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A while back I was introduced to fighting with boffered weapons and since then I've pretty much kept it up. I've made a number of weapons and fought with people from black belt martial artists, to fencers, to newbies. I've learned some stuff in my time, including how much I dislike being hit in the nuts and how stupid many people act if they get a weapon-like object in their hands, and I've taught some stuff too. I've even taught a couple guys who then managed to wipe the floor with me.

Boffered weapons are basically safe weapons made of PVC, pipe insulation, and duct tape. They're a lot of fun, and you can see pictures of me and my Ac Dec crew fighting over in that picture gallery. I'd like to invite others to give this underrated and entertaining hobby a try. However, if you break your head or your ass doing it, don't tell me I didn't warn you. If done improperly or stupidly, which is quite possible it can be rather dangerous. However, I've used these weapons and this rules system for over a year without a serious injury. At any rate, this page contains information about it.

That's my arsenal right there. Nice little collection no? I've also got two shields but they're not nearly as photogenic or impressive. These weapons are:

These are just a fraction of what could be made. My selection is limited by my lack of funds and materials.

First off, the materials you'll need: PVC plumbing pipe, 5/8ths inch foam pipe insulation with the same ID as your PVC, electrical tape, and Duct tape. For your PVC, it can be a little hard to figure out exactly what to use. Generally, if your weapon is going to be one handed, you can probably take advantage of the lighter weight of 1/2" PVC but for a two-handed weapon you can't get by with less then 3/4" pipe. For foam by absolutely sure you get the right size for your pipe. If you get too large, you're weapon will no only be jiggly, it'll be unsafe. If it's too small, you'll never get it on the pipe. Electrical tape is kind of iffy. I buy pretty cheap stuff, but it's sort of hit and miss when you're finding your brand. Because the electrical tape will be used on the grip, it might chafe or cause the weapon to slip. Duct tape is a pretty important part of the weapon, since it can make the difference between a heavy weapon and a light weapon and it's the part that comes in contact with your opponent's skin. The higher the thread count, and therefor more expensive, duct tape is the safer and more durable a weapon it will make.

The first step is to cut your PVC and insulation. For my purposes, a short sword is about 2 1/2' and a long sword is about 3 1/2'. Greatswords and bastard swords can vary from 4' to 6'. I even have a dagger that's under 1', but it hasn't been used yet. Your insulation should, simply enough, be cut to whatever length you want your blade. Generally a hilt and grip for one hand needs about 6" to 8" and for two hands 12" to 14" inches is minimal. The foam should extend about 2" or 3" beyond the end of the PVC. After you've got the stuff cut, slide the foam over the PVC. Longer weapons will be harder to get the foam on, and one needs to take care so as not to accidentally, I don't know, push the PVC through the side of the foam. Don't laugh, I did this.

It ought to be noted that the foam doesn't really act as padding in the way you might think. Instead of absorbing the shock merely by squishing down. The pipe foam actually spreads the impact over a greater area. This is why it's important to use somewhat stiff foam. If it's too soft, the pipe underneath will still hurt through the foam. The foam doesn't make hits painless. A blow can sting or even knock the wind out of you (and taking a shot to the nuts will really ruin your day). However, to this date we've never had a serious injury. Just a couple cuts and scrapes and mostly when we trip over ourselves and fall down.

Now you need to cover your foam with duct tape. This adds immeasurably to the life span of your weapons. The trick to making good and safe weapons is to make them way as little as possible. Which means using as little tape as possible. The best way to do this is to run the tape parallel to the length of the weapon. At the tip, fold the tape over and make sure there's a little overlap with the tape there. The tip is where you'll tape will break first so it's ok to use I bit more tape here. Otherwise, it's important to overlap as little as you can get away with because this cuts down on weight.

Your choice of duct tape will affect how your weapon fights and lasts. The thread count of the tape is the number of threads that are contained in the tape. The threads increase the strength of the tape and makes it more "clothlike". I've got a couple swords made with better tape and some made with the cheap stuff. The cheap stuff makes sharper corners and the good swords are nicer to be hit with, believe me. They've also needed less repair since the were made.

Now the hilt and the grip. Take a scrap from the foam and make two V-shaped cuts in the middle. You can then slide the foam on perpendicularly to the pipe. Hilts come in handy now and then. Their biggest advantage is that they add some weight to the back of the sword, which shifts the center of gravity a little closer to your hand. That makes the weapon quicker and easier to fight with.

