A kindly whiskey besotted Seattleite has linked to us, proud of his first day garb (it was good) and first day RP (it was great). Thanks, you nerds at Mintifresh. See you soon!
Warlord Sports on Foam Durability
Sir Brennon Viridian (of Amtgard’s Celestial Kingdom) at Warlord Sports has devised several methods for testing foam durability. It’s a great read. The article puts a set of small squares of Fun Noodle, Drill Spot, Duratube, Aethertube, and MC foams through a series of destructive events and has telling pics of the results.
Why Low Profile Weapons
Why low profile?
In foamsmithing, the phrase low profile when refers to boffer weapons that make use of more compact and lower volume designs. While a sword can certainly be low profile, the term more typically refers to thrusting weapons, as stabbing tips are traditionally bulky components.
Advantages of low profile designs:
- They’re lighter
- The more maneuverable in combat
- They have a more realistic appearance
- There’s no outer layer of soft, breakable foam to deteriorate before the rest of the weapon
- No fucking flop! (Where the mass of the open cell foam moves off to the side during an angled strike)
For years, the conventional approach to building stabbing tips was to apply a large volume of open cell foam on a base of bluefoam. This led to fairly bulky, round stabbing point. Since then, innovations in materials and techniques over the years have led to the production of smaller designs, especially for daggers, spears, and javelins. The primary new material for stabbing tips is no longer the traditional open cell foam (which could have included nerf footballs, couch foam, computer packing foam, etc.) but now is a form of Ensolite, usually in the form of “Marine Foam”, Stadium Seat Cushions, or Yogamat. Ensolite is a very spongy closed cell foam that lends well to a lower profile stabbing tip using the principle of progressive resistance.
Another innovation is the inclusion of a swatch of leather or plastic capping the weapon after it has its first wrap of foam at the tip. Place this disc on the end of the core (depicted to the left) after a base of foam has been built flush with the end of the core. This technique spreads the force of the impact of the core to a wider surface area, allowing more absorption by the stabbing tip foam. In conjunction with the Ensolite, these two imrpovements make very safe, lower profile weapons that look better and are easier to use.
Spear Builds
We’ve looked and looked, and there are no spear builds out there better than the Spear guides on Geddon.org by Poo and Arrakis. The phrase ‘low profile’ describes the practice of not having a cubic foot of foam on the end of your spear, which is super effective.
First PD project: Arnad Ceredir
This past Sunday, I finally finished my first plastidip project, and Andor (aka John) got a shiny new sword! I’ve got some pics of it below. Feel free to leave constructive criticism.
Wrapshot!
Anok of No Quarter is seriously on the cutting edge of plastidip over at his blog, Wrapshot. My favorite right now is (His Royal Highness of Darkon) Slindar’s Shield. Dig that crazy action. We also added a lot of his pics to the gallery – if you have more boffer treasure that we can stockpile, let us know.
Why PVC Sucks
John and I were having a discussion regarding different core materials for javelins. A lot of people, including me, have argued for a long time that PVC is completely useless as a core material for boffer weapons. Not “bad” or “substandard” but completely worthless, put it with lead pipes and cardboard tubes, nobody should ever use it again. Continue reading “Why PVC Sucks”
Making Belegarth Rocks and Dargarth Spellballs
New guides are up for Belegarth Rocks. We know rocks are a novelty weapon, but they’re real and they’re happening and we’d like you to know how to build them well. Read up, or get hit in the face with a really good looking brick.
Also, the same article covers spellballs for use at Dargarth, Darkon, etc. Spellballs are rock-like projectiles that represent spells. They’re pretty similar in construction to rocks. If you’re a caster at a boffer larp, this guide will show you how to make spellballs.
New bluesword guides posted!
There are two new guides posted in the Guides section under the Bluesword page: the Eryndor Method and the Box Method. They are only methods for building the blades of swords and do not include directions for a guard, handle, or pommel. Those three things will all get their own guides in the (near) future.
Eryndor Guides
The Dagorhir realm of Eryndor has provided a number of great blue weapon builds. Hail Eryndor!
Some of these guides have some dated techniques or materials.
Bluesword (swf) — This Guide is one of my favorites. It is very well put together, clean and thorough. The only downside to the guide is that it suggests PVC for a core. PVC is acceptable for first time or quick and dirty builds, but for a weapon that will be around for a while, fiberglass is the preferred core. For a one handed sword 1/2″ round fiberglass rod is good.
EVA Bluesword (pdf) — I like this guide for how thorough and concise it is. It also suggests the use of higher quality materials (fiberglass and EVAlite). There are only two flaws with the guide. Primarily, all of the color coding can be a bit overwhelming initially. Second, the guide suggests duct tape on the striking surface of the weapon. In my experience, a well constructed weapon shouldn’t need any tape to hold it together and duct taping along the flat of the blade is more for reinforcement. I have seen foams shear along the edges of tape (bluefoam can be especially notorious for this) on striking surface.
Stabby One-sided Bluesword (gif): — I have to admit, I’m not particularly fond of this next guide. Double-coring (when two small diameter cores are used) is an acceptable method, but not ideal. Furthermore the guide suggests the use of an open cell foam for the stabbing tip. Modern stabbing tip technology uses either Yoga-mat or Marinefoam (aka Ensolite) (Ensolite can also be found from seat cushions). A discussion of stabbing tip foam can be found here. Lastly, I dislike the profile of this weapon. Due to the use of open-cell foam, the sword needs to be reinforced along the flat to prevent the tip from blowing out.
