How to make a larp boffer meat cleaver.

In the previous blog post about improvised weapons, I showed a farming sickle. All that is well and good, but what other things come to mind in terms of everyday tools and items used as weapons? Let's see, lumberjack axe, blacksmith hammer, hunting bow, peasant pitchforks and flails...and a butcher's cleaver.

Its hard to argue with a 150kg butcher with a 2 foot long cleaver in one hand and a meat hook in the other. Or an equally big cook whom you've caught in his beloved kitchen while storming the castle so he naturally reaches for the first familiar choppy thing nearby...People don't generally keep swords and other stuff in the kitchen. No need - its a veritable arsenal already.

So - butcher's meat cleaver. What do we need? Eh not much really - same as usual.

First we cut the necessary length for the core then we make the handle.

The grip is similar to the one on the sickle, with the added exception - hemp string for looks.

After that the blade - which should be multi-layered.

To improve the looks - I added cardboard to the sides of it. Normally that hardens the blade, but in this case we are talking about a short weapon that's going to lack kinetic energy anyway, so we go for the looks.

 Finally - top layer of tape and we are done. We got a larp boffer meat cleaver.

How to make a larp boffer farming sickle

As I mentioned in my facebook page I'm going to make a couple of "improvised" weapons. Actually the term was a bit misleading, since I did not mean something cobbled together from a bits of scrap MacGuyver style. Actually there are an awful lot of tools of everyday life that also happen to have good weight or sharp edges and thus be quite good for chopping or clobbering someone over the head. Remember - not everyone can be a special snowflake, and hardly everyone was a mighty warrior or had a heirloom sword of power stashed in the attic. So when you are a simple farmer and those uppity orcs show up and trample your fields...well you grab the first thing that can go choppy on them, you don't wait for the army to arrive 6 days later. As it happens to be, that would be your sickle. Hell, as far it goes its a perfectly fine bladed weapon. A certain Paulus Hector Mair even had a chapter in his medieval fighting manual on sickles.

 

But enough about that. So you want a sickle? Lets make one!


LARP BOFFER SICKLE.


Budget: Usual for a weapon

Materials: foam, F20 pipe(you need a thin pipe or you won't be able to curve it) tapes, something for the handle.

Tools: Usual for the job AND also get a heat gun+ protective gloves. You can still use the other ways of heating the pipe, but as I discovered the heat gun is perfect.


 First thing to do would be to cut the necessary length of pipe and prepare for heat gun work.

 USE GLOVES AND CAUTION WITH THE HEAT GUN! 

Otherwise you will burn yourself or something else. So read the damn manual.

 

 Keep in mind - achieving the shape will probably take more than one pass. Do it slowly and steadily so that you don't damage the pipe, only bend it. As an advice - to speed up cooling put it in cold water while holding it in the right shape (or under the water tap). Thus it will get solid in the shape we want it.

After that its mostly trivial stuff. First the handle is made. Since I'm out of flip-flop pieces, I just taped a few strips of cardboard  to it.

Then I covered it with wood texture wallpaper and its on to the blade.

Keep in mind that the blade of the sickle is on the inner side. So most layers of foam and the tip(which you will be striking a lot with) should be on the inner side.

 Eventually we got our farming sickle done. Now we can have a peasant rebellion.

I say....how about lowering them taxes m'lord?

How to make a larp boffer bardiche (or berdiche) great axe

The bardiche is a type of great axe, possibly evolved from the dane axe, that was widely used in medieval Russia and Poland. Its notable for its very long blade - often up to 60 sm and lack of spear point or rear spike, that made it different from halberds and the like.

Unfortunately after I finished mine, I accidentally deleted the step by step photos. Therefore I'll have to improvise with this guide, since I can't make another one.


So, bardiche - how its made.

First of all - there are a lot of similarities with the guide on a one handed fighting axe and the warhammer guide.

BUDGET - bigger than usual - roughly twice what we'd need for a simple sword.

