Recently I have been searching the forums for all the advice I could find on building a quality red sword. I've taken the best ideas I've found and combined them into this picture guide hope you guys like it and all critiques are welcome. This was made by fellow fighter Alsander and I.




Step 1: We chose a 6ft bandshop pole that we cut down slightly to about 5'1/2 ft. I am only 5'8 myself and did not want a sword taller than I. We prepped the core by sanding and capping it with a circle of leather followed by a circle of yoga mat.

Step 2: We then purchased the puzzle floor mats from harbor freight and made a box around the core as such.



Step 3: We had 2 redsword fryes purchased from Edhellen we cut out the center routed layer leaving 3 layers on the frye and attached it to the box. (Decorative bottom part was made from leftover sword frye if wandering)



Step 4: We then began work on the cross guard, credit the idea to the forum post of Sieglatan using water hardened leather and string we laced, dapped and taped it to our cores. then covering it in blue foam and tape to solidify it even more.



Step 5: We then made a stabby tip our of 2 layers of seat cushion dapped and strapping taped we just followed the building a stabby tip guide.

Step 6: Built a pommel ... Pretty simple build whatever design pommel your comfortable with I prefered a circle design and my friend Alsander chose an octagon design.

Step 7: We covered the cross guard and pommel with tough cloth tape.

Step 8: Using bar stock we attached it to the legnth of the handle using duct tape making sure it was secured tightly.



Step 9: We then took parachoute chord soaked it in water and wrapped it tightly down the handle.(sorry cant remember the size of the chord and the pictures are hard to see the chord since it is black) Between the barstock and the rope handle the balance point of the sword is absolutely perfect 2-3 inches above the cross guard!



Step 10: We then made and sewed the covers and finished off the entire thing with some more cloth tape.



Finished product produced two very nice red swords thanks to the research of the belegarth boards. It was both me and Alsanders first attempts in years at building a red hope this will help condense some of the facts we found on the board.

Thanks goes out to Tiberius Claudius, Fork Beard, Bo1 among others with their intelligent and helpful posts.

sexy.

My God.

HaHa Love the reactions thanks =) Just figured its time to put my dumb amount of knowledge and research to use helping out others after so many years. Will be getting more weapon tutorials with pics up as time and money permits.

looking like a nice, clean job.

First use was done today and they hit like a dream. The floor mat box helps absorb the shots phenomenally and even with some hard tip shots the stabby hasn't budged. All and all a very good first showing for them.

Those are thing's of beauty.....

Very nice read too, taking pointers down....

Slight adjustments id make would be after the box layer is made.. the strapping tape over top of it was probally a bad idea .. eventually it will cause weak spots in the foam.. where as the dap will hold just fine.. Also ill probally put up a tutortial on how i make me pommels its completely from blue foam.

Beautiful looking, and so glad to hear they hit well. I'll be interested in how long they hold up and possibly using those fries myself.

Is there any incidental padding on your ricasso? As a herald I'd probably deem it necessary since its so near the striking surface.

And, most importantly, what are your final measurements and weights?

Ricasso I'm assuming is the handle part above the cross guard.. if so i used pipe insolation with cloth tape over it .. normally don't like it but had a piece that fit perfectly lying around.... uhmm will get exact dimensions up shortly its currently at friends house..

Why would you require to have the ricasso padded? If the handle and ricasso together didn't exceed the maximum allowed handle, I don't see the problem. I plan on making a sword like this eventually and I wasn't planning on padding the ricasso.

I padded it for look and safety ( the way my cross guard was made actually had leather going up slightly that needed to be covered anyways) honest a thin layer of courtesy padding should be done as just in case step and isn't noticeable when you grip it.. i used it multiple times with thrusting and swinging and it felt great. It doesn't hinder your sword at all and helps incase on of the rare ocurrence where you smash someones knuckle. I definitly recomend trying it before u decide against it.

