Can you help a girl out? :)

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fictionwriter

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Mar 9, 2008
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Hi everyone,
I'm writing a fiction book and one of my characters uses throwing knives. I'm trying to be as realistic as possible with the weapons and fighting, so I thought I'd come to the experts. :)

I've done a bunch of research on throwing knives, but have apparently imagined a thigh sheath that isn't attached to a belt. Does such a thing exist? If so, how many Hibbens-style knives would it hold? If not, what are my options for a female character who can't always wear the knives in plain view (i.e. hanging from a belt and on top of her clothing)?

Thanks so much for your help.
 
for smaller knives you can conceal them in a boot or someting like you discribed but on youre forearm. thats my 2 cents, Ill try to help out more, and this forum is pretty dead so you might have to wait a day or 2 for a smart person to answer
 
Ok, I'll bite

http://www.snyderstreasures.com/pages/oss_soe.htm
is a link to some WW2 special forces wrist dagger-spikes worn on a wrist sheath that laces around the forearm like a corset.

Search on OSS (british special forces) for other information.

Boot knives are extremely common and are considered a classification all to themselves.

It is much more realistic for a female character to use her wiles to get close to the target and disable him than anything else.

Actually throwing a knife, getting it to stick, hurting someone doing it...not that easy, not that realistic, not recommended - much more useful to slash or stab the target than throw your knife away.

Search on "Get Tough" by Fairbairn - widely available free on the net too - as to knife fighting - killing techniques taught to commandos - OSS agents in WW2 and still of use now.
http://www.amazon.com/Get-Tough-W-E-Fairbairn/dp/0873640020

As mentioned above, it is quite possible to attach a sheath about the thigh in a strap around/corset style, but:
-assuming that the character is an attractive woman...every man will do his absolute level best to see or be where that thigh sheath is attached.
-use that against the target to distract them, hide it somewhere under less scrutiny, wait until the target is disarmed, less guarded, sleeping, tied up...
 
I agree with Mr. Penner. Any knife small enough to be worn concealed on the thigh is not going to be powerful enough to ensure a solid kill on something the size and mass of a human being.

She'd be better off getting in close with the knife.

But, if your story line absolutely requires it, I could easily envision her throwing a smaller knife toward the face or head as a distraction, but immediately followed by something more effective: such as a large blade into the torso or something along those lines.
 
it is ofcorse posible to kill with small blades aswell if they are realy sharp and the aim is perfect (and you know your anatomy well)

and both blade and sheath can ofcorse be costom made however you like them to be, so as long as your character has some money to spend you can give her and kind of blade you like.

the biggest "problem" with regular throwing knifes is that they are not made to do much more than sticking to wood... so if you want her to kill with them i would go for custom made.

or you could just put some nasty poison on the blades and the would kill just fine ^^


so if you want it to be realistic all you have to remember is that if a blade is light wight it will not go very deep. that can be fixed with poison and/or aim for sensetive spots.

ohh and you should probebly go with a no spin teqnice
 
kalas_k said:
it is ofcorse posible to kill with small blades aswell if they are realy sharp and the aim is perfect (and you know your anatomy well)
Click to expand...
I disagree. A living person is not a static target. Even small movements due to respiration will offset your throw sufficiently over the distance the blade is thrown. In theory, yes, you're right: but in practice, it's like throwing a perfect bullseye on a gently swinging dartboard. Even the energy of the tip hitting the target will push and shift the target point away from the point of impact.

kalas_k said:
or you could just put some nasty poison on the blades and the would kill just fine
Click to expand...
No, they probably would have little if any effect. "Poisoned blades" is a chronic myth that doesn't work for a bunch of reasons.

Here they are.
 
I know this isn't the most realistic, but Dean Koontz's character dispatches some bad guys with a thrown knife in "Twilight Eyes"

And wasn't it in "The Magnificent Seven" that one of the gunslingers had a knife stashed behind his neck that he threw and killed someone with?

Oh-- and I remember the ending of "Ladyhawke" where Rutger Hauer makes a fifty foot throw to kill the guy who is going to ring the cathedral bells.

