Knife Self Defense and Basic Knife Fighting Techniques
Avoid if possible any confrontation with an opponent who has a knife; no matter how good you think you are, you can and will be cut. There are ways to minimize the damage to yourself if you are confronted with a knife welding opponent and you have no weapon. First, try and get some distance between you and the opponent so they have to lunge to get to you, and look for a weapon or blocking tool of any kind to defend yourself. It could be a jacket, belt, seat cushion, chair, table, lamp, stick, dirt, or almost anything you can swing to block or strike with. I won’t go into to much detail on how to use these items against your opponent, you can figure this out on your own by practicing grabbing different items and see how they work.
If you are also armed with a knife, the first thing you need to do is get it in your hand in the proper grip. A proper knife grip should be a powerful one that you can stab and slice without a chance of losing your weapon. I prefer the knife pointing toward you opponent with your thumb over your fingers, like making a fist or a baseball bat grip. With this grip you can stab and slice with power and without loosing your grip on the knife.
Your stance is also very important; a solid stance that you can move from is best. If you have your feet shoulder width apart you can move forward, sideways, and backwards. This way you are not limited in your movement. You can dodge and strike your opponent when the opportunity arises. Your knife hand should be the front hand. This way your weapon is closer to your opponent, so you can use your knife to block and strike. Do you stand facing your opponent or turned sideways? This should depend on your distance from your opponent. If you are far enough away that they cannot reach you then the open stance is ok. If you are close, you will have to turn to the side to protect your vital organs and get in a better positon to thrust forward with your weapon.
You must practice your knife proficiency with a knife by using practice knives (plastic, wood, or metal dull knives) on dummies or a willing partner. Make sure you use eye protection and make some rules if you are using a partner. Practice blocking, stabbing and slicing. Your targets are neck, chest, and abdomen; these are the vital spots that can cause death. You should also practice targeting the inner arms and back of legs, these spots can incapacitate an opponent by cutting tendons and rendering the limb useless.
Knife use law is complicated, if you use a knife in a fight you must be justified in using a deadly weapon. In our great country we enjoy freedom with laws that protect the innocent, but it is your responsibility to know these laws and follow them. If you use your knife to protect yourself in a deadly confrontation you will have to justify this to the court, so be prepared by researching the laws in your area.
Your knife is a tool, and like any tool should be taken care of so it will work when needed. The old saying “A sharp knife is a safe knife” is so true. Here is a new saying “ A person that is prepared for the fight, will win”. This also rings true.
This article was written by Jeff Gaastra, a martial arts school owner and instructor since 1981. Jeff has a family owned knife store that you can purchase all major brands of quality knives. www.KnifeDealsPlus.com 800-867-7496 Article by Copyright © Jeff Gaastra, Reprint permission granted with this footer included.
Let’s do something with all the katana pictures we have here !
When looking for some pictures today in our archive, I realized that over de years we collected a few 1000 high resolution pictures of katanas and other samurai related stuff such as armors, kabuto&mempo, different sword parts, etc. While strolling through them, I did found some very nice ones that ..hell I even didn’t know they were still here 
So I came up with the idea to make some of them available to the public ..
So if you need a nice desktop paper (wallpaper) perhaps you can find it here. Now, I can’t put all of them here in just 1 day so I will add new one’s on a regular base. To save to your desktop, click on the format you need. That will take you to the actual size of the picture. Go with your mouse over the picture and right click. You will see ’set as wallpaper’ or ’set as background’…click and you’re done…
If you have any requests, just let me know !
Here are the first ones :
1024×768 Download
1440×900 Download
1024×768 Download
1440×900 Download
1024×768 Download
1440×900 Download
1024×768 Download
1440×900 Download
1024×768 Download
1440×900 Download
The Long expected 9260 steel katana swords are almost here…damn Olympics
The summer is slowly passing by and after a relative calm (depends what that is to your definition ) period we’re ready to go full speed again.
The most important thing to mention here is the fact that the new 9260 Konron swords are ready. If all goes well, which is dangerous to say, they will leave the forge this week or next week. The problem we face at the moment are the damn Olympics. The security in China is on red alert now and no transportation company is allowed to transport swords within the whole country. So that’s a major problem that can still take a while after the Olympics.
Now…we are having a very close relationship with Konron and the owner will take the whole order and drive them to the airport himself. Not a big deal you think….it’s a 8-10hour drive to the airport and 8-10 back so…
We don’t have very good pics yet of the new swords but here are some of them..’straight out of the box, not edited’
So what will be different with the previous generations ? First of all, as mentioned before, they are mounted with imported Japanese Fittings , better ito and signed on the tang. But that’s not all, we do have a little extra for you : There will be different tsuba designs available. I’m not quit sure about how many we speak here but expect 3-5 different designs to choose. And if they’re done their job at the forge (which is sometimes hard to predict) both the hi and non hi version will be available in 2 lengths…but don’t take my word on it for now.
Since there are a lot of updates on the 9260, we won’t be able to maintain the original price of 175 euro. So the new price will be 220 euro, which is (taking all of the updates in consideration) still a bargain.
We expect 50 pcs in this shipment (that’s all he can transport in his car) and looking at the backorders we still have for these, half of them are already sold. Now, I don’t want to make a sales pitch here but if you have any interest or planning to buy one, please make an backorder for it now. Last time, we had some angry people because they sold out just too fast and I do prefer happy customers
Second reason…the oil and especially the price of the steel is still going up and there’s very little chance we will be able to offer the next shipment at the price of 220 euro…
Once again, this is no “hurry-to-buy-it” talk, just for your information.
We do have lot of other plans with the Forge (since we’re partnering up with them) which does include offering traditional polish (just check this sample here) , using different steels (experimenting with the famous L6 steel now), offering real traditional katana kits (mainly for the collectors) which will include a tamahagane katana with traditional stone polish, Japanese fittings ,ect. The sword will be presented in a big box in shirasaya and with the koshirae.
We have some other cool things in mind but can’t say too much about that at this point….
Enough talk for today..ow yes before I forget ..just finished our discussion board so if you have any questions, or just like to share something, that’s the place to be. Perhaps you’re interested in becoming a moderator ? All help we can get is welcome ! Eather way, it would be nice if you could introduce yourself there so we have an idea of who our customers/visitors are
