“Skallagrim” discusses “End Him Rightly”, a fighting technique from the Gladiatoria.
Bonus #1: Here’s another video from the good folks at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC): “Integrity in the Workplace”. Or, things you shouldn’t do as a Federal employee.
Bonus #2: A little something for FotB RoadRich again. Guy picks up a 1973 Piper Cherokee Cruiser for $9,000 (it needs an overhaul and the owner couldn’t afford it) and does a restoration and rebuild.
Besides putting this up as RoadRich bait, I’m posting this because that’s a really nice looking airplane. I could see myself flying something like that.
Bonus #3: And speaking of the Cherokee, “50th Anniversary of the Piper Cherokee” from the good folks at Piper.
There’s a British gent named Guy Martin who has a YouTube channel. He used to race motorcycles, but more recently he’s become a television personality who seems to specialize in engineering and technical stuff.
I thought I’d do two videos today, one short, one longer. The short one: Mr. Martin goes to Japan and forges a sword with a master sword maker. As you know, Bob, I love hot metal and knives, so this is right in my wheelhouse.
The long: this is the first part of a series, “How Britain Worked”.
A lot of work has been put in to rediscovering how they were made. Among the people involved were Al Pendray, a knifemaker and farrier from Florida, and John Verhoeven, a metallurgist and emeritus engineering professor from Iowa State.
This is a documentary about Mr. Pendray and Mr. Verhoven and two swordsmiths from Jordan working to make Wootz steel from ore mined in Jordan: “a mine that is known to have produced weapons for Saladin himself.” I know this is longer than usual, but the next two are coffee break size.
Bonus video: Al Pendray passed away in 2017. This is a 15 minute tribute to him from The Craftsmanship Initiative.
Bonus video #2: Holy cow! I did not know this, but apparently the late Anthony Bourdain was doing some sort of tie-in with The Balvenie called “Raw Craft”. In this one (only about 12 minutes) he went up to Washington state “to see firsthand how master bladesmith, Bob Kramer crafts the perfect kitchen knife from melted meteorite”.
What makes this kind of noteworthy is that the alleged ninja is also the owner of a fairly prominent local bar. (Never been there, but have heard of it: mostly in the context of, “In spite of the name, this has nothing to do with A Clockwork Orange.”)
I can think of one person whose wheelhouse this would sort of be in: he’d probably buy two copies and resell one, except this is a little outside of his specialty…
At the weird intersection of gun crankery and entertainment history:
There are two things I enjoy doing when Mike the Musicologist and I go to Tulsa (well, three, but the shopping is really the whole point of the trip, so it doesn’t count):
Visiting with folks from the Smith and Wesson Collector’s Association.
Visiting the NRA Museum table. Especially if Jim Supica is there.
I didn’t see Mr. Supica this time, but we hung around the table for a bit and I picked up a few postcards, one of which contained the following odd bit of history.
I kind of knew Sammy Davis Jr. was a gun owner and collector (probably from reading his Wikipedia entry). What I didn’t know was that Mr. Davis was a serious fast draw practitioner. Serious.
Photo by way of Gabby Franco’s blog, also linked.
That’s one of Mr. Davis’ Colt Single Action Army revolvers. The rig was custom made for him by the great Arvo Ojala, holster maker and consultant to the stars. Mr. Davis was fast enough that he did his own gun work for many of the TV shows he guested on.
Mr. Davis and Mr. Martin apparently were not the only fast draw artists in the Rat Pack: according to the back of the postcard (which, sadly, I’ve dropped in the mail and don’t have in front of me), Mr. Davis and Frank Sinatra had a fast draw competition with a new car as the stakes. And Mr. Davis won.
“I was beaten by my friend Mel Torme, who also collects Colts.” !!!!
(And Dr. Brackett too? The earth was full of giants in those days: or, more likely, a lot of these folks learned fast draw as a way to get roles in the endless parade of TV westerns.)
I’ll leave you with a short NRA “Curator’s Corner” video about the Davis gun.