TOOLS - the usual.

MATERIALS - F32 pipe 1.5m long, foam, tapes, wood texture wallpaper for the shaft, f20 pipe 1m long,  about 20+ plastic bottles, cardboard. Pop rivets.


First things first - about the shaft - the shaft is made exactly the same way as the shaft in the normal axe guide. Of course its much longer - the bardiche stands at a 1.85. sm - its as tall as I am.  The f20 pipe is about 1 m long and its fitted inside the f32 as a counter weight and for improved stability(and less wobbliness).




Now the real deal - the axe head. To make the axe head you will need a LOT of plastic and cardboard.
 Therefore your main resources will be plastic beer bottles and pizza boxes. Well - at least for me they were.

 I used a LOT of both - About 20+ plastic bottles and I still don't think its enough.

Here is the tricky part now. Even the large 2 litre beer bottle is not big enough for the whole head.

Therefore you need to make it two piece - First from plastic bottles you cut and shape 2/3ds of the axe blade, then rivet that to the shaft. Reinforce it with the cutouts from the bottles the cardboard and truly frightening amounts of duct tape. After that with yet another batch of plastic bottles you shape the top half of the axe head AND rivet that to the lower half. Don't forget to cover the rivets with foam/cardboard. Don't leave exposed metal. Again reinforce it with copious amounts of cardboard, tape and plastic. After all this, actually fitting the foam covering is a trivial job. 

How to make a larp boffer roman gladius

The Roman gladius does hold a few more target specific points to be given a separate tutorial here.

So what can be said about it  in one sentence. If you are looking for a short stabbing sword meant for fighting with big shield in formation then you need a gladius. They come in several basic types, though most of the variation comes from blade shape which cannot be readily replicated. Size is between 60-70-80 sm long, depending on the type.

So Larp boffer Gladius - materials list

The usual gig - polypropylene pipe F25, tapes, foam, some glue and hemp string in this case.

The tools list is usual and so is the price tag attached. I'm not going to repeat it every single time after all.

Now the specific point about the gladuis is that it's meant mostly for stabbing. Therefore the tip needs to be made a bit differently. First I'll soften the edges of the pipe so that they don't damage the foam tip. A champagne bottle cap could go there but I don't have one at the moment.

 After that its grip making time. First I measure it and leave some room for error margin. After all the sword might go in bigger hands than mine.

 Then its business as usual for my current larp sword making technique - the grip is made oval and the pommel goes in. Note that there is no additional counterweight this time, apart from the pommel itself. The gladius is fairly short and light so there is no need for it.

 Usually at this point I add leather to the grip to improve handling. However I decided to do something else this time around.A bit of a cheaper alternative to be accurate.

 

 Simple hemp string is glued to the grip instead of leather. It works just as fine, but at a fraction of the cost.

Sometime later its done and one can start working on the blade itself. 

 

 

In this case the blade is made a bit differently. Its again classic 2 foam layers, however the layers themselves are made from a single length of foam that goes around both ways. 

 One extra layer of foam is added to the tip to soften it more. Both this and the previous step are made exactly with more stabbing in mind. A sharp tip will be flattened in no time anyway.

 Finally one thing the gladuis sometimes lacks - a sword guard. I made it from another piece of left over flip-flop foam. Nothing left to do now but cover the blade.

 All set - you can go stab someone now.

Assasination weapons in LARP - the breast dagger

Every now and then you can find an idea in those fantasy tv serials that isn't as bad as the rest of it and can be applied to a larp. No, I'm not talking about chainmail battle bikini. This one will be the breast dagger from Xena the warrior princess. Yeah yeah, don't shoot now - think a bit. If poison cannot be used for various reasons - you still need a blade. And well, at any larp game that does not involve character sheets and dice, guards will quickly remove knives and daggers hidden in the usual places. That's why you need one hidden in a, well less usual place where they'd usually NOT look. And if they try to - you have all right to stop them. I don't have to mention that's a lady's weapon do I? Well just to make clear - its a small punch dagger for a lady to hide between her breasts.

