Phoenix/Wachusett Mountain Men skills exchange

One of the folks who works in the manufacturing department where I work does 1700’s reenactment. He heard I do swords and stuff with Phoenix and suggested we get the two groups together for a skills exchange. They’d show us what they do, and we’d show them what we do.

Sounded like a good idea. So, today we drove off to the woods in the shadow of Wachusett Mountain for the skills exchange.

They went first. One of the things they taught us was making fire with flint and steel.
Of course, we weren’t allowed to use the “advanced” methods that some people back then used.

We used things found in the forest, scraps of cloth and steel bars banged with pieces of flint like rock.
But, we still did OK.

Although interesting to watch the friction method, we didn’t join in doing that one.

Then we went down to their black powder range.

Ed, my coworker, demonstrated with smooth bore and rifled barrel guns.

The targets were very close and each of us hit at least one.

(I only hit with the rifle. But I’m not a big gun person and haven’t fired one since 1982 so I think I did OK.)

Then it was our turn. We started with our historical show going through sword and other weapon techniques from 1300 to 1620.

You might notice there aren’t a lot of them watching. They only had 5 people there. We only had 7. Both groups have a lot more people. But, as

perrin_o_ravnos said, “those are their Whoop Nerds”.
(Whoop Nerds is our term for the folks who show up the most, do the most and are the most involved. Six whoop nerds is an anagram of Phoenix Swords, which is where it comes from. OK, we had 7 folks there. We don’t normally have that many folks really into it. I don’t mind, even if it breaks the anagram.)
He was right. The few they had there were really into it, very nice and very generous with their time and ammo.
So, we decided to share more of our skills with them.

And, being a skills exchange, they were game to try and learn what we do.

After we had a shared meal, we moved over to tommy hawk throwing.

It was a pretty good time. It was very nice to spend some time with folks also very into history and doing this as they were done. Even if they do a different time frame from what we do, the interest was still there and very nice.