Okay.  So this is one of the sections of the book I'm not really happy with.  As a result I'm going to break this up into sections and make liberal use of videos to explain it.  Today We'll cover the core mechanic section with hands joined or retreating behind the buckler.  This is the best documented cutting mechanic we have.  The cuts from the profiled guards are more complicated.  The thrusts we use and describe are almost entirely speculative, or reconstructed from other sources.  Elashvili does not show any thrusts, in fact he goes out of his way to ignore the use of thrusts.  He is trying to describe a "safe" sporting form of the art rather than the full battlefield art and being a classically trained fencer he sees the thrust as far deadlier.

The basic form of the cut are what I describe as a "joined" cut.  As Elashvili puts it:

Offensive operations using the shashka are characterized by the fact that the opponents use exceptionally light chopping blows, which strike at different places in the target zone and are executed using sharp motions of the hands in the plane of the strike. Both hands move forward simultaneously (right, holding the shashka and the left the buckler).

He also notes that Lunging is absent, the intensity of blows does not rise from Parikaoba to Chra-Chriloba (I'll do another bit on the three formal levels of fighting.  Parikaoba can be thought of as "we're showing off", Chra-Chriloba as "we're settling a dispute but don't want to start a feud."), and that the blows to him resemble those used in the French school of spadroon fencing.  

The goal of the joined cuts is to inflict a controlled wound.  According to Elashvili, this is accomplished by projecting the hands forward (both sword and buckler together) as the sword moves in the plane defined by it's age.  So from Guard A you would push your hands forward and snap your wrist downward to make a chopping strike downward.  This is very awkward feeling at first.  And I have found in my review old ethnographic footage, that this is only one of two main ways of striking in Khevsureti.  The other method is similar, only instead of keeping the hands together, the sword arm is allowed to flicker forward, returning immediately behind the buckler. 

In these videos you might notice that the swords seem to curve forward.  This is because to be "safe" for their demonstration on camera, they simply reverse the blade and fence with the unsharpened spine.  

The two methods here also present something else that we need to understand.  Khevsur fencing is not A style, but rather a family of styles with many common elements.  Each passed down through a family or within a village.  What Elashvili documented is only a slice of the rich art that existed.  We have done our best to fill in gaps from other (Mostly Georgian) sources alongside the bits he has preserved so diligently for us.