ES - Youth Boffer

davihayes at na.ko.com davihayes at na.ko.com
Mon Jul 26 10:56:29 PDT 1999



Galen, thanks for your hard work in this area; my sons and I will patiently
await the time when youth boffer practices can be held on Wednesday night. In
the meantime, they and I have taken the 4.0 rules and made a first attempt at
constructing swords. Several questions arose that I thought you might be able to
provide insight on.

1) I took "foam" to mean closed-cell foam. We used two 1/4" thicknesses of an
old camping sleeping mat I had in the garage to make up the required 1/2" of
padding surrounding the PVC pipe base. Is this what the rules meant?

2) How "loosely wrapped" should the duct tape be around the padding? We found
that we had to wrap it somewhat tightly to get the two edges of the foam to meet
without leaving a big gap and to keep the foam from simply slipping off of the
PVC when the sword was swung at speed. We tried not to lash things too tightly,
but I'd like to get some idea on what the purpose of "loose" wrapping is so we
can try to meet the spirit of the law.

3) What about quillons on the sword? Can we use a length of PVC split
lengthwise, lashed perpendicularly to the PVC blade, taped up firmly with fiber
strapping tape, padded and capped? I like the idea of doing that, but we didn't
try that thinking it might have been too far outside of the rules. Instead we
came up with a circular guard made from a disc of duct-tape covered, closed-cell
foam.

4) We taped a striking edge on each side of the weapon's "blade" to make things
more realistic even though the rules did not seem to require it. Is doing this
completely unnecessary?

Thanks for your consideration and help with all this boffer stuff and I'd be
happy to redirect these questions to anyone who might be a more appropriate
target.

Dunstan


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