Also the hilts block the occasional blow that would smack you in the hand. Hands don't count in our fights, because you can really hurt someone if you hit their hands. But it's a good idea to keep as many hits of them anyway. Another added benefit is that they increase the style of a weapon. I've got two swords; they're exactly alike. They're almost identically balanced and they're the same length. But since one has a D-shaped hand-guard, people immediately think of it as a sabre. Weird, no?

Now you can wrap your hilt. The most important part of taping the hilt is to wrap it around the T of the hilt, blade, and grip a bunch of times, which makes an X of tape. This will keep your hilt from moving around and adds strength to it's greatest stress point. It's important to wrap the whole of your hilt in electrical tape. I let some newbies use my sword for five minutes back before I started wrapping the hilts and they got trashed. It was so bad I had to toss them and the swords haven't had hilts since. My hilts are pretty good now, and you can do a lot with them.

Once you're done with the hilt, wrap the grip. Electrical tape is usually sufficient for a grip but if you're feeling frisky you can wrap the PVC in rope or cloth first to build up the grip first. But it's still usually a good idea to cover it with tape too. There you go, you now know how to make yourself a boffered weapon.

Now I'm talk a little about the rules. When you fight you can set this up however you want, but this is the way I do it and it's safe and fun so I figure it works. There are any number of ways to set up the rules, from applying point values to each limb/target to one hit one kill type fights. I designate a number of regions on the body on which you can be hit. When you're hit on each of these, there're are certain effects that happen. Blows don't need to be hard, so we count light hits as well. The idea is that if only hard blows were counted, people would start throwing heavy-handed blows and somebody might get hurt.

Head - This isn't a legal target. Some people will say that if you're hit in the head you should be granted the win, but I think that would lead to people exploiting their heads in order to win. If you hit someone in the head, we usually pause and make sure the person isn't hurt/their glasses aren't broken/or momentarily stunned, then go on fighting. If I could get my hands on some of those headgears for boxers that I could maybe rivet some face protection to as well, I could make the head a legal target, but for now that isn't really economical. Unless someone has got a couple they're just gonna get rid of that they'll let me have. The neck is part of the head.

Torso - This is your real target when you fight. Any blow that lands here is a kill. Pretty simple, eh? For the most part, why count glances, but if you shrug off an especially light glance now and then because you think it really couldn't have done any damage with a sword that can work. But be sure to let people know that they can too if you're gonna do that. Clothing is not counted as part of the body because a sword couldn't slice open your liver by cutting open your shirt.

Arms - Whenever you get hit on the arm, you drop whatever it is you've got in that hand and go on fighting. If that's your sword arm, most of us are polite enough to wait for you to switch hands first. However, it is not required to let your opponent switch. Just remember, that if you don't let them, they'll be less likely to let you.

Legs - Get hit in the leg and you drop to your knees. It hasn't happened yet, but if you happened to get hit again, I guessed you should sit down on your butt.

Hands and Wrists - A no-no spot. You can really hurt somebody if you crush their fingers between your weapon and their grip. However, if their hand is not currently grasping a weapon, it's counted as part of the arm.

Feet - It's hard enough to feel a blow through most shoes that counting feet is impractical. However to keep people from intentionally blocking with their feet, if the foot is off the ground the blow should be counted.

Crotch - For both guys, this is a definite no-no. Guys can literally be laid out on the ground from a blow from a boffered weapon. Try to lay of the girls too. It may not be as debilitating, but it's not fun.

Breasts - We have to treat breasts with special care. Not just cause we like the so much either. I hear from girls it's quite painful to be hit in the breasts. But it has to be admitted that if you call them illegal targets, a guy is put as a severe disadvantage by his lack of chestal bouncy-ness. My policy is this: try not to hit them, but if you do the blow counts. And it seems to work.

Now for some special notes. It is possible to make throwable weapons. When making weapons intended to fly through the air, no PVC should be used. That's about the only difference. You'll note that this makes trowable weapons crap in melee combat, but hey, you can throw them.

Also, on some weapons, it's obvious they have only a certain number of killing surfaces. An axe can't really kill with the flat of the blade. Normally we consider the swords omnidirectional, but if anybody is using a weapon like an axe or an hammer we count only two 'edges' of the sword as a killing surface. These 'edges' are defined with black electrical tape.

I don't allow any of what I call "sword-wrestling" which is when two opponents merely try to force the other's blade to do something the other person doesn't want it to do. You can "sword-grapple" with means parrying and bypassing your opponent's blade, but if it becomes a test of strength and not skill, you're wrestling. Wrestling will break the weapons and I've got a policy of "if it breaks in your hands, you pay for me to make a new one".

