[MR] How hard does it hit?

[Terry Buyers]

This one has been around at least since the days when Locksley wrote the 
rapier rules for Atenveldt mumble-mumble years ago.

If the blades were operating in isolation you could reduce the impact to 
force equals mass times acceleration, then compute the ergs per square 
centimeter of impact.

But...

All in all, that's a totally irrelevant number. As soon as you put a 
person into the equation, it ceases to be a pure engineering matter and 
throws in a bunch of 'that depends'.

Are you hitting locked wrist, locked elbow, or with shoulder rotation? 
Sure, the body is moving forward as the same speed in each example. But, 
how much of body mass is transferred into the hit? Does a schlager hit 
softer than an epee because it is used by only a more experienced fencer 
who knows how to pull his hit? I guarantee I can give you a stiff-arm 
hit with a foil that will rattle your teeth.
                      Taras

Walter W Triplette wrote:
> The question I'm asking is:  Given the weights and speeds of the weapons at impact, how hard does each hit, given the size of the blunts on each weapon?  Does the rapier with it's greater weight hit harder despite the bigger blunt, or does the epee, despite it's lighter weight, hit harder because the force is distributed over a smaller area?
>   

-- 
     
"If anyone ever does show that
he can place 20 hits in a 20-inch
circle in 20 seconds at 1000 yards
it will be because he, the shooter,
did the job, not that he could 
assemble an unprecedented collection
of gadgets"
      - Col. Jeff Cooper -