Getting badguys with a thrown knife might not be the best idea in real life, but it sure works great in movies and books
 
were getting way off topic here but here are some suggestions, but if the character had some anti blood-clotting drug (I forgot the name, it was the one used in Saw II I think) on the tip of her knife, it would still take longer than usual, but could work. If the blade was heated first it would cut easier, also fire has big results. Ballistics might work, if there was some stuff stuck to the handle or even blade that might help. My favorite, bacteria. If there was some way to get any type of virus on the blade it would be a slow death or make it a comedy and give all the victims an STD. and my last one, venom. I particuarly had in mind brown recluse venom, takes a week or so but kills fast when on neck/head. Think about it and tell us what you had in mind
 
honestly, an important question is if this book is fantasy, and if the character is human if it is. An elf in the fantasy world is much stronger and capable than a human, so they might be able to use smaller devices. Just saying, because i'm a fantasy writer, lol.
 
If you character is wearing a shirt and pants you can use a belly band type sheathe as has been pointed out if you are going for realism throwing a knife is usually only good for a distraction.
 
Hi... woman in the past have concealed knives etc for such acts of killing-as much as it sounds silly-it was very real,-have you looked at the early Samurai days?-there were actual samurai woman who played a vital role in such cases-concealing weaponry-and very much used them.
 
Well it also depends, what sort of situation you character is in. So with a little stretch of imagination here's what I think could be possible:

In a combat situation I could imagine the aforementioned no-spin (like Japanese Shuriken) working as a distraction when thrown to the face, knee or elsewhere. Then using the heroine's favourite dagger to finish him off.

Knives could also be used for a sucker strike: Heroine has throwing knife in hand and does some slashes through the air to make the baddie back off a bit. Then she does another strike, but lets go of the knife - baddie goes *ouch*. I hope this somehow came across: slashes to mask windup for a closeup throw. If the sucker strike hits home this might be a fight ender.

As for poisoning, there's an old Japanese technique: Place the blades in manure and presto: nasty infections.

In an assassination attempt throws with multiple spins would be feasible on an unsuspecting target, maybe when reading a book or doing something where the target is relatively stationary.
There would also be no need for concealment, so a larger and therefore deadlier blade could be used.
With good camouflage and evasion skills the target would not know what hit him and should he not instantly die would not ba able to locate the heroine after the hit.

As for concealment of the knives: they could be in a holster on the leg if the heroine was wearing a pleated skirt, maybe with a slit for easy access.

Ookami
 
As for concealment of the knives: they could be in a holster on the leg if the heroine was wearing a pleated skirt, maybe with a slit for easy access.

Ookami[/QUOTE]
This sounds perfect. Leaves alot for the imagination.
 
If you're trying to make the book realistic, you could probably find a inside waist band sheath somewhere, but accessing it would be hard, another easy way to conceal a knife is one knife on each side of your underarm attached with cord to the sheath and hung upside down with a coat on, or hiding one in the boot or ankle.

Just a lil note, if you're character is going to throw a knife in a fight, 99% of the time you WILL miss, the opponents would easily see it coming, and most people throw with a spin so you have a 50% chance of hitting them with the edge assuming they are not moving, throwing knives are very impractical in fighting, they are more better as a weapon to distract the opponent, under stress there is no way you could aim the knife and still throw with absolute speed and taking distance in account while keeping throwing form, but if you're not looking for realism, knife kills sound cool :D.
 
throwing away your weapon in a fight is not a good idea... If your character is a woman, it shouldn't be too hard for her to get really close up to a guy (or even a girl now adays, girls need loving too hehe :)) and then to have her jam something in to the other's body. Infact, if your talking about general hand gun shooting ranges (about 7 yards or so) by the time someone can draw their handgun from a side holster (to full aimming stance) and/or rack it, the opponent with a knife will be right on top of them if not faster then they could draw.

I also agree that in a real fight, nobody is gonna stand at exactly the distance you train to throw at so unless your throwing something like a cold steel torpedo where if you get hit by even the middle of it flying at you, it will break/crush bone, your probally gonna miss over 99% of the time. From my experiece today (I finnaly learned how to actually sink the tips into a target, if your standing even a foot away from your sweet spot, the tip is gonna be way off).