It's easy enough to just pick up a sword and hit each other. Making this anything close to actual combat is different. I try to go for at least a 'tournament of knights' feel if I can't get a 'battlefield of Scots and English' feel. There're four huge things that will make you an effective fighter; stance, footwork, feints, and defense.

Stance is first, and this also includes how you put power and speed into your weapon. With any weapon, it's best to keep your feet shoulder width apart with your shoulder to your opponent, turn your head to face them. Keep the foot closest to your enemy pointed forward at them and the other perpendicular to the other. Bend your knees slightly. If you're using a shield, put your shield forward and very close to your body, keep your sword just to the side and back from your shield. If you've got just a single handed weapon, keep it between you and your opponent and keep your other arm bent behind you for balance. With a two-handed weapon, keep it low at him level with your right hand on top and your hands as far apart as your grip will allow. Always keep any weapon you use pointed at roughly your opponent's throat or chest. Don't let it drift off to the side or too high or low. When you throw a shot, the power should come from the wrist and always throw your blow so that if the opponent wasn't there, your weapon would be forming a straight line from your target point to your shoulder. If you're using a two-handed weapon, use your right(top) hand/wrist as a pivot point, a fulcrum, and let the power and control come from your left(bottom) hand.

Next is footwork. Never keep perfectly still unless you're on your knees. Move from side to side and change the distance from you to your opponent. This keeps them off balance and keeps the target they're aiming for moving. A fight can be one and lost in the footwork. 60% of the time, instead of blocking a blow with your weapon or shield, and thereby tying up one of your arms and the rest of your with it, can be dodged by either moving to one side or the other, or simply backing up. Also, by reacting with footwork instead of your weapon, you're not opening holes in your defense, which really pisses off people who throw a lot of faints. Instead of taking large normal steps, take smaller, shuffling steps. You can make faster tighter movements this way and quickly change direction. And please, please, always step forward when throwing a shot. When you're at a normal distance from your opponent, you aren't in reach of each other's weapons so by stepping forward when you attack, you bring them into your reach (and you into theirs). On he same note, if you step back when they attack, you remain out of their reach. If they follow through with their swing arc, they will be pulled a little off balance and more then likely a nice hole will open up in their defenses.

Feints. These are the beginner's nightmare. If you do nothing else, learn to throw an effective feint. You'll have an upperhand on anybody who's just starting out for the rest of your life. The biggest trick of throwing feints is learning that you don't have to reverse the direction of your weapon to change where it's gonna land. A lot of people feint by making an attack but pulling it back and starting a whole new attack. This does a couple things: it takes unnecessary amounts of strength, because you have to negate all the energy you just put into the weapon, then add enough to make it move backward, it takes a long time, which gives them time to react, and it actually tips of your opponent that it's a feint. What you can do is this: you can start with something like a high diagonal slash, which will hit the shoulder if it makes it through, and by guiding your weapon downward you could aim it at the arm, hip, or even knee. This drastically changes the target zone and takes only a little effort to do. There are a couple of other feints you can do. You can just shift the target up and down the enemy's body, you can actually pull it sideways across the body, or you can actually do a little tricky one. Try just pausing for a moment, pull back on the weapon for a second and look at something on that persons body where you weren't aiming. Then go ahead and hit the spot you were aiming for. You just out thought your opponent, making him think you were gonna feint but then actually hitting them. I love that one.

Finally, defense. A beginner will usually throw diagonal slashes. This blow comes naturally to most people, starting at about shoulder level and aiming for the chest. This is not only the easiest to throw, it's the easiest to block and avoid as well. So watch for it. The biggest part of defense is knowing what it is your opponent is trying. If you see someone who always steps when they attack, and they don't step, they're probably feinting. If they pull their weapon back to their right, expect a blow from that side. Naturally you can't be expected to actually think during a fight. Strategy comes in part from natural talent and in part from experience. The more you fight, and especially the more you fight with the same people, the more your learn their styles and moves. Once you know what they're doing, you have to know what to do with it. If possible, avoid the shot entirely by the techniques described in footwork. If you can't avoid the blow, try to strike it in a line perpendicular to the line of their strike. This will deflect the blow, not block it. Doing this a proper parry or sweep. You move their weapon out of the threat area and yours into it. You can then follow with a shot to their torso or the arm they used to attack. Finally you can merely block the blow. The biggest rule about blocking a blow is that if your weapon is shorter then theirs, it's in your best interest to step into a block, which ought to put you inside their threat zone or defense and allow you to go for a kill. If your weapon is greater in length, stepping backwards will help you because it should help keep them outside your defenses but them inside your reach.

Well, that's about it, enjoy the fighting.

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