[Intro music]
Here's something you don't normally see on my channel: a foam sword.
I've never done LARP, I have no interest in it, and I've never had any reason to get one of these.
But I was contacted by Calimacil, the maker of this sword here,
and asked, "Hey, you wanna make a video about this? We would be interested in your opinion."
And so, I was kinda curious. So what are these actually like? Do they have any potential
for HEMA practice or any other application.
And since the only thing they asked me to do is include their logo in the video and link
to the sword in the video description, I figured
"Why not? Might as well try it out and see what it's like."
This is "The Highlander" by Calimacil. It's a historical design and it looks
quite similar to original claymores in overall shape.
A lot of the details as well—I'll get to that later.
The core is a fibreglass rod which is reinforced at the tip
with fibre-braided polyurethane tube to prevent the rod from
poking through the foam.
It's made of expanded polymer foam but it does not contain any latex;
from what I understand most LARP weapons have latex
which requires special maintenance.
You know, talcum powder and whatnot—I don't know what the maintenance routines are—
but none of that is necessary with this stuff here.
And it seems pretty strong; you can twist it around
pretty violently and it returns back to its shape.
It might get a little wrinkly on the surface but
it really seems very strong. So the edges can
collapse easily for safety,
and the entire thing flexes, not only in the direction of the flat.
In fact, towards the flat, not so much;
it actually flexes less than some steel swords towards the flat.
But it does have some give in the direction of the edge.
So that definitely helps if you strike anything;
and it deforms on impact—that absorbs a lot of the force.
So that makes this generally pretty safe.
I say "generally," because I'm a little surprised
by how thin the edge is for a LARP sword.
I mean, in a way that's nice, because it makes it look a little
—well, not necessarily that much more realistic
because it's still a pretty thick sword of course.
And there's no way that, even at first glance,
you could mistake this for a real sword,
unless you're in desperate need of prescription glasses.
But, it just makes it overall look more appealing
that it has this taper towards a relatively thin edge. However,
I'm wondering just how safe that is,
especially considering that the edge is kinda rough.
I'll show you a closeup here. There are a few spots which
almost feel a little bit, well not really sharp, but rough.
I wonder if that might possibly be able to tear skin in the worst-case scenario.
Even duct tape can have that sort of effect on practice weapons.
But this is just me speculating, I have no idea how to use this.
Overall it definitely seems safe.
In terms of thrusts, well, the point here
flexes a lot; this bends over all the way to 90 degrees and even further.
After that it doesn't have that much flex.
Now, for LARP purposes I'm sure that's fine.
If I wanted to use this for HEMA practice
—for those who don't know that's Historical European Martial Arts—
that might be a bit of a problem, because there is a difference
in the thrust between doing something like this—
that would be a fairly weak thrust—
and stepping into the thrust.
So if you really step into the thrust with your entire bodyweight,
it's much more powerful. And I'm not sure I would be
comfortable with something like this necessarily. I mean
it has flex, but a very powerful thrust while
stepping in, might be a bit much. But again, I haven't tried this.
The other thing of course is that I wouldn't recommend
a murderstroke because this pommel is rather solid.
Even though the thing flexes, if you were to strike somebody like that,
that would not be a fun time for them. But I mean,
in most situations you wouldn't anyway.
The guard is very flexible, so that makes it sort of
useless for HEMA practice but good for its intended purpose, which is LARP.
So these things you can also really abuse apparently.
I can twist that around all kinds of ways and just try to tear it off
it still holds up. I mean I could, if I wanted to, I could rip this off
if I tried hard, because I can hear something starts tearing in there,
at least it sounds like it. But I mean
that's not exactly what would normally happen on a LARP event.
At least I think somebody running around trying to rip off people's guards
would be kicked out fairly soon, so that's not really an issue.
On the grip here there are these knobs. I mean,
those are apparently meant to resemble rivets. I'm personally
not a fan of that, it feels really weird.
It doesn’t really do that much for traction, but it feels kind of strange on the hands.
However, what I like about this is the level of detail.
The fake wood grain comes out really nicely.
At first glance this really looks like wood, if you don’t touch it. So, that is pretty interesting.
Even if you touch it, at first you could possibly mistake it for wood
aside from how light it is. But it looks really good.
Also there’s some detail on the guard here. This in fact
I’ve seen on a real claymore in a museum.
Some very similar decorations so I’m assuming that’s what they referenced.
So that is really quite nice to see.
The bevel shape on the guard, that makes it look more interesting.
The pommel is fairly intricate; you can see these decorations here.
The blade also looks really good for what it is. As said, the blade
has to be pretty thick for the padding to do its job.
But it still has a fairly refined shape.
It’s got a fuller here, and it’s pretty much a lenticular cross-section.
The edges are more lightly coloured, so that makes it look like a polished edge.
It would be a little wider than usual on a steel sword, but you can see it better this way.
Yeah, so artistically that looks really quite nice.
There are a few cases, like right here, where the seam is a little bit rough,
but otherwise it’s definitely a good job.
So for use as a LARP weapon, I’m assuming it’s good—
again, I don’t have firsthand experience so I can’t say for sure
—but it definitely seems light enough, it seems to flex enough.
At least for light thrusts and definitely for strikes, shouldn’t be a problem.
Aside from the rough edge here, I don’t see any issues with it.
If you wanted to use that for martial arts practice,
I don’t think this is the right tool.
I mean, for one it’s extremely light. I’ll show you the weight:
572 grams; or 20 ounces.
For comparison, here is a padded training sword made by XEL(?)—
still need to get around to reviewing that one.
So this is about 1.17 kilos; 41.4 ounces.
And a synthetic sword for HEMA practice.
This one is 1.3 kilograms, or about 46 ounces.
So it’s essentially a fourth of the weight of a real claymore and about a third of a longsword.
And when dealing with so little mass,
it limits quite a bit what you can do.
A lot of the techniques wouldn’t really work or wouldn’t work the same way
because of how differently it would behave—in the bind, especially.
In parries those would probably bind reasonably well edge-to-edge, but
I don’t think this would be a great training tool.
But again, it’s not designed for that, so for what it is, seems good as far as I can tell.
But keep in mind I cannot make any statements about the durability
because I haven’t used it and have no plans to do so.
So just take it for what it’s worth.
And thanks for watching.
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