Re: Cookies and Mercs

[Eli White <eliwhite@home.com>]

Poster: Eli White <eliwhite@home.com>

>The 'bowling ball' technique you mention, however, is a nifty idea.  I
>hadn't heard of it before, actually.  If you remember, could you
>elaborate a bit more on it?

Sure, I've never actually seen it done before, but heard it described to me
by many people, as the guy who came up with the test had it out at Pennsic
one year, and from what I understand, was trying to get the SCA do accept
it as a true means of calibration ...

Basically it went as follows ...

You sunk a 4x4 into the ground leaving it some exact height (I belive it
was like 4 or 5').

You then used a SPECIFIC poundage of bowling ball that you set on top of
this 4x4 ...

There are then distance rings that you measure out from the pole and paint
onto the ground.  Two rings in particular.

A fighter then walks up to the pole, and hits the bowling ball.  If the
bowling ball ends up between the two rings, then it was a 'good hit'
anything shorter than that was light, anything over that was excessive.

I believe for the actual distances he had either taken what 'most people
considered a good blow', or had done the math with the actual armor (ie,
hit mail with a sword hard enough to make the hunk of meat under it get
majorly damaged (discouraged to continue to fight), then hit a force meter
with the same power)

I've heard both stories on the latter ... but that isn't the as important
as just having the gauge, and once the gauge is set, everyone can calibrate
to it.

Siegfried


______________________________________________________________________
Siegfried Sebastian Faust          Incipient Barony of Highland Foorde
       Minister of Misinformation (Chronicler & Web Minister)
             http://highland-foorde.atlantia.sca.org
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