Main > The Armoury
Hacking up a sword
Sir Edward:
Just thought I'd post a note on this. This year at MDRF, one of the security guys has started giving me a hard time about the fake sword, along the lines of "we frown on that, just so you know for future reference", but never actually stops me. Someone called security on me once so far this season as well, and 4 of them came running over. I showed them it was fake, and they were satisfied and walked off.
Anyway, the belt I'm using is the one that Silvanus had linked to a while back. It's working out really well for a relatively inexpensive belt. When it comes to sword suspensions, they're usually really expensive, or horrendously simplistic, or badly designed. It's hard to get one that's reasonably priced and does the right thing.
Here's the link:
http://www.realarmorofgod.com/store/html/Products/Historical-Clothing/Medieval-Men/12th-Century-Sword-Belt-806.html
And a photo from this season:
I know it's hard to see the belt in the photo, but you can see how it holds the sword when I have the buckles tightened up to hold it fairly snug and high up. In period, double-wrap suspensions served the purpose of keeping the sword in place without it swinging all over while you're walking. This belt does that. The only thing I did to it to improve it was to tie the two scabbard loops together so they don't separate (and thus dump the scabbard out the front onto the ground if you bend forward). But I imagine they could be tightened down onto specific parts of the scabbard if you wanted them a little further apart too, but I haven't experimented with that.
Sometimes I just wish I used a slightly shorter scabbard. :)
Sir William:
I was thinking of epoxying one of my old beaters into the scabbard- its no longer usable as a cutter, because of the tang being turned to accept screw-on pommels (and we all know how much those suck), the hilt components are basically shot and the blade's notched all to hell so I was gonna epoxy the whole damn thing just for MDRF. Bill said as much and I'd toyed with the idea for a while, just couldn't bring myself to do it. Now I think I can...just need epoxy and a rigid scabbard I guess? I like your belt Sir Edward...wouldn't you know THAT site is blocked too.
The gov't is afraid of God, apparently. As well they should be.
Sir Edward:
Yep, just a rigid scabbard, and a way to rough up the blade a little so the epoxy can grab it.
In my photo above, the blue belt you see is the knightly belt that you can get from places such as MRL. I wear it over the black double-wrap belt for the looks and to hold the pouches and things separately.
Sir William:
Rigid scabbard's gonna be a problem...hm. Might have to turn my Brom sword into my Ren Faire piece. That's got such a clunky scabbard though, its really unattractive.
Sir Edward:
I'm tempted to rig up another prop sword that's a little shorter in the scabbard. The one I'm using usually hangs a little lower than the photo I posted a few messages back, and ends up hitting the ground a lot, or catching the lace ties in the chausses on the back of my ankles.
But if I'm going to do this, I'd be tempted to grab a prettier looking SLO to hack up. We'll see if I get around to it. I have an entire year to think about it now, since I won't be able to do this before the closing weekend this year at MDRF (and any other faire I go to in between will allow my real swords).
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