Recently I learned something. It was something I wasn't expecting to learn and it showed me that; a) sometimes things aren't always as they instinctively feel they should be, b) people of yore did know what they were doing, c) sometimes physically dealing with an object or place is invaluable to your perception.
nebulous? you betcha.
So in my recent spate of woodworking events I had cut out three blanks for yari tips. I made up one of them as documented in a prior post, and I pretty much swore off making up the other two.
I decided for an unknown reason that I wouldn't mind making one up as a modern fighting knife. My teacher here has a wood bowie knife that someone whipped up for him. Not a huge fan of that style myself but I do happen to like these instead...
The Fairbairn Skyes dagger/fighting knife as made famous by the WWII Brit Commandos.
With that in mind I quickly chopped down a yari blank and started shaping...
No way that thing's turning into a yari tip now!
I didn't have a specific methodology planned, but it wasn't difficult to rough out a silhouette, then the topology.
Bada bing, bada boom one Fairbairn Sykes 'tanto' ready for training. It's not perfect by any means but it's an arts and crafts project just for the sake of it, and turned out as good as I had hoped for.
I found dimensions/lengths on the interwebs and freehanded an approximation of the shape onto the blank. While I really like the blade shape of this dagger, I was less sure about the handle shape, preferring a more cylindrically/fat shape like the usa M7 bayonette. But I'd committed to the project and it turned out relatively FS in spirit, though chunkier because it's wood obviously.
Anyways, so this lead to my revelation. I had assumed that the round, quite thin/tapered handle might be... somewhat unwieldy, or hard to get a solid, locking grip. At least from my default position dealing with sageo wrapped tsuka (handles) in the Japanese style it seemed very spartan.
With the piece done I spent a while just carrying it around, handling it and working out how it worked. Turns out that the design is quite cunning.
In my experience with Japanese blade weapons we generally grip the handle strongly with the ring and pinky fingers, leaving the middle and pointer fingers to direct and nuance the blade, i.e. we do not grip it like a hammer. The shape of the FS dagger thins down right where the strong fingers wrap around, which I thought was really cool - well done Fairbairn... or Sykes... whoever did the handle.
The top fingers can adjust above, and the thumb can either wrap around for a 'slashing' grip, or press against the guard for a 'thrusting' grip. If I have to make one critique the handle is like 1/2 an inch shorter than is ideally comfortable for my hand (it was made matching the specs for blade and overall length) but it is still a very functional fit.
Similarly when the dagger is taken in the 'reverse' or 'dagger' grip the index finger and thumb can tightly wrap the end of the dagger - the other fingers less tight. This would help minimize the change of the hand sliding along the handle and thence the fingers up onto the blade. Bloody brilliant.
So there you go. If I'd not made the physical item I'd still be thinking, "I like it, but the handle looks dumb."
