How To: Swordchucks

[Hanuman]

What are Swordchucks? They are 2 long slim sword-shaped weights attached to a bit of chain attached to another symmetrical weight, so when one is held it becomes the handle or Held Sword (HS), and the other becomes the weight or Swinging Sword (SS), and you can hold it either in standard sword grip or Forward Grip, or have it held away from the thumb or Reverse Grip.

There are certain techniques unique to swordchucks, the feel, the body movement, the mechanical geometry, but essentially they are a fusion of these 3 things:

• Poi - A new variation of a Maori combat training/music/dance instrument, Poi are now a light or fire/light/dance/juggling instrument.
• Doublestaff - A doublestaff is a shorter (3'-4') single staff used for fire performance, since both ends can be lit doublestaff can make use of 4 points of fire at the same time, strictly as a fire/light/juggling/dance instrument.
• Double Meteor Hammer - A Shaolin weapon, the double meteor hammer is more known for performance rather than combat, the traditional combat instrument would be the single meteor hammer, possibly the most powerful of all soft weapons.

Poi Example
Doublestaff Example
Double Meteor Hammer Example


Because of this fusion, swordchucks (when used 2 at a time) are much more difficult to use than any single one of these tools, so to understand how swordchucks work you can actually build any of these other tools to train with and learn swordchucks indirectly, and since swordchucks use about 4-16 times the amount of fire of other tools it would be good to train with other tools on fire before you try swordchucks on fire.

Poi Section

What is poi? You manipulate a swung weight on a tether, this will help you master not hitting yourself with the swung sword as where the held sword handle ends and the chain begins, it becomes poi.

The BIG difference between standard poi and swordchucks are that the poi is held in REVERSE, which does change the physical body movements and some of the patterns you can accomplish, but not the principle of it. There are about 5 or 6 grips in poi, generally only forward and reverse grip have been useful to me as all of the others generally disable throws and are used for greenhorns so it's easier on their hands and make sure it doesn't fly out. Grip Illustration
Forward Grip


Reverse Grip


New! Real Pictures:
Forward = http://img827.imageshack.us/img827/1667/dsc00051g.jpg
Reverse = http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/1021/dsc00049ja.jpg


To avoid hitting yourself, the ultimate way to avoid this is developing spacial awareness, and general awareness (through developing your ability to feel) as you explore the Poi aspect you'll be able to tell where you are facing at all times (N/S/E/W and exact spaces in between), where both of your poi are, how much energy is in them and where that energy is going, and understanding how long they are down the the millimeter.
Spacial awareness is one of the biggest tools you can get, as it manages pretty much everything, allows you to do all this blind (literally), and from it comes the ability to make your planes clean, which makes it both safer, gives it the ability to be more intricate without fear of tangling, and makes it more visually pleasing. Planes Illustration
Planes, From the Audience's Perspective


Weighting of poi generally follows the guidelines that the weight of the head is heavier or equal to the combined weight of the chain which can vary from 1:1 head:chain ratio for heavy chains on fire poi (with no wooden filler) to around 20:1 for our Mark 4.5 chain mail poi and braided chain mail tether; Swordchucks on the other hand actually have their head using around 80% of where the tether should be, making them more like snakes than anything else.
Distributing weight like this causes a few effects, one is that the inertia of the head diminishes which means that isolating the poi becomes very difficult, the other is that the mass at the head doesn't FEEL as sharp, which means that your timing (which is based on your gravity line-- feeling where DOWN is based on the gravity of whatever you are swinging, which is important because the lowest point in your circle is how you calibrate your sense of timing both poi-body timing and poi-poi timing which a lot of the time work like gears, and since they go all-which-ways around you... while on fire... you generally need to be able to spin completely blind.


Poi Learning Links-

• Poi Community by Yuta http://poicommunity.com/online_lesson/enindex.php

This guide will be ongoing and will be added to to display all information gathered in the future, expect frequent updates.

[Green Spanner]

Opening up your own martial-arts school, Lev?

Because I could not approve more.

[Hanuman]

Yes sir, dance/fire/juggling/martial arts hybrid.
I've been recruited to teach classes at this years Anime Evolution in Vancouver BC Canada

[Amake]

If you want to make it a little more tricky, I suggest swordchucks with sticky hands in place of chains.

[bobfish]

Originally Posted by Lev

since swordchucks use about 4-16 times the amount of fire of other tools it would be good to train with other tools on fire before you try swordchucks on fire.

You should also train with things not on fire before trying them on fire.

[Veho]

Originally Posted by bobfish

You should also train with things not on fire before trying them on fire.

That sort of wishy-washy attitude will get you nowhere. It's like saying "why don't you practice half a backflip before trying an entire backflip." The best way to teach someone to swim is to throw them in the water. Similarly, the best way to teach someone flaming swordchucks is to set them on fire.


And you can light the swordchucks too.

[Hanuman]

Generally the #1 rule with fire is that you ARE going to get burned, so if you cannot fully accept that.. then you are just not ready for fire.. and as soon as you accept that then you are ready.
Giving someone a lit torch to rub on their arms and stuff is really a good way to teach someone about fire.

The whole thing about swordchucks is that you need to know how they work before you start using them... they are MONSTROUSLY hot and if you don't know what you are doing you will either burn your hands severely, or you will drop them.
How they work is that the fire is constantly circling your hands, half the avenues of movement at any time are also superheated air so trying to escape the heat field you constantly generate can lead to superheated gloves OR a few seconds of relief from the heat field so its important to stay moving to escape the heat or you generally will BBQ your hands (gloves are mandatory, current model will give you 2nd-3rd degree burns without them even if used correctly).

[kh3lgar]

Not to sound like a jerk, but have you tried making a sword chuck with real swords? I know it would cost some extra money but it'd really be worth it to see a genuine sword chuck used as a weapon.

Getting it to cut anything is an entirely different story tho. I don't know if it's phisically possible to cut anything while swinging swords around with a chain.

Don't do it unless you are 100% certain it's safe though.It is probably incredibly unstable and you won't have anything to protect you from cutting yourself if you do something wrong.

Anyway, very very nice work with the flame chucks. I look forward to seeing some movies with them.

[Hanuman]

have you tried making a sword chuck with real swords? I know it would cost some extra money but it'd really be worth it to see a genuine sword chuck used as a weapon.

That's an interesting proposal, TBH the entire design process thus far has been geared toward the current model and only the current model... sure the length, width, materials and wick application may have changed, but the MACHINE principle was constant.

So, now that I think about it-- if we change the machine principle slightly the application of the swung sword MIGHT be viable... just change the chain to a tether with linearly pivots, like a bike chain does, and then you have a swung weight with a constant plane of weight face. I'll take our wooden sparring shortswords and try to rig something up and play with the design. Thanks!

Edit- I've arranged a session with our artist this week, if we get around to drawing up the blueprints for this new design I'll post them up... or if it's beta designs of the fighter armor then I'll post those.

[Veho]

Originally Posted by Lev

So, now that I think about it-- if we change the machine principle slightly the application of the swung sword MIGHT be viable... just change the chain to a tether with linearly pivots, like a bike chain does, and then you have a swung weight with a constant plane of weight face.

Linear pivots will limit your motion; they will give you more control but the whole construction will behave awkwardly. Instead, you can keep the "soft" link and add some sort of stabilizers to the "flying" blades, that will turn the cutting edge to face the way the blade is moving, like a weatherwane in the wind.