Ritterkunst Fechtschule

Ritterkunst Fechtschule celebrates its 8th Anniversary

Both small and large anniversaries are occasions worth celebrating. This June marks eight years since we established our school's name and heraldry. We raise a toast to Jess Finley, who got us started as teacher, coach and friend. The most crucial elements of any school are its students and teachers/coaches.

We salute all our current students, whether they've been with us for years or have just joined, as well as those who have moved on to other schools and paths in life. Thank you for making this such a rewarding journey!

In gratitude for our teachers/coaches who dedicate their time to preparing classes and fostering a safe and fun learning environment, we presented them with a small token of thanks in a 15th-century style this year.

Ed has started us on a two-swords learning journey and it’s already a blast!

another great SERFO in the books, thanks to Atlanta Historical Fencing Academy for putting it on.

we had a really nice showing of support & participation this year from our RKF crew, thanks for coming out. well done to Longsword Instructor Ross for capturing 4th in Tier B Longsword, and congrats to our others fencers for making it to Elims!!!

LONGSWORD tuesday
ARMOR wednesday
SWORD & BUCKLER thursday
visiting swordspeople saturday!

check out this salamander

LONGSWORD tuesday
ARMOR wednesday
SWORD & BUCKLER thursday
no class saturday

week 19 schedule

LONGSWORD tuesday
ARMOR wednesday
SWORD & BUCKLER thursday
IN-DEPTH WORK saturday

schedule for week of 29 april

class schedule for the week of 22 april:
- tuesday: longsword
- wednesday: armor
- thursday: sword & buckler
- saturday: working in depth

Huge congratulations to our student Zach Brown for winning 2nd in the Midlands Madness Open Longsword and 1st in the Combat Longsword!

Schedule this week:
- Tuesday 8pm Longsword
- Wednesday 8:15pm Armor
- Thursday 8pm Sword & Buckler

Wednesday we’ll be starting a new class series: Fighting in Armor (outside of armor), where we’ll be looking again at how to fence in armor

Armor is not required for this class, & it will start a little later than normal (@ 8:15) to accommodate the ATA

this week’s schedule:
- Monday: beginner longsword
- Tuesday: regular longsword
- Thursday: sword & buckler
- Saturday: longsword & sparring day

Schedule for this week:

3/4 Monday: Beginner’s Longsword ⚔️
3/5 Tuesday: Longsword ⚔️
3/7 Thursday: Sword & Buckler 🛡️

We’re hosting a beginner longsword class every Monday in March! It’ll be a series that takes you through a few basics so that you can jump
into our regular Tuesday/Thursday classes with a better foundation! Limited & low gear necessary, so don’t let a lack of equipment stop you - it’s a beginner class!

Come on and swing some swords! $60 for the series, or its included in your membership! 8-9:30pm

It is weird for me to write this. I did not realize I would ever get to write it when SERFO started 12 years ago! We barely thought about being able to do the next event, let alone growing into the event that we have become.

Welcome to the 10th holding of the South East Renaissance Fencing Open!!!

We shall be opening registration for the event in the next week.

As in previous years, we shall be at KSU Marietta Gym, this year from June 7th-9th.

Having listened to the feedback from last year, we have some changes and updates to the event.

- Saturday shall be Longsword only. We will be doing the Tiers A, B, and C again this year.
- We will only be doing First Blood Rapier and Conventional Rapier. Conventional Rapier shall be updated slightly to differentiate it more from First Blood and hopefully give fencers more fencing time.
- We have already started Director training for SERFO 24 among those in the local clubs who have volunteered to help out. Our goal is to improve the quality, clarity, and conformity of the judging this year in response to issues we experienced in 2023.
- We have also started planning on how to improve the bullpen, provide updates to fencers during the event, etc.
- The rules book shall be updated and reformatted to make it easier to read through and understand
- There will be new medals.
- Etc.

The Tournaments being held this year are:

Under Represent Genders Longsword - 32 (Soft upper limit)
Sabre - 32 (This is a semi-invitational where we shall pick from those interested. We shall give you plenty of notice of who is accepted)
Open Longsword - 128 (Hard limit. There will be a waitlist)
Tier A - 36 fencers
Tier B - 44 fencers
Tier C - 48 fencers
First Blood Rapier - 52 (Hard limit. There will be a waitlist)
Conventional Rapier - 60 (Hard limit. There will be a waitlist)
Sword and Buckler - 56 (Hard limit. There will be a waitlist)

For those who do not know, the KSU Marietta campus is located in a great spot with many restaurants only a few minutes drive north on the same road as the entrance. Plus, Marietta downtown is less than a 10 minute drive away. There are plenty of hotels and AirBnBs within a close driving distance of the venue.