BTW: The anti clotting drug you are thinking of may be heprin although there are much stronger ones out there (generation 3 rat poisons are 100X as potent, also, no amount of vitamin k is gonna help the clotting with the next gen anti-coagulants). Personnaly I'd look in to using rattle snake venom or better yet, a water snake's venom which is even faster acting and more potent. Spider venom isn't really that deadly (although some people do get killed very quickly when they have an allergic reaction to most) and most spiders out there arn't deadly although they do cause large amounts of necrosis and pain. Realisticly though, I'd personnaly just buy a 20 cent bullet from Walmart and rent a gun...
 
the concealment options would depend very much on the type of charcater, that is her type of clothes in a moment...to put it one way
so i assume that if the character would appear sexy...she would have a knife attached to her lingerie, if she would try to blend in the environment, the environment would be a factor again, so wearing the knife attached somehow to a purse , or in an integrated disquised sheath on the purse, in an institution here, like a library or a bussiness building...
of course, being fictional stuff, she would have a small knife, in the situation that she is a trained assasin, lets say, for throwing, something like a double edged push dagger,(even if tgat one its not really for throw), for fighting one HAK, or a karambit type knife, or if she is the bad ass type character, she would have a regular stileto knife...
again, her motivation again can dictate what knife, depending on the "victim", and what she wants to inflict upon, and on who...; use the right knife for the right "victim",...
as said, the type of character and her personality dictates pretty much what knife and the concealment options, IMO
my 2 cents, anyway, but you are the writer, so if you can give more info on your character, maybe we can help better, if you havent already decided what youre going to use
if you insist on the hibben fantasy knives, the knife can be weared in a back mounted harness, up side down, or a shoulder harness, but its to simple..for a fiction book
if not ,having said you write fiction...and that is a very opened teritory for any kind of ideas, please do come up with something real nice and original, even if far away from the reality truth.
cheers
 
Hi, fictionwriter, lot of info coming in, i see. But, you said you had done research. Have yoy tryed some actual knife throwing yourself. Most fiction and fantasy writers who write about it seem to not knowng much themselves:)
Find out how YOU wold carry it/(them), pull it out and use it. It is usually not as easy as in most books.
I agree wit those who speek about short range, no-spin throw for distraction, should be easy for a fictional heroine. Distance spinning throw is for hitting the un-aware, would work then.
When I, a normal sice man, go out for some throws, I stuff my knives in sheats inside the waistband, under some jacket or shirt, work fine - pretty invisible. Small Hibben knives kan be stuffed many places, sheats kan be sewn inside clothes most places.
I was thrilled by the heroine with the thight sheat, would she lift her skirt to pull the knives out, or pull down her pants? Then I remembered the possibility with slits in the garment:)
timann
 
Timann-- that's actually a very good, inexpensive and productive suggestion! And who knows...maybe fictionwriter will love it and hang around to post her discoveries and suggestions!
 
I can only speak for myself here. I've thrown plenty of knives and I'd say I can make a throw with good accuracy at up to 10 feet on a non-moving target. Add target movement and that throw is ten times harder. Add your own movement too (like say in a fight) and that throw is nigh impossible.

No spin or half-turn spin are, in my experience, the only techniques that could work against an unaware opponent standing still. This also has to be at pretty close range, especially so with the half-turn throw.

Like others have said, distraction is the only real purpose of throwing anything at your opponent in combat. Unless you're the Hulk and throw a bulldozer at them of course. That could work.

As for the steel itself the knife has to be heavy on the blade and large enough to generate the kind of force required to pierce the human body throw whatever layers of clothing you have in mind. If the target is wearing even the lightest of armor the knife will not penetrate.

Dissapointing huh? I know, it would be so cool if it worked like in the movies and dime store novels. But then again, this gives you an opening to let your heroine use other types of knife based combat and maybe pull off a distracting throw once in awhile. Also she could, in theory, do a throw to silence a guard or so, assuming she can get close enough. However, if you're going for realism on this, make sure you don't make it sound like an easy feat. :)

Like others have suggested, try out a couple throws and see for yourself how it feels. Best of luck on your story and feel free to ask follow up questions. :)
 
Wow! You guys rock! Looks like I got some things right and, um, a bunch of things wrong. LOL! Time to revise, revise, revise. :) I'm going to take the great info you all provided and rewrite the scenes. If anyone is willing to beta read them for me, let me know. Otherwise, thanks so much for all your help. You guys are the best. :)
 
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