Belegarth

I am still new to making foam weapons. I have made a blue sword and now would like to try to construct a mini red. I would like to try out a round sword but I have not had much luck finding any tutorials for round reds. I would like to use this club posted on the wiki. Then just add a nerf stabbing tip.

http://www.geddon.org/Constructing_a_Club

Will this work with a longer sword/club? I plan to use a thicker core. Would 1/2" fiberglass work or do I need to go up to 5/8"? I would also think that I need to add another layer or two of foam. How many total layers do I need to add for it to not hit to hard? Will it be to heavy by the time I add enough layers? Will this work? If not does anyone have any other guides to make a round red? Any advice will be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Before this thread devolves into people complaining about round swords, do yourself a favor and PM Bo and Barley. They make the best omni-glaives I've ever seen, and they're both on the boards regularly. Whatever advice they give you will be solid.

Hopefully they post the builds in this thread and not just PM, I'd love to have some more builds out in the open - especially up to date tech. People get tons of information from the builds section of the wiki, come here, and then get told that everything on there is outdated.

I made one recently. I did a double box of 4# around a bandshoppe pole.
I shaved the double box into an octagon. Then wrapped a layer of blue foam followed by a wrap of EVA blue foam. Pretty nice.
Next time I'm going to us plank foam, 2" 4# for the box then shave it into an octagon wherein I will do layers of 4# on the edges, followed by EVA #4(softer, squishier foam) alongside for a tetsubo/kanebo look next time; the added striking surface area adds a lot of moxy to ya hits. Marine foam stabbing tip, low-pro.

Dude, that sounds like WAY too much 4# and not enough 2#. Do you find that four pound gets significantly more effective in layers thicker than 1/2"? That seems to me to be about the 98% point on the diminishing returns curve.

Arrakis wrote:Dude, that sounds like WAY too much 4# and not enough 2#. Do you find that four pound gets significantly more effective in layers thicker than 1/2"? That seems to me to be about the 98% point on the diminishing returns curve.

Are you concerned that it'll hit too hard? What do you think would be a better build?

Yeah. I've been hit with a sword made with 3/4" of 4# and a half-inch of 2# and it left giganto bruises despite being only .125 thinner than a three-layers-of-blue stick.

Of course, I could be misremembering the build and it probably didn't help that it was Dagganoth swinging the * thing.

Remy's original build, with like 3/4" of 4# and then an inch of 2# stuff sounds more reasonable, but even that sounds like a recipe for broken hands on a long red.


*shrug* It's been a minute since I built a long red. Hopefully bo or somebody will pop in and tell me if I'm just being paranoid.

For a min-red I would use a 1/2" fiberglass rod, cut to about 44". Get yourself some 2# MC mat and DAP. Build a 1/2" "biscuit" onto the tip of the fiberglass rod, that will help keep the weapon from tipping out the stab tip. Cut the MC foam to 24" x 30" (the 30" is a guess) the 24" should be taped to the core from the tip of the rod down. Slowly and tightly roll the foam around the core, until you reach 2.5" in diameter. Once you have achieved that, cut any excess foam (from the 30"). Unroll the foam and apply a thin layer of DAP to the inside of the foam. Once the DAP gets tacky, you again roll the foam up. Use a couple piece to tape to hold the foam in place while the glue dries. Wait a week! This is very important, you must allow the DAP to fully cure, it takes longer because the glue doesn't have the airflow. After a week, add your stab tip and cover. Then add courtesy padding, pommel, and a cross guard to finish it out.

Hope that helps

Round swords are trash and make you fight like a slob.
Flat blades are cooler.
Also, seriously Remy, that sound like way, way too much 4# foam on your next build idea. You are going to hurt people and it'll fail for hitting too hard. Not a bad plan, but in the end it WILL hit way too hard. I'd simply use more 2#.

My build hit WAY too hard and I scrapped the idea. I'm going to use Randy's technique next time. I have 8', 7' and 6' bandshoppe poles for polearms. I also have a slew of red swords, flatblades that I've been using a lot all the way from 80" and 3" difference all the way down to 24" blue flatblades.

I like the omniblade on the polearms cause I like to get brutal, I like to get aggressive and I like to get violent.

I don't want to worry about cranking out a flat on someone like what happened to me on Saturday at CW. This guy hit me in the elbow with the flat of his 6' red sword and felt like he broke it. I was going single blue, he was behind me and we were doing the Singing battles or * ever and then I saw a flash of red in my periphials then red, blinding agony. I felt core. Luckily it wasn't broken tho crippled for a month following.

Suffice to say I'm going to repay him tenfold if I ever see him again.
>:3

3/8" of 4# and 1/4" of 2# over that is plenty of padding on a glaive flat to make it not core out on a hard point. It's always "*blink* Huh. That wasn't as bad as I thought it was gonna be."

Yeah, I figured. I'd also put a layer of marine foam ala *'s butt-pad foam on the sides of my flatblade glaives. There are safe ways to make flatblades for sure, but then there are always going to be issues that happen, I just like to minimize the potential to maim lol