Aloha ~ Kenrom here ; )

Fire swords. I just posted some notes about a design my friend Magnus and I came up with last year to Santa Rosa Fire Tribe... I'll repost here ; )

The double-swords that Singe mentioned have a really neat slide 'trap' that allows the two swords to come apart sideways at the hilt. This was professionally welded by my friend Magnus, and extremely sturdy! I helped build this particular fire tool and consulted on its design, but the welding was all Magnus'. You would need to have welding skills to create something like these swords, though the design itself is fairly simple and may be achieved through other techniques and materials.

Here are my thoughts on mine and Magnus' prototype design, which you may find helpful when building your own swords...

When we created the double-swords, our goal was to build it tough enough to endure the shock of actual (staged) fire combat, and to devise a mechanism to quickly and easily separate the two swords.

We used 1" steel bars, 1/8" thick for the blades and welded 1/8" round metal guards onto them to help protect hands from the huge flame that fire swords put out. There is a single slit in each of the guards for the other blade to slide in and out of, and the slits are offset by about a half inch each from center at the hilt.

The slide trap is basically made up of the two guards held in place by rectangular metal pieces welded onto either side of the guards at the hilt: one on top, and the other on the bottom. (See photos in this tribe's photo gallery.) This works really well and is superior to any other means of securing double-swords together because it is impossible to separate them accidentally.

Another important aspect of fire sword design is how the kevlar is secured to the blades. Kevlar tends to bunch up and "blossom" around securing points, which doesn't look good. What's more, wicks cannot take a lot of blade contact before fraying and falling apart. These two things have been a major problem with the fire sword designs that I've seen.

So to solve this we folded over 2" kevlar webbing (so that it's 1" wide) and secured it to the sides of each blade using bolts and a long strip of sheet metal (see photo gallery). The kevlar itself is held in the center of the blade and lays flush up to both edges--not wrapped around! This presents a hard metal edge to absorb blocks and parries and helps prevent the kevlar from getting torn up during blade-on-blade contact. BTW, this configuration also makes a much more satisfying sound in combat!

One thing about my swords is that they are presently weighted towards the blades--not good. Balance is very important for any sword, since a perfectly weighted sword is almost effortless to wield, while one that is unbalanced causes a lot of strain on your wrist! When we welded the pommels (counterweights) onto the ends of each sword, we failed to take into account the weight that would be added to the blades later by the kevlar, metal strips that secure it, the nuts and bolts, or the fuel.

Oh well... The slight imbalance isn't so great, but otherwise a good fire tool.

Lately I've started toying with lighter fire tool design ideas--wooden martial arts swords sheathed in aluminum tape and/or sheet metal. I've yet to actually finish a prototype since returning from Burning Man, but now that things are settling down I'm going to have a go at it. I'll let you guys know how that goes...

Hope my notes on the subject help you guys come up with some trick fire sword designs yourselves...

Flame ON!

+kenrom-