sword canes

[Gordon]

Thor: When I was a freshman in Mercer in 1965 nobody told me you couldn't have a sword cane, carry a .25 Beretta or ride a Royal Enfield which blew flame out the exhaust after midnight. Being a drinking man and not a Methodist, I went to U of Ga. in 66 (and on to Nam in 68!).

 

[heron]

I have a friend who was attacked by someone using a sword cane. My friend broke the assailant's weapon over his arm, then stabbed the assailant in the abdomen with the handle end of it. I assume the item was one of the cheapies.

Aside from that, I use a cane legitimately due to my arthritic hip, and it's a constant hassle. If I didn't need to have one hand constantly occupied, I certainly wouldn't do it. I can understand why the fashion of gentlemen carrying canes went out of style and never came back. Try it once; you'll see what I mean.

 

[Macmac]

Anyone needing a cane to get around isn't going to weild a sword very well. My back is trash, and a good bit of last summer I had no choice but to use 2 canes, one in each hand. I can assure anyone thinking to attack a guy with 2 canes that can hardly walk, is just a really good way to get shot with a gun.

Because I don't like to appear screwed up my canes are nothing more than sticks with a root attached still. Somedays I can get by with just one, and other days I don't need either, and I like those days the best.

To me a sword cane is useless, but I don't have any problem with a spark plug up the tail pipes, or seeing naked horses get a bath

 

[fardarrigger]

The human body has many areas susceptible to an impact weapon, like a cane. Ever been whacked across the hand with a stick? With a little knowledge and training someone smaller an weaker can defend themselves nicely with a cane. A crook top cane lets you hook an ankle and sweep someone off their feet. Lots of resources online, check out Canemasters and google The Walking Stick Method of Self Defense. I downloaded that entire book, it's good reading.

 

[Fred Fuller]

Jim Bowie wasn't too impressed by a sword cane...

lpl
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The Bowie Period in American History was a turbulent one. It was born on a sandbar on the Mississippi River near Natchez, Mississippi in 1827. A political duel became a free-for-all. James Bowie, who was an observer at the duel, was shot and stabbed through with a sword cane, but he managed to dispatch his major opponents with a Bowie knife, even though his wounds were so grave that his life hung by a thread for weeks afterwards. The infamous Sandbar Fight, as it was later called, took the imagination of the country by storm. Newspapers far and wide copied the stories from the Natchez papers and soon every man wanted a knife like Bowie’s - a Bowie knife. American cutlers (many of them surgical instrument makers) and Sheffield, England cutlers began to make Bowie knives to fill the market demand. The Bowie Period only lasted about forty years - from the Sandbar Fight to the end of the Civil War. When pistols became reliable and plentiful the size of the knife shrank. By the 1870s and 1880s, the Bowie knife was used as a hunting knife much more than as a primary defense arm.