Modell Design, LLC is a knife and sword design company that specializes in the design of high-end custom butterfly swords. Modell Design has been working with Everything Wing Chun since 2009 to bring the world the finest quality of production grade Wing Chun swords. If you are interested in working with Modell Design to get Wing Chun BJD made for you or your schools, please contact Everything Wing Chun.
We will now take a look at the sword blade length, and how it applies to your style. The correct blade length is determined by the style of martial art (Wing Chun, Hung Gar, etc), your lineage within that style (especially within Wing Chun), how you execute certain inside sweeping movements, if you flip the swords and block on the forearm, and your forearm length. Let's learn more about blade length.
We will now take a look at the sword blade, starting with the cutting slope and the shape of the blade. These are very important because they dictate what you can effectively do with the sword (i.e. stab, chop, slice, block, etc). You should use a blade shape that will allow for the full range of techniques that your lineage teaches and helps facilitate the most important movements.
Many Chinese martial arts use “Butterfly Swords,” but they are the jewel of the Wing Chun system. Practitioners who reach their level of study are expected to practice intensely, thoughtfully and achieve an understanding that recursively improves their empty hand abilities.
A couple of U.S. Western-style knife makers did blades with a combination of different grinds. For example, a convex (lenticular) grind adjacent to a concave (hollow) grind. I am not sure this sort of thing is anything but aesthetic for most knives, but I can see how a strong tip grind for thrusting penetration without breaking followed by a sharp slicing grind might be useful, ignoring the potential stress points on the blade. These sort of blades have what is known as a “Nightmare Grind” because they are a nightmare to hand grind though easier to machine on a CNC machine! I thought about what kind of Butterfly Sword might appeal to a knife collector, and was advised that unusual grinds were popular these days so I doodled out a Nightmare Grind blade that would be flippable. I sent it off to Forge Master Ali for him to do a prototype. He decided to do a concave/concave combined grind instead of the easier convex/concave I recommended and found it quite a mouthful, so much so that he said the knife had to be put in the hands of someone who could appreciate the difficulty of the work.
Perhaps the most valuable Randall knife is the big Sasquatch recurve designed by Doug Kenefick. They sell for about $1100 to $1300 per single knife on eBay. I have one on order from him, but meanwhile I got to thinking about what a nice Wing Chun chopper an enlarged, modified Sasquatch style blade would make.
Designing knives for the Wing Chun community is tough because it is an aggregation of different lineages and schools. While the length of the knife is determined either by the inside or outside measure on the elbow (depending on the lineage), there are no consistent preferences on any of the other key design elements such as: blade profile (stabber, chopper, good mix of both), blade capabilities/purposes (i.e., demonstration only or serious weapon vs. weapon training), D Guard purpose (trap, flip, combination), preferred knuckle bow shape, handle style, handle materials, point of balance and weight.
I design Butterfly Swords (“BFS”) for personal use and on a professional basis (in the evening, not my day job) under the Modell Design LLC umbrella, http://www.modelldesignllc.com website. You can also see work product at http://www.everythingwingchun.com/wing-chun-butterfly-swords-s/35.htm web-site (look for the integral knives and flagship line). I recommend that anyone who has a serious interest in BFS read the following two articles:
– Jeffrey Modell, Esq., “History & Design of Butterfly Swords”, Kung Fu Tai Chi Magazine (March/April 2010)
– Jeffrey Modell, Esq., “Modern Butterfly Swords”, Kung Fu Tai Chi Magazine (July/August 2011)
BFS were actually used for the village water wars, by militia, security guards and criminal gangs. You can design them for cheap manufacturing or you can design and spec them as real weapons. I only do the latter but once you have weapons-grade design, balance, construction and materials, the knives are dangerous even if blunt.