A Good sword
If you've read my story about my first sword, you've learned how to NOT make a good sword. Here's an example of how to make a better sword. You can find many sites that talk about making SCA weapons. Everyone has little variations in how they make their sword, so hopefully you'll find my personal eccentricities to your benefit.
Now, here's how I made my latest sword.
Choosing the stick
I started with a piece of rattan that was as dense, straight, smooth, and uniform in diameter as I could find.
You should choose the heaviest pole in a group of poles of similar diameters. Density can be gauged by the weight of the pole you start with, and by looking for a tight pack of fibers at the cut end of the rattan. The age of the rattan will also determine density. On a stem of rattan, the oldest part is at the base, and the youngest at the top. Springerlink.com has a snippet that references the greater amount of fibers and additional thickness a the basal internodes.
You want a smooth stick of rattan because imperfections are weak spots. A piece of rattan that has a ridge along one of its segments should not be bought, in my opinion, because that ridge will cause some problems when it hits an opponent or a shield. It will channel more energy into your opponent in a focused edge, which is exactly what we're trying to avoid by using rattan in the first place. Also, when you hit a shield, or other non yeilding object with that ridge, you will transmit all your energy back into that edge, which will lead to a much shorter lived stick.
Other imperfections in rattan include patterns that look like cracks in the skin, pitting, and gouges.
Prepping the rattan
I bevel the tip to reduce damage to the tip tape, grind off the loose material at the joints, and shave the handle to fit my hand.
There's lots of ways to shave the handle. I start by shaving the rattan into an octagonal tube, or "tennis grip". the octagon has two longer sides, which match the faces of the sword. Next, I grind a gully around the bottom and top of the octagonal section where my thumb and forefinger and my pinkie finger will sit. Finally, I round the corners of the octagon.
Once I'm done grinding and smoothing, The handle gets a layer or two of athletic tape. This increases the grippiness, and creates a layer of material and glue that blocks sweat from entering the rattan. I try to not leave my swords laying around in the wet, as they WILL absorb moisture, get really heavy, and die due to rot.
Taping
I prefer to tape my rattan before putting on the basket hilt, as I find that the hilt gets in the way of taping. I do my best to add very little weight to the rattan. To facilitate this, I run a non overlapping spiral of strapping tape up and down the length of the blade, which results in 2 layers of tape with a cross pattern of fibers.
Because I'm not putting any layers of duct tape onto this sword, I run another spiral of strapping tape up the sword length. This time with some overlap. This is the skin of the sword. It's not as pretty as some of the colored taped swords, but it's more protective, and lets face it, whether it's silver, blue, or black, it's still just a colored tape that adds no protection to the sword.
At the tip, I use at least four six inch strips of strapping tape to cross over the tip and create a simple basket of fibers. I then run a short spiral over the 3 inches or so that are covering the tip. If I'm putting on a thrusting tip, I do so at this time.
Thrusting tip*
I'm lucky in that I have some 1 inch thick closed cel foam.Because it's one piece, I don't worry so much about losing disks of padding. I cut a square of foam that's just a little bigger across than the diameter of the sword, and tape it on with 4 strips of packing tape crossed over the top, like I did with the tip. This is done snugly, but not so snugly that it deforms the tip.
Once the thrusting tip is attached, I spiral up from four or so inches below it, with some overlap. This is done as tight as possible on the rattan, and just tight enough to compress the foam to match the sword's diameter. I do the same coming up in an opposite spiral to create the crossed fibers effect that I like to think adds strength in opposing directions.
Skinning the sword
The strapping tape layers ARE the skin of the sword. If you really want to skin your sword, put on as little as possible by running a full width of tape up each side of the sword. There should be just enough width in the sides to almost touch at the edges of the sword. This gap gets covered with edge tape.
I put on as little red duct or gaffers tape as possible. I mark the thrusting tip down to about an inch beyond the soft tip, and run a single half width strip of red gaffers up the front and back edge of the sword.
Adding the basket
I use the dense rubber basket hilts you can buy online. A unique trait of these baskets is that they are flexible. Of course, not enough to bottom out on your fingers, but if struck right, they will slide around some, and possibly right out of their restraints. Because of this, I do some prep work on my sword to ensure that failure is not an option.
I make two rings of leather by cutting a couple of straps out of some dense 8 ounce leather. These are taped onto the sword where the top and bottom tangs of the basket will sit. I make the strips narrow enough that there is room between them and the body of the basket. I then strap and hose clamp in that area of tang between the strips and the basket hilt. This causes the ends of the tang to be curved away from the rattan, and creates a shallow V that the basket hilt sits in. If it is hit downward, the hose-clamp and basket slides into the bottom ring, and the tension keeps the whole assembly from sliding off the end Same result in the other direction. It's not a perfect solution, but it does reduce the number of times that I have a basket spring off the hilt.
All the techniques I've used above result in a very light sword. As such there is room to make adjustments. It's easier to add tape and strips of material to a sword to add weight and change the balance than it is to take it apart and re-tape it.
One trick I learned is to use garment weight vinyl instead of leather to define an edge and shift the balance point of a sword. It is much cheaper than leather, uniform in thickness, and much thinner, which makes it easier to add just a llittle weight where you want it.
I found a couple of sword blanks I made a while back, which had their sides shaved. They were from a phase I was going through, where I wanted to make light, fast swords. I am currently working with much heavier swords, so I could not use these blades without some major modifications.
When adding a lot of mass to my sword and changing the balance drastically, I use Gorilla tape. I've found that it has a lot of mass, and I get quick results with little tape used. I add a strip or two to the back and front edges to add mass. If I need to shift the balance toward the tip, I add a couple of strips to the last third of the sword. I do this step after I've attached the blade to the basket, and follow up by skinning the sword.
Lanyards
I've used many kinds of lanyard and trigger. At this point, I pfefer to have as little junk between my hand and the sword as possible, so I don't use a trigger. I also don't like having a loop of leather that gets loose and comes off of my wrist in the middle of a fight, so I don't use a thong lanyard either.
Instead, I've taken to using a short strap of leather attached to my demi-gauntlet. It starts at my thumb on the demi guantlet, loops around the hilt, and buckles to my demi on the other side. Duke Paul uses a loop of leather that goes over the blade of the sword, and with a half twist, cinches over the wrist as a lanyard. I may be going to this style of safety strap.
I'm now experimenting with a loop of leather, tied to the pomel of my sword. The loop is about five inches in diameter, which is plenty large to get my demi gauntlet through. I twirl the sword two or three times to close the loop up some. So far, I've found that the loop does not get between my hand and the handle. Tieing it to the butt end of the sword instead of the top of the basket also gives my wrist more freedom of motion.
Thrusting tip errata
In the ever changing world of standards, there is nothing constant. In this case, the SCA just went to 1 and 1/4 inch thickness for low profile thrusting tips. West Kingdom will be experimenting with 3/4 to 1 inch thick tips until September of 2007 to gather data on the safety of those weapons.
