Gil's Blog

I keep seeing those TV commercials for house alarms.. A young women with a child is in her house, she turn on the alarm. You see a prowler outside. He kicks the door in, the alarm goes off, frustrated, he turns around and runs away. Sure, it could happen just like that, but the thug is already in, ten feet from the potential victims, and he just got pissed-off.. Why would he leave right then? Criminals do not think about the consequences of their actions, otherwise they would be in another line of work. Even if a squad car is a couple blocks away, he still has plenty of time to kill the mother and child, just because that alarm ruined his day, or he just feels like it.

Your first line of defense should not be a house alarm. By all means, get one, but you should think about your doors first. A good solid door with a steel frame and quality locks can save your life. Windows can be armored too, and you get the benefit of hurricane protection as well.

Martial arts training is a must, but what you really need in your house is a gun. That requires training too, but it is an excellent life insurance. Some will say “but I don’t like guns.” It’s just an object, it won’t shoot you all by itself. If you are not comfortable with one, you just need an instructor to show you how to handle it safely. You also need a safe, the kind you can open quickly by pressing a finger combination:

Get at least a 9mm semi-auto, or a .38+P revolver. I highly recommend all Glock models of semi-auto pistols. Anything smaller won’t stop an angry robber. I personally have an affinity for the .45, but I would be very happy with a Glock model 19, with the right ammo.

A robber has to go through a series of evaluations and actions to get into your house. Why would he pick your house? Get outside, stand across the street and look at your place.. Imagine how you might break-in. Imagine watching yourself get in and out. Are you an easy target? You need to evaluate your value as a target to make yourself look less inviting to unwanted guests.

Next comes you physical protection. How strong are the entry points to your house? Not only doors and windows, but roof, garage door, and any possible weaknesses? Robbers will find ways to get into your house you would never think of. You need to plug those holes.

Last, your response to a home invasion. It shouldn’t be just calling 911 and hoping for the best. You do need a weapon. The choice is yours, but is limited. I see baseball bats near front doors fairly often; wrong place. If someone kicks in the door, they got your weapon! It takes a lot of strength to damage the human body, and if you can’t swing that bat hard enough, forget it. A gun, sure, but you must practice with it. A sword would be better than any kind of club. Non-lethal options like the Taser or mace are in my opinion not good options. The Taser is a one shot deal, and mace might just piss-off your attacker.

One last consideration is the legalities of self-defense. If someone breaks into your house, you have a petty clean-cut case. If however you shoot a robber on your front lawn while he’s getting away with you TV, you’re going to jail..

I am not an expert, but I hope these suggestions will help keep you safer. Comments and suggestions are welcome…

I have been pretty busy forging, with the completion of a scimitar inspired knife out of a railroad spike, hardened in water, and a sort of tanto for my friend Phil who provided me with steel for a new anvil and helped me build it. The tanto was differentially hardened using the clay method with Satanite refractory cement and transmission fluid for the quench. But first, here is a photo of the scimitar (the handle is parkerized), sheath by Robert Jones:

Below is a photo of the parkerizing process for the handle, about ten minutes at 190F in the manganese bath:The tanto was forged from a 1075 steel flat stock. I made one mistake in the claying process, and that was to heat-up the blade for quenching without letting the Satanite dry properly. this caused cracks in the covering, and uneven areas of hardness.The objective of this operation is of course to obtain a very hard edge combined with a soft back. The result is a sharp blade that holds an edge but does not break easily. The quenching process was quite entertaining.

The knife was tempered in the kitchen oven twice 1h30 at 450F to soften the metal a bit. 1075 quenched is too hard for a knife, the blade would chip too easily. The hardening succeeded, because the file I used to clean-up the blade would bite on the back of the blade, but skid right over the edge.

Next was polishing with sand-paper in the following grits: 100, 220, 400, 800, 1000. I could not remove all the file marks and some imperfections due to poor hammer technique (this being really my second completed knife), but the result is still pleasant. I did sharpen the edge, and it shaves nicely. For the handle, I used a piece of wood I had laying around, traced the contour of the blade on it and carved the inside with a narrow wood chisel.

I had some PC-7 epoxy and decided to use it to glue the two sides together and fill any small void. The photo below was taken before I wiped the excess off. I will let it dry for 48Hrs before sanding down the handle to size.
I was going to wait before posting this last part of the series that I finished the handle, but I don’t seem to be able to find the time to sand it down to size. You’ll have to use your imagination. I am about to get a new propane tank and start on a new tanto, this one with proper tapering and better claying. I will post it when finished in a new post.

There is much debate about the use of protective gear in martial arts. Many styles only allow light or no contact, no strikes to the face, etc. and therefore do not require protections. What happens when a practitioner encounters violence in real life however comes at a surprise. You have a lot to learn in a second while getting pounded in the face by an experienced attacker.. Not the best time to learn taking hits. Aikido would be a very fierce style if it incorporated strikes, giving and taking. I attended a Kung-Fu (Wushu) class as a teenager. We were not allowed to strike the face. Actually, we barely touched each-others. After six months, I realized that I wasn’t learning anything useful and quit. My Karate experience (Shotokan) was a bit better. We had protections, but there wasn’t much control. The same was true for my full-contact and Taekwon-Do short practices.

My friend Phil recently stopped-by with a couple padded helmets he got at Goodwill for a few dollars. While Systema discourages the use of protections, it was too tempting to give it a try and see if it would affect the way we worked. It wasn’t really sparring, because Phil wore the helmets (he put on two!) and attacked, while I wore gloves and defended.

Wearing protections seems to have two negative side-effects:

1. You are not so affraid of getting hit.
2. You tend to hit harder, with less control.

Taking hits to the body really isn’t much of a problem. Most people can not hit hard enough to cause internal damage. Proper breathing, relaxation and a bit of practice goes a long way to prevent injury. Getting hit in the face is a bit unnerving, but you get used to it and start to care a bit less.. In five years of Systema, I have been hit in the face countless times, hard enough to be really uncomfortable, but I never got a black eye or lost a tooth. I give credit here to our slow practice and control. Top Systema instructors are masters at precision and control. They know exactly how hard to hit someone and where without hurting them while inflicting a good amount of pain.

Add protective gear to he mix, and the psychology of sparring changes. People start to hit harder. The positioning of one’s fist becomes less of a problem. You can hit bone with a glove, it doesn’t matter. A slightly misaligned wrist is no longer a painful reminder to strike at the right angle. Precision goes out the window. Wearing a helmet might have you step into a position you would otherwise not occupy without it. The more protection you add, the more removed you become from reality.

I am not advocating giving up protective gear, mind you. Once in a while, going “all out” with protections is good, if only to get used to the speed. You can however go almost “all out” with good control, without any gear. This way, you actually do get hit and learn to deal with it properly. The key is to start really slow, and I mean extreme slow motion. It looks goofy, but you gain much in precision and timing.

If your martial art style does not allow much contact, you need to ask yourself why you train. If you have a good time and consider it more or less an exercise, great. If you want the extra benefit of acquiring self-defense skills, you need to be able to get hit hard by bare fists as well as deliver heavy strikes the same way. No-contact effective self-defense is a fantasy.