Good job with the padding for Rule 0's sake, Boz; I like the cut of your jib.
As a red weapon, this thing can generate quite a lot of velocity and force. I would have to certainly see the weapon in person, but with an unpadded area so close to the striking surface, I would choose to err on the side of safety and use herald's discretion if I felt it was unsafe. Just because something conforms to the letter of the law doesn't mean its good to go. I feel this discussion covers my concerns.

Gotcha.

I think it'd be fine without the padding, as long as was stated above, it doesn't exceed maximum handel length.

I'm sure it would pass. Was actually talking about it with friend as we made them. I just did the lil extra padding cause i know accidents happen and with how hard i know ill be swinging it an accident can be pretty nasty and figure why not to a lil more to be safe =p

Bravo.

Try making one of these ~52-58" long on 1/2" square fiberglass for dueling. Nothing quite like a heavy, durable dueling redsword.

Currently building a min profile spear.. then gotta build a few different blues. But on my list to build is a min red and a glaive. =) definitly keep that in mind =D

Don't build it literally minimal. It's rather hard to build lower than 3" to pass. I recommend my tutorial on the wiki.

I can second this. I built one of these and it's my favorite toy. The things are solid too. I built mine with 3.5" as my target diam. The difference between a 3.5" and a 3" is minimal (only 1/4" realistically), and it's plenty small enough to find those pockets. My aim with a spear isn't good enough for 1/4" to make a difference between a miss and a kill.

Was gonna aim for 3 to 3.5 to be safe anyways. Have read your tutorial online and is actually what I'm building around and one of the reasons I wont be making a pictured spear tutorial cause it is essentially the exact same thing LoL. Any advice or changes you'd reccamend since you posted on the wiki ? (the types of foam i have available at the moment are blue foam.. yoga mats... seat cushions..floor mat..and couch foam (probably a nerf football if needed for a 1 inch disk) what layering would you reccamend for the best results.

I also will attest to Arrakis' design. My spear was so bad * some new kids stole it from a practice.

I'll get around to making another one eventually.

The tutorial should getcha there. You can replace the pre-compressed cylinders with a solid cylinder of higher-density foam if you want. You may have to play with the amounts of the foams over the tip to get it to feel right to you/pass in your area.

Good luck.

My friend made one of these, little different as it's on a 6 foot bandshoppe pole. It's amazing, this thing is like Min weight.

Is it intended for Bel? Because that handle looks a little too long (a bel legal redsword will have a handle length of either 18 in. or 1/3 the total length of the weapon, whichever is bigger).

Also, puzzle mat + 2 layers of blue sounds wicked mean on a red, judging from the picture.

Edit: upon closer inspection, it looks to be three layers. As you were then.

24 inches of handle on a little over 6 feet of overall weapon. So like 74 inches or so?

Nice looking sword. The reach on that thing and the ability to choke up on it will be invaluable. I hope the guy's got long monkey arms to take full advantage of it.

I would highly suggest oblonging the handle. Grip/hockey tape loses its traction quickly enough.

So, how are these bad boys holding up after two months?

That is my red in those pics Ragefire posted. It is actually 3 layers of blue and the handle is oblong, just not a great pic. I hate round handles. I changed the stab tip, that was just what i had at the time and wanted to use it. That thing went to Rag with me, core it out by Thursday of rag, used from Sunday-Thursday. it was just over three months old, and it cored from continuous Double greens from line fights. I am extremely happy with it and loved the helpful tutorial. I only changed a few steps. Lots of people commented on it at Rag an i told them where i got the idea. I got to fight right beside Forkbeard for the first time with it.

Forkbeard, lol....

But *, a redsword that died from stabbing? Amazing.

Did it core through the stab tip, or did it blow out the side?

it blew out the side, it had gotten alot of abuse, and i lent it out a few times, found out he was noobish, probably put lots of stress on the tip. I spent all day destroying shields and stabbing in line fights, so it was bound to happen.