Classes

Arts and Sciences

Brewing Hippocras

Hippocras is a sweetened, spiced wine beverage that is typically made by room-temperature infusion and served similarly (as opposed to mulled wine, which is boiled and usually served hot). I taught a class on how to brew it as a virtual cook-along during the 2020 Great Plague as prep for an E-Feast in Roxbury Mill.

My Hippocras Class Notes

For a fun video giving more background and a demonstration, I recommend this video: Hippocras by Tasting History

Roxbury List Fence

Our main fighting event was taking off, but we didn't have a list fence and were borrowing one from a neighboring group. I wanted us to be able to more independently put on the event and have another excuse to plaster the Shire colors across the field. So THL Nicolo Santorio and I built this lightweight, pack-down list fence I designed to accommodate the limited storage and transportation space available to our group.

This was a great success, living easily in my shed and packing compactly to events. And it's been a help to other groups in our area who have similar needs, being very easy to loan out to others!

Materials and instructions for building your own Portable List Fence here!

Rapier and Martial

Physics for Rapier Fighters - Four Principles of Mechanical Advantage

Because nothing is more period than the laws of physics!

I taught a small seminar at Pentamere Academy of Defense (PAoD) in 2019 about the basic concepts that determine mechanical advantage when two swords cross, how to notice them both visually and physically, and how to leverage them.

Yes, that pun was intentional.

There is no writeup for this class, but the principles are as follows:

Gravity - The sword on top of a crossing uses gravity to its advantage, while the sword on the bottom of a crossing has to resist both gravity and the weight of the upper sword.
Edge - You are able to both apply and resist larger forces on the true edge of your sword than on the false.
Angle - Two swords crossed at 90° are able to apply the most force, shallower angles result in less effective force.
Distance - A sword is a lever: it can apply more force at the guard than it can at the point.

With speed and timing as multiplicative factors: A good thing done faster is that much better, and a bad thing done faster is that much worse.

Being on the advantageous side of each principle in a given interaction is not a guarantee that you will win, but not understanding them at all is a guarantee that you will lose.

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