This piece was prompted by wanting to make something more beautiful, elegant, and sweeping. It’s based upon a design by Arms & Armor, itself based upon a piece in the Musée de l’Armée in Paris, featured in The Rapier and Small-Sword, 1460-1820 by A V B Norman.

I love how the lighting strikes the chrome surface, and how the curves of the swept hilt mirror the work of the original. This was the piece for which I originally developed my now-frequently-used Composite Foam technique, enabling the blade to be so long (the total length of the piece is 4’3″, of which the blade is 3’5″) while still remaining strong, lightweight, and safe.

The handle is faux leather from FabMo, which takes donations of spare fabrics left over from trade shows that would otherwise be unused. It gives a nice firm grip, not so soft as to make it difficult to twirl, nor so hard that it’s difficult to get traction. The entire structure of the chrome elements — the cross-guard, knuckle guard, loop-guards, side-rings, and counter-guards — are constructed out of the same low-density polyethylene foam that blades are often made out of, so that it squishes if pressed. The ricasso (the two-inch part of the “blade” between the cross-guard and the rest of the blade, which is left unsharpened because that’s where your thumb and index finger grip it) also has the faux leather in it, so that the grip remains strong.

Originally I made this with a carbon fiber rod as the core because I didn’t have any tubes at the time, but, as expected, that added unnecessary weight, so I replaced it with a hollow tube that weighs less than 2 ounces. The entire rapier is now 9.6 ounces, 60% of one pound, and much of that is in the handle.

I crafted this rapier to be 4’3″ (129 cm) in length because my research into historical rapier dimensions suggested this would approximately correspond to the proportional recommendations based upon one’s height by Capoferro, who wrote one of the most famous historical manuals on fencing (you may recognize his name as being referenced in the legendary duel between Inigo Montoya and Westley in The Princess Bride). If you really want to read about the squabbling over interpreting historical rapier length arguments, you can check out this article and its comments for some amusing in-depth debate/analysis.

These dimensions work well for me, but I have unusually long arms, so it proved unwieldy for others. Therefore, my subsequent rapier designs were shorter. I am happy, however, that the one tester who had actually trained in fencing found this design very effective.