Due to inflation and added costs from the venue and insurance, we have to slightly raise the cost of the event for this year.

Cost for Event:

- Weekend Early Registration - as always, registration costs for SERFO includes registration into as many tournaments as you wish to compete in (until May 25th) - $100
- Weekend Registration after this day, as well as at the door (from May 26 to event date) - $120
- Single Day Registration - $75
- T-Shirt - $20

We look forward to seeing you at SERFO 24 to celebrate our 10th anniversary in holding the event. It is an exciting thing to be able to say!

Thanks to Richard Escoto for the cool pic from last year!

Ritterkunst Fechtschule's 4th Annual Spar-B-Q was another successful fencing adventure!

Thank you to all our friends and families that joined us for the sparring, music and singing!

Thanks to the Athens School of Arms for spending the day fencing with all kinds of weapons and in all kinds of ways today!

When you look who knows what you will find. Also a peek at how important
The digitization of documents has been to the art we study and seek to understand.

Whose wife fenced in Strasbourg? Tying together sources to paint a fuller picture

Thanks to Atlanta Historical Fencing Academy for hosting us today!

1st Thursday of the month one of two Harness focused classes we have each month.

Yep

Thank you to Hampton Park library, Forsyth Library and Kayla for inviting us up so we could share what we love to do with as Ross said future fencers and sword nerds! We all had a great time.

A bunch of rapid fire postings this year. My apologies.

Due to overwhelming, both emotionally and physically by signing up, support for SERFO 2023 we have decided to expand and slightly modify the Longsword tournament this year.

Normally we hard stop at 96 but we have already accidentally blasted past this. So instead we shall be doing a hard stop of 128. Along with this we shall be breaking the longsword event up into 3 Tiers. A, B and C because we are imaginative.

A - 36 fencers
B - 44 fencers
C - 48 fencers

Each Tier shall have it's own set of pools and DEs. With the top two fencers of each pool advancing into the DE.

We shall break up the Tiers using various methods called HEMA Ratings, Personal knowledge, You giving us unknown knowledge. Hopefully this will give us a fair breakdown between the Tiers.

This also should give everyone involved some good fencing and more opportunity to advance.

The longsword shall still be held on Saturday but the schedule shall be flipped with First Blood Rapier being held in the morning and Longsword in the afternoon.

Currently this is where each tournament stands

Under Represent Genders Longsword - 21/32 (Soft upper limit)
Franco Belgian Rapier - 33/52 (Soft Upper Limit)
Sabre - 32 limit (This is a semi-invitational where we shall pick from those interested. We shall give you plenty of notice of who is accepted)
Open Longsword - 103/128 (Hard Limit. There will be a waitlist)
First Blood Rapier - 47/52 (Hard Limit. There will be a waitlist)
Conventional Rapier - 53/60 (Hard Limit. There will be a waitlist)
Sword and Buckler - 62/56 (Hard Limit. There will be a waitlist and people always drop)

If you have any questions please let me know. You can register here: https://fencingatl.com/event-registration

Care for your friends while learning.

A prototype sword for training armored HEMA Today we take a look at a prototype training sword for Harnesfechten, or armored combat. The training swords typically used in HEMA, normally called feders, are replicas or derivations of 16th century European training swords specifically designed for blossfechten, or unarmored combat. They were des...

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Fencing Chest Protector A chest protector designed for the women in HEMA. By Cryptid Combat Wear | Check out 'Fencing Chest Protector' on Indiegogo.

Good stuff! Chest protectors. Check it out.

Fencing Chest Protector A chest protector designed for the women in HEMA. By Cryptid Combat Wear | Check out 'Fencing Chest Protector' on Indiegogo.

This escaped my notice two months ago, but it appears that Antti Ijäs defended his dissertation on MS I.33 (FECHT1) in August, and it was subsequently placed online.

You can read it here, including both his incredibly in-depth analysis and his transcription and English translation.

https://helda.helsinki.fi/handle/10138/346444

Jess news.

My first published translation. So excited to have this in my hands.

Because swords and this includes some excellent pictures of.

I enjoy readimg the different fightbooks and translations even those that are not directly involved with what I practice.

Longsword from the Kölner Fechtbuch - Keith Farrell This is my current translation of the longsword section of the Kölner Fechtbuch, an interesting source outwith the Liechtenauer tradition.