 Note: I made it a bit bigger than it should be. However since its has to be of a custom size to fit uuuh...well the user's hiding spots, it was better to make it bigger and THEN trim it out. That's why the grip is so plain too,I should decorate it a bit.

TOOLS - the usual

MATERIALS - 1 old flip-flop or a piece of tougher camp mat foam with the suitable shape, various duct tapes, old plastic bottles - grip decoration is optional.

First thing to do is cut out the rough shape of the dagger. Yeah I know what it looks like at this point, don't laugh.

After that, slowly start trimming and sharpening it until it reaches the desired shape and size.

Then its time to make the grip - plastic bottles are the material of choice for me. Nothing difficult here either.

 Then its just adding the tapes and its finished. Decorating the grip is up to you. I decided against anything serious, since it will  be trimmed down even more later on to fit a girl's hand, not mine.

 And that's it, now nobody will feel safe around girls in larp. Not as if we did before...

How to make a basic larp boffer spear

Spears, halberds, poleaxes, and so on, are a bit more specific to make than one handed weapons obviously. Main issue is getting a good core for the job. When talking spears there are several types and sizes, that have different approach for them.

 First are short one handed spears.

A short spear would not be much different from the javelins - in fact if you only follow the same guide but make it a bit bigger (f25 core and say 1.2-3sm size) and you will get a nice dual purpose weapon - stabbing spear that you can also throw when needed.


Next are full sized fighting spears - you can use those with either 1 hand or 2 hands but they are usually not suitable for throwing. This guide is about them.

Finally you got pikes - 3 meters+. Pikes are a dedicated formation weapon, making them would be a problematic, let alone finding enough people for a pikemen square. Never encountered it so I got nothing to say about pikes.

So how would you got about making your basic simple spear? First of all materials needed.

BUDGET: around 20$ - the large pipe is a bit expensive.

MATERIALS

Core is an F32 polypropilene pipe, a piece of foam, tapes and some wood textured wall paper to decorate the spear shaft.

Note. The problem with polypropilene for long weapons, is that the longer the core, the more wobbly it becomes, effectively giving the so called spaghetti spear effect. The simplest way to counter that is to use a thicker pipe for a longer weapon and it works to a point. For weapons up to 1 meter something - f20 and f25 pipes are ok, for up to 1.5 meters f 32 is ok, but for bigger, its not enough and the f40 diameter pipe is I'd say a bit too big. The wobbling in spears and polearms can be solved by inserting something else inside the core - basically that's why I postponed making the spear guide, I was looking for something suitable. Alas I found nothing so far so i'll show it in the polearm guides later on.

Tools are the usual for every larp weapon.

A spear is actually remarkably easy to make, finding a suitable core is harder.


First thing to do would be to prepare the spear shaft. The core is 2 meters long and a suitable piece of wallpaper is cut for it.

And then wrapped around....After all it should look like a spear right?

 Here's the shaft in full size. Can't take photos of it elsewhere - its too long.

 The rear end I covered in tape. Some folks might turn it into a spike and thus make both ends of the spear useable, I'll pass on that for now.

Next thing to do is the spear head. NOTE  This is a SPEAR - not a polearm, not a naginata - a SPEAR. Its meant for stabbing only, not cutting and slashing, so don't try to wallop the other guy over the head ok? 

Now that we got that bit out of the way, back to the spearhead. Obviously, since you will be stabbing all the time, not occasionally as with swords, the head needs to be reinforced. You can't get away with something the size and thickness of a sword blade&tip.

 Thus the spearhead will be thicker and with a fortified tip - I got 3 layers of foam on it, and then the final one giving it the pointed shape.

 After the foam layers are placed on, the final two pieces are cut to give it a pointed edge. Not too much since constant use will flatten it anyway, just enough to make it look decent.

 With the spearhead finished you only need to cover it in tape and its done.

There is you basic spear in full size.