Soft vs Medium vs Hard Boffers
A boffer is a soft training weapon designed to allow you to hit other people without damaging them or significantly limiting the potential for damage. We supply a range at the club but some like soft or medium boffers are easy to make yourself.
Soft - these light padded weapons, with large edges design to prevent accidental injury.
Medium - these are harder boffers used for HMB soft and other training.
Hard - hard surfaced training weapons that allow some flexibility on striking, these include Japanese bamboo based training weapons such as a Shinai, the PVC 32mm pipe we use for staffs, or the SCA rubber axe heads we used for axe practice.
Soft - these light padded weapons, with large edges design to prevent accidental injury.
Medium - these are harder boffers used for HMB soft and other training.
Hard - hard surfaced training weapons that allow some flexibility on striking, these include Japanese bamboo based training weapons such as a Shinai, the PVC 32mm pipe we use for staffs, or the SCA rubber axe heads we used for axe practice.
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Colour of you "soft" boffer
At practical sword we use the colour of the boffer to indicate the type of surface it represents. Red - these represent blades or cutting surfaces Green - these represents hafts of weapons made of wood Blue - these represent blunt striking heads such as mace heads or metal hafts |
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Build you own soft boffer - SWORD
Dark ages / Viking training training starts with a "soft" boffer. A boffer is a soft training weapon designed to allow you to hit other people without damaging them.
You can build your own boffer out of materials you can get from a hardware store and a place stocks swimming pool toys which big hardware stores do anyway. You will need the following,
Cut the PVC to 60 cm, cut a length of the pool noodle to 55 cm long, slide the pool noodle down leaving a gap of 12-15 cm to allow for a grip. This results in about a 7-10cm overhang to allow for safe thrusting.
Tape pool noodle to the conduit, place the rubber chair tip over the end of the conduit and tape in place.
Reinforce the pool noodle where the end of the PVC conduit finishes to reduce attrition with two wraps of cloth tape.
This gives you a boffer of about 70 cm long which makes it a reasonable length for an adult short sword or a junior training sword.
For adult and bigger fighters increase to overall length up to 100 cm for example 75, 90 or 95 cm.
You can build your own boffer out of materials you can get from a hardware store and a place stocks swimming pool toys which big hardware stores do anyway. You will need the following,
- electrical conduit orange 20mm
- red hollow pool noodle
- 19mm rubber chair stopper
- cloth tape and or pvc tape
- hacksaw and a sharp knife
Cut the PVC to 60 cm, cut a length of the pool noodle to 55 cm long, slide the pool noodle down leaving a gap of 12-15 cm to allow for a grip. This results in about a 7-10cm overhang to allow for safe thrusting.
Tape pool noodle to the conduit, place the rubber chair tip over the end of the conduit and tape in place.
Reinforce the pool noodle where the end of the PVC conduit finishes to reduce attrition with two wraps of cloth tape.
This gives you a boffer of about 70 cm long which makes it a reasonable length for an adult short sword or a junior training sword.
For adult and bigger fighters increase to overall length up to 100 cm for example 75, 90 or 95 cm.
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Build you own medium boffer - SWORD
To turn your SOFT Boffer into a MEDIUM Boffer wrap the whole boffer in cloth tape. Add weight and stiffness buy using 25mm PVC and a larger chair stopper. MEDUIM boffers are used ONLY for HMB soft where no thrusting is allowed and thus only need 3cm of overhang of pool noodle. Alterntively use pipe insulation instead of a pool noodle.
