I wanted to create a tournament for everyone (professional and beginner) and over time transform these into a ranked league. Looking at common fencing events, the amount of armor one needs to wear makes combat a drag to look at and be in.
So looking at alternatives, i saw potential in the live action role playing equipment; they are using a rigid foam in a sandwich construction with a glass fiber pole. Those weapons are pretty light and usually dont hurt when hit.
With those in mind, i was looking for an eengineer to build me a mold for a longsword and a short one sword (gladius). I designed the swords and wanted iron weights in the guard and knob area. We pushed it to 950g weight (750 for the gladius) and it looked promising. But the engineer took his time and preferred another customer, doing the same thing, but solely for blades (only the blade part without guard, grip and knob). He sold aorund 2000 blades in the live aciton market before my sword went into the final phase. After that, i tested it out with a fencing group and a friend trainer of mine. Quickly, the top of the blade broke off due to conflicting materials (glass fiber pole pressing against the foam and destryoing it // see 2nd picture). I was upset, as this feature should have been looked at from the very beginning by the engineer. He said, he simply did not think about it, although i highlighted this potnetial problem very early on.
So i was left with a prototype weapon not build for heavy duty work and as the contract was my own doing, i had no safety in there. We decided to build the weapon solely for the live action community and made some adjustments. This sommer, i went on a big convention only to learn that these type of weapons were now prohibited officially. Due to the new and robust foam, the blades would cut into commonly used weapons, which is a no go. The other guy who sold 2000 weapons was the main reason for this ban, as people realized over 2 years how dangerous those blades were. As we had nearly the same blade, my new weapon was put into the same category and all interest was lost.
Now i am sitting on around 100 swords which are too weak for being used in fencing and my tournament and too hard for being allowed in the secondary market. The engineer closed the production down and the other guy sent his mold to china. I don't have another 30k € to try out a new foam and thus the project is now frozen.
Test Squardon