Belegarth

There's tons of posts on here saying not to use PVC for a sword core because it might crack or warp under the stresses of combat. Which made me wonder

Is PVC still considered good for a handle on a coreless shield though? It's old tech and a lot of people these days are moving on to fiberglass for a shield handle core. I have a ton of half inch PVC lying around and I'd like to use it.

I'm aware that PVC as a shield handle will pass as long as it was built right, my question is can I expect it to last at least two or three years?

My coreless punch shield is 6 layers of blue camp foam everywhere except the boss. The boss is two layers of blue camp + 3 layers of 4 pound EVA foam (I also made the boss bigger than the hole for my hand so no worries). the dimensions are 2 feet wide and 3 feet long. The pipe is 30 inches, giving 3 inches of padding above and below the ends.

If this is doomed to break eventually -- well I guess I can build a new one with fiberglass rod as a handle instead.

As long as it's SCH40 or SCH80, it should fine. I've had a punch with a PVC handle since 2012, and I haven't had any issues with it.

You should be fine. Even if the PVC does snap, you don't need to scrap the whole shield. You can simply glue in a new fiberglass core (or even another PVC one if you want to go that way).