[MR] weapons

[Garth Groff]

Noble friends,

I too have one of these swords, with another on back-order. I bought the 
hand-and-a-half (which they say is a "two hander", though it is not), 
and the "one hand" arming sword, but don't use them for combat. They 
were purchased to use as display items children and guests could handle 
safely at an upcoming large and probably hectic demo. Potentially these 
are great for school demos where the principal will not allow weapons 
(still check with him/her in advance).

For combat practice, I would leave these as they are, bare black 
plastic. For display they should be painted. The hilts and pommel on 
mine were sprayed with bronze paint, and the blade with silver. I 
suggest you paint the furniture first, after everything is dry snap the 
hilts in place, then mask the whole grip end using blue painters' tape 
and a plastic bag before spraying the blade. I did not use the small 
plastic collar since the hilts fit quite snugly, but that collar would 
be needed for actual combat. I plan to wrap the grip with brown leather.

Museum Replicas/Atlanta Cuttlery had the best prices at the time I 
ordered, $25 for the arming sword, and $30 for the "two hander".

Yours Aye,


Lord Mungo Napier, That Crazy Scot


On 2/21/2012 4:37 AM, Baron Mungoe wrote:
> Greetings
>    I picked up two of the Gladius type plastic swords and have been 
> using them in Kali class, and have used them with SCA armor in my 
> yard, found this
> 1. They are too thin, easily go through the grill of a helm or a gape 
> in the neck.
> 2. With practice they hit very hard, you have too use them like a real 
> sword to hit edge on. Had to grip differantly due to that fact. On 
> body armor-aluminum lamellar over a padded gambeson I could feel the 
> blow, felt funny on the head. Thrusting was felt very easily.
> 3. Very durable, my nephew Nick and I hit sword to sword as hard as we 
> could repeatedly  and did not damage the sword, did make some divots 
> in the rattan when we used them on SCA type swords. Been using them 
> for drills for about a month and they are holding up better then rattan.
> 4. Real cool at demos as the kids at schools cannot cut themselves on 
> them.
> May be on to something with this material and design, thicker edges 
> would work but they lose the cosmetic aspect if they are thicker. Also 
> got the machette  gladius,   evil, evil, evil toy.