getting there, and then we can do a lot more comparisons because, yeah, I have been getting a lot of questions about the European style swords, how they move, how they handle, how they perform. I hope I can get my skill up to a point where I can give you good answers. Until then, as usual, thanks for watching, following, liking, subscribing, sharing, and I hope to see you back for, well, whatever I do manage to come up with next.