11 replies to this topic

[bionicsuperjew]

In light of the some of the unsafe melee weapon topics I have seen, I would like to start my first topic by showing everyone here what I do now since I have not nerfed in about two years. I go to Florida State University, down in Tallahassee, Florida, yeah, that's right, Florida. We used to have about 20 people or so that would nerf, but we stopped two years ago.

Now on to the main reason I start this new topic. What I do now for fun is spar with homemade realistic foam weapons, not just swords, but any melee weapon you can think of. Her is my site:

Foam sparring weapons

I used freewebs and am still updating the site continually. I make all of my weapons with safety in mind first, then realistic length and weight distribution. I am not here to try and sell them or anything, I have a write up on the site on how to make a katana, and will have a write up soon on how to make a longsword. I took much of my inspiration in making them from my days of modding nerf guns, and I think of these as a sister hobby, since I use many of the same materials.

Well, if anyone has any questions or comments about them, feel free to say so here, or if you really want to, you can join the forum I have there, but I put that there just so my friends could suggest things on the site instead of waiting until they saw me again. Remember all you youngsters around here, it may say I just joined a couple months ago, but I have been actively reading the forums here since around 2005, so I know the rules and the code of conduct, and whose in charge here.

[Lt Stefan]

Wow those swords really are quite professional looking. What is the main type of foam you use?

[oh1134]

Anyways, those swords are cool. I've made a numchuck out of cpvc, foam, hot glue and electical tape once.

Edited by oh1134, 10 February 2009 - 03:30 PM.

[bionicsuperjew]

Lt. Stefan Posted Today, 03:25 PM
"Wow those swords really are quite professional looking. What is the main type of foam you use?"

I use camping pad foam. There are two kinds that I use, one from Wal-Mart and one from K-Mart. The camping pad from K-Mart is of better quality than the Wal-Mart foam, which is really dense and doesn't like to bend at all. I use the camping foam from K-Mart for most of the larger weapons and the Wal-Mart foam for shield faces and Katana blades.

But thank you for your compliment, I take pride in making the weapons look as clean and nice as possible

[mind13]

Those are some of the most detailed foam swords I have ever seen. Do you guys just spar? I was reading your site and I know you look down upon LARP, as do I , but what about somthing like Jugger? The link in my sig will take you to a poorly made site about the sport or you could check out Wikipedia if you want.

[bigred1rifleman]

[quote name='oh1134' date='Feb 10 2009, 12:29 PM' post='211123']

Anyways, those swords are cool. I've made a numchuck out of cpvc, foam, hot glue and electical tape once.
[/qoute]

Numchuck? I believe that you mean nunchaku.
Cool swords, though.

~F!nnster

Edited by bigred1rifleman, 26 February 2009 - 09:25 PM.

[bionicsuperjew]

First off, since this is my thread I can necro it, although it has been three weeks, so only kind of border necro. Anyway,
Mind13:
thank you about the swords. I looked up this jugger thing in your sig. Seems very interesting. If we had more people I would consider trying it out sometime. As of right now, we just spar and have dagger fights as well where we draw or create a circle about 14 ft in diameter and have two people in there and if you step out, it counts as a kill for the other person and the two people try to kill each other, usually it ends in a grappling match. We also tried this thing that I called the gauntlet, where two people start off in the middle of everyone else and when someone gets killed, another person runs in with whatever weapons they want and then repeat. We never keep track of anything points or kills or anything, but we are considering advertising to get more people interested here.

Bigred:
How did your nunchaku turn out? I have debated whether or not to make some and so far I have not.

I just updated the site a couple of days ago to add how to make a longsword as well as katana, from how I make the swords, using these two templates you can make virtually any other weapon.

[Yazzeh]

I had a short look-around on your site, and I don't really understand the difference between making your katana and your longsword.

I host Nerf Wars in Montreal with guns and swords. It's pretty easy to manage both with holsters and 'sheaths'. I also have combat conversion rules which state you cannot shoot people in H2H (which starts when two swords hit each other). This prevents shooters from creeping up behind people focused on a sword duel and point blank shooting them in the head.

Anyhow, I'm a foam-smith as well, I'll make a new topic later.

[bionicsuperjew]

the basic breakdown of the Katana is pipe insulation with one strip of the camping foam as the blade. The longsword is two pieces of camping foam shaped like the blade that are taped together with pipe in the middle. I really cannot explain it any better than that.

[Eboreg]

I DEMAND A BAT.

[stickfigure91x]

I had a short look-around on your site, and I don't really understand the difference between making your katana and your longsword.

Both links lead to his longsword writeup. He used to have his katana one working


Actually, now that i look at it, most of his pictures are just the same.

Edited by stickfigure91x, 08 March 2009 - 07:47 PM.

[bionicsuperjew]

Hey, sorry about that. I see what you are saying now. Yeah, my longsword write up replaced my katana write up. I will fix that later on tonight. But just for reference, there did in fact used to be a katana write up.

All of the photos are now fixed in the katana write up. I had saved all of the longsword photos as numbers and I did the same thing for the katana photos, so they just replaced them. I also added some more weapon photos in the photo gallery and will add more photos to the sparring photos. Thank you for point this out, that would have been confusing otherwise.

Edited by bionicsuperjew, 08 March 2009 - 11:25 PM.