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 such as 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 secondary striking surfaces such as the butt of a spear. |
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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 while lmiting the poential for damaging them.
You can build your own boffer out of materials you can get from a hardware store and a store that stocks swimming pool toys. 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 store that stocks swimming pool toys. 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
MEDIUM boffers are used for HMB soft training and training for more experienced students.
Option 1 - Modify your soft boffer
To turn your SOFT Boffer into a MEDIUM Boffer wrap the whole boffer in cloth tape.
Option 2 - Build a medium boffer from scratch
Use the same technique as above accept for the following modifications.
Option 1 - Modify your soft boffer
To turn your SOFT Boffer into a MEDIUM Boffer wrap the whole boffer in cloth tape.
Option 2 - Build a medium boffer from scratch
Use the same technique as above accept for the following modifications.
- Haft - add weight and stiffness buy using 25mm PVC and a larger chair stopper.
- Padding - the padding is reduced by using hot water pipe insulation such as K-Flex 13 x 13mm x 1m Elastomeric Pipe Insulation from Bunnings.
- Tape - the foam padding is then covered completely with cloth tape or other fiber reinforced tape.
- Trusting tip - as there is less protection at the thrusting end you need to put a chair stopper on both ends and ensure extra padding is added above this inside the 3cm overhang. The tip is reinforced with extra wraps of tape.
- If only using your medium boffer for HMB soft or HMB Buhurt, duel or profight training where no thrusting is allowed, you only need 3cm of overhang without the extra stopper in the tip.
