With real sword, the edges bite into each other so that they don’t slide unless one or both fencers winds to a flat. This is known as “releasing the bind” and is an core technique for narrow work.

Unfortunately modern simulators are incapable of binding. Steel swords readily slide against each other in a most annoying fashion. And synthetics, well they might as well be greased.

Thankfully, we have found a solution. Simply run a strip of 3M friction tape along the edge of synthetic blades and they will bind. They bind hard, with no slipping at all.

I apologize for the poor quality of the video, but I think it is good enough to see this happen:

That’s not scripted, it just happened when they pressed against each other. Looking through Mair, we find a very similar illustration:

This posture, which is plate 9 in Keith P. Myers’ translation, rarely happens with blunt steel and I’ve never seen it with naked synthetics. Yet it happened by accident just by demonstrating the bind.

Conclusions

First and foremost, we’re not going to use synthetics without friction tape again. I’ve got five rolls on order and intend to stripe every one of our swords. At only 3 dollars a roll there is no excuse not to use this for every drill.

Then we are going to reevaluate all of our Chapter 10 Meyer plays. Those that involve a bind will have to be filmed again, as this will definitely change the mechanics.