Well, I have set out on my quest to make a katana, but the best thing that I have found for a core is wood. According to the Belegarth official rules wooden cores are allowed. I was just curious if that is also in effect for Nan Belegorn.


P.S. ~ If anyone has any alternatives to wood or a pvc oven to make a curved core, let me know!

Nan Belegorn follows the Belegarth rules to the letter. It doesn't make much sense to have house rules, as we're very much into attending national events, and it's harder to adjust when you have different rules you're not used to.

As for wood - that's generally not a good idea. Go with PVC. There are PVC bending instructions on the Eriador Construction Page.

Unless you're dead set on making yourself a curved blade, I would reccomend against it. Katanas/other Japanese/Curved weapons were designed for slashing. Because of the mechanics/rule set we use in Belegarth, slashing weapons have almost no place. It's going to be a lot harder for you to land hits with sufficient force with a curved weapon.

Depends on the curve. See Loklamone's "Vanguard Sword" on the front of the Solasmahr Tir website.

-another shameless plug

Yeah, forward curved weapons are sweet, and actually can help significantly.

Hey, Grim, if you're interested, I can hook you guys up with some free server space if you want to get off of Geocities.

That'd be cool. How much we talkin?

We built the next version of the Vanguard sword before Ofest but we never got the covers finished so we were using the initial swords there.

So what the fuck is everyone doing with swords? Lol, doesn't everyone use a slashing weapon of some kind for the most part? (Aside from the flails, spears, javelins, and arrows, which are a minority compared to the edged weapons)

No, they're hacking. The mechanics are different.

Katanas are (typically) designed to be used in a slashing, "draw cut" motion. This doesn't translate to Belegarth.

Goooootcha. My bad.

Another core you could use for your weapons is some good ol' fiberglass rods. That's what Ouija uses...and if you've held my sword....it's pretty light and whatnot. I dunno...I like fiberglass cores a lot.

But he wants something he can bend, I'm not sure if fiberglass can, though I do know PVC can after seeing the guides to bending it.

Fiberglass cannot be bent as it depends on the bonded strength of its fibers to hold shape.
PVC can be bent, and can be bent well. Talk to Gorlock about it, he's in touch with some of the Durdemarian guys (like Koom) who have a good process for bending PVC while retaining its strength.

Also I don't know if this is your first weapon or not but if it is I would go for something simpler. Make sure you get the mechanics of regular swordmaking down before you get into curvy stuff.

Curved blade is a good weapon? or straight blade is advisable.

A straight blade is better; if you use a curved blade in a slashing motion, most of the force of your swing is kept in the motion of the blade rather than transferred onto the target. This is going to feel like the shot just slide across the target's body rather than impacting as is needed in Belegarth to count as a good hit. A reverse curve (a Kopesh), however, would work fine in this regard.

Hoooray bots!