Foam for weapons

[JeanryChandler]

I'm trying to find some suitible foam material for making high -end WMA swords, something better than the blue camping stuff. I just got an order today that I'd been waiting for from foamdirect.com and I don't think the material is suitible. I can't seem to find any good source either locally in New Orleans or on the web. I was wondering if some of y'all knew of a good source for something like floatation foam, preferably in sheets 1/2" - 1/4"

Any help would be appreciated.

JR

[Guest]

Hi Jeanry
I have some experience with making foam latex weapons for live roleplaying and the stuff that i used then was a polyethylene foam called "Plastazote".
It´s lightweight, compact and pretty good for weaponmaking.

I made a quick search on the net :
http://www.acor.com/plastazote.htm
http://www.atlasortho.com/sub%20Products/Materials/diabeticandsoftfoam/Plastazote.htm

I think you could order samples from these companies to make sure that it is the right type of foam.

Best of luck
.peter

[JeanryChandler]

Thanks so much for your help. Do you reccomend the firm, medium, or soft plastazoat? Also, seeing as you used to make latex weapons, are you familiar with isoflex, and do you know where to get that in the US? Isoflex was reccomended to me as a top coat to remove the stickyness of latex weapons.

JR

[Guest]

I would recommend using the medium plastazote because it takes up just enough of a strike without giving in to much.

My latex weapon making days were over six years ago. Much has happened since than so i´m not familliar with isoflex.

But again i made a quick search to help you out and i found this "how to":
http://home.clara.net/arianrhod/Aldebaran/DoItYourself/Sword10.html

it says that you could use something called Flexithane instead of Isoflex.

Best of luck
.peter

[Craig Peters]

Jeanry, I don't know exactly what kind of foam swords you are making, but if you are contsructing "high end" swords, you might want to avoid foams that are used for roleplaying rather than serious sparring. I have been having difficulty finding foam in my region, but don't settle for less when it comes to padding weapons.

[JeanryChandler]

The two companies in question evidently manufacture several different types of foam. I called them on the phone today and got them both to send me samples of several varieties, so I'll be able to determine if I think they carry any foam which is suitible for sparring weapons or not, this time before I waste money ordering something unusable like I did last week.

Personally the only big issue I really have with the blue camping pad foam is that it isn't available in thin enough sheets. I'd like something at least as good which comes in 1/4" sheets, so that I can make thinner "blades" for my weapons, for my own use and to sell to fencing school members. Currently I have sold some weapons, mostly daggers, to a few small medieval fencing schools but I'd like to expand that. I'm also experimenting with making latex weapons suitible for martial arts use, I'll probably start testing my first prototype this weekend now that I finally located some suitible polyurethane coating for it to protect the latex and paint.

This landau flotation foam John advocates seems hard to find. Last year we located one source on the net but they wanted nearly $100 for a sheet, beyond our budget at the time. That company apparently doesn't carry the product any more.

The rather amazing and frustrating thing is I find really good closed cell foam often used in packing material for things I buy, (like a water pump for a fish pond I recently bought) so I know it's got to be commercially available somewhere, and pretty cheap if it's used that way. I'm just too stupid to find it so far.

For my own purposes, at the moment the blue camping pad foam is the most reasonable compromise so far. I wonder what is the chief complaint y'all have against it? It seems to hold up pretty well in weapons I have been using for about a year though I notice it does seem to compress a little over time.

Anyway, I'll report any progress I make.

JR