Ergonomic Boffer Handle

I make a lot of things for LARP. I've made props, costume pieces, shields, and more relevant, swords. 

There's two main ways to craft a boffer sword. The cheaper and simpler way is to take some PVC pipe, stick it in a pool noodle, and tape it all up (see image below). However these weapons are heavier, which means that they're slower to swing and carrying them around all day is just that much more tiring. The other method is to make a weapon as light as you can, which makes it easier to move quickly. These could be made with existing materials, like the rods of golf clubs or fishing rods. Those are easy, and if you buy them secondhand they can be cheap as well. The drawback is you're more or less stuck with the handle you get, and they just don't look as cool (looking cool is one of the pros of LARP). For this project, I took a stab at making an ergonomic handle for a boffer utilizing a doubled up fiberglass core.

On top is a standard boffer. It works pretty well.

On the bottom is a sculpted boffer. It uses the same core as the handle in this project, inside a leather-wrapped wood handle. It's not bad, but could be better than just a rounded box.

One of my friends had talked about wanting to make a basket hilt rapier boffer, and that sounded exciting. I started by looking at swords and their guards and to work backwards from there. I had to think about a mix of practical use compared to how cool it would look.

I took the inspiration I had from looking at cool swords and started thinking about sword guards. My intent from there was to work backwards to design a handle. I ended up finding an idea I liked so I fleshed it out.

 My intent was to make both the handle and the guard, but in terms of casting, the open guard just wouldn't work, so I instead decided to make the handle for casting and the guard could be 3D printed and then added on after. When I had an idea for a guard I liked, I worked out an idea that looked cool and viable ergonomically. This idea was what I went into clay shaping with. However, this handle design acted more as an inspiration as I found a completely different idea.

I had a small 3D printed handle for another sword that I didn't end up using, so I ended up using that as the base for shaping. I developed the base shape for a grip, and realized the tube idea I had earlier would look way cooler as a snake. I contemplated just using plastic tubing and winding that around, as that would stay cylindrical, but that meant I would have to wait until after class to work on that, and I wasn't that patient.

I sculpted the sausage shape, constantly holding it as I would to check if anything needed to be shaved down or scootched about. It was very helpful having the fiberglass core, as it meant I could hold onto it while shaping the handle without smudging or otherwise unintentionally marking the handle. It would have been nice to have even harder clay that wouldn't smudge as much as the clay did.

Ergonomically, the handle has some cool features. The area behind the index finger is further out compared to the areas behind other fingers to accommodate for my preferred grip. The bump on the back fits nicely in the hand, yet the contour up means I could choke up on the grip without cramping the thumb webbing. It also acts in conjunction with the snake, acting as a pommel would to prevent the sword from slipping. 

After the basic form was done and my hand agreed with the position of the snake, I added some texture. The "wood grain" I could paint later to look more wood-like, and added some registration for extra grippyness. All I had to do was use the wood modeling tool  to lightly scratch the surface, and then brush off any excess material that wasn't pushed off. 

I would have loved to make a scale-texture roller or stamp for the snake, but the shape was too irregular. I slightly scored the surface for some directionality, and then decided a hammered metal look would be better. To achieve that look, I hit the clay with the butt end of the potter's needle, leaving divets. To make the snake stand out, I used the needle as it was meant to be used and outlined the shape, pushing down the excess material on either end with the wood modeling tool and then smudge the lines a bit with my finger.

And then after lightly signing my name on the bottom, I was done.

In my final drawings, I thought about the handle through section, and each one focuses on a different Cartesian section, with one being shaded and the other just being lined in, and to a certain extent treating information in front of the section cut as ghosted in. Since I already had two drawings there, I figured it could be helpful to see what it looked like with the exposed core and then with the foam "blade" attached. This layering of information comes from the background in architecture.

In the end, the design can work well without an added guard, with a minimal guard, or with a full basket guard ( at least it should in my head). If I have one regret, it would be making the handle fit exclusively for a right-handed user, as it means that when making multiple, I wouldn't be able to have a set of matching swords, since there's no way that'd be comfortable to hold in the left hand. It also means that I couldn't lend any sword with this handle to a left-handed user. The tradeoff is a very unique look, but I'm not confident that the tradeoff's worth it.