Wondering what gear to acquire? Here are some recommendations. To keep things simple, we’ve listed only one or two options in each category – but there are many other good options out there, if you look around a bit.

We don’t recommend buying all this gear right away! It’s best to try out historical fencing first, to be certain you like it.
We’ve listed these items roughly in the order you should acquire them.


A note on gear deliveries: recently a few of our members have had unopened packages gear stolen right off their porch, just after delivery. So please watch out for this! We don’t want anyone else in the club to lose valuable gear to package thieves!

For your first class

No need to bring gear! Just bring a water bottle (we get sweaty!), closed toe shoes, and arrive wearing whatever else you’d normally wear when exercising. We have some loaner swords to help you get started.

FIRST STEP: MASK and ‘light’ GLOVES

Once you know you’re coming back to a second class, you should buy a mask and gloves. Having a mask and gloves allows you to perform a much wider range of exercises safely, and thus *drastically* increases the amount of fun you can have with swords.

Here’s a mask which is affordable, easily available, and suits all our specs: https://www.woodenswords.com/Absolute…/af.mask.basic.htm

Since the mask doesn’t protect the back of the head, you’ll want to add a back of the head protector such as this one: https://www.woodenswords.com/product_p/wu.mask.overlay.htm

Here’s a fairly affordable pair of gloves that work well for light training: https://www.woodenswords.com/Glov…/glove.rapier.rexine.htm


If you are are planning to spar with steel swords, you will want to get heavy gloves (below)

Groin Protection

The next thing to acquire is an athletic cup. If you have external genitals, an athletic cup is an absolute must for any serious sword training! And honestly, many people with less pointy private bits also find them good to have. So if that sounds like you, buy a standard athletic cup or pelvic protector from any sports store (or online) and wear it! They are cheap, and very, very much worth it, even for light training. For heavy training they are an absolute must.

NECK PROTECTION

Additional protection for the throat is really important. After all, your throat is both very important and very delicate, so it’s well-worth protecting it. The ‘blade catcher’ at the top of good throat protection also helps to prevent blades from sliding up to hit the face, so that’s good another reason to be serious about this.

The best available option for neck protection right now, by far, is the excellent Vytis gorget which is available here. This product is often out of stock, so any of the options available here are also acceptable and sufficient

Club T-Shirt! (optional)

TEMPORARY NOTE: our merchandise is currently unavailable due to issues with the manufacturer. we are working to resolve this issue, but it may be a while.

Once you’ve got your mask, gloves, cup (if necessary), and gorget, you might want to consider buying one of our irresistibly attractive club T-Shirts!

This is totally optional – we don’t require our fencers to train in uniform, or anything like that. But many of our members do like to train in the club T-Shirt, just to represent the team. And after all, you have to wear some kind of T-shirt to training…..

You can order yourself a New Haven Historical Fencing T-Shirt here. Just for silliness, there’s also a range of other fun club-marked things you can buy, including our excellent New Haven Historical Fencing champagne bucket.

(Note that the club doesn’t make any kind of profit on any of these items; they’re all available simply at the cost of printing them)

Steel swords

Steel swords are more or less the point of what we do, so at some stage you are probably going to want one!

Note that the cheapest sword option – still worthwhile because it will allow you to practice techniques at home – is a broom handle. Anything that gets you practicing at home is great! A sword is also the easiest piece of gear to borrow, so many take the route of borrowing various swords for a bit until they find a style or model that fits them best!

For a starting steel sword, at a low price point, we recommend these Regenyei standard feders. That’s a very low price for a good sword which can be used for solo training, sparring, and competition. It’s also usually available to ship immediately. (For safety reasons, the ‘medium’ or ‘light” flex blade is preferable to the ‘strong’ blade; it flexes much more safely in the thrust)

Note that there are many other beautiful training swords of this kind (“feders”) out there, and so it’s worth looking around to see what’s available; many of them are more highly developed than this example (though almost all are more expensive, and may involve some wait time).

But if you don’t mind paying a little more, and/or waiting a little while for production & shipping, are some further options:

The SIGI standard feder is really lovely, and very reasonably priced. https://sigiforge.com/products/sigi-feder/ they have some of the most popular feders on the market, and are excellent quality, but usually have a production queue pf about 6 months. Highly recommended!

The US-based company Krieger also makes some very nice feders, of a couple of different kinds. These have quite long wait times, but are some of the nicest ones out there aesthetically, and perform excellently in the bind. The manufacturer is here: https://www.kriegerarmory.com/shop?Sword+Type=Federschwerts

A third good option: Kvetun Armory makes a very nice training sword they call the FFG federschwert. https://kvetun-armoury.com/longsword/ffg-federschwert-1.html NOTE: Kvetun is currently experiencing production and legal issues. DO NOT ORDER until told otherwise or this page is changed.

Whatever you do, please don’t buy a cheap sword from a random online seller! Check in with us first. There are many, many ‘swords’ out there that look okay at first glance (and even claim to be sparring-safe), but are totally unsafe for sparring. A sword that looks good could be unsafe for any number of reasons: some do not flex enough in the thrust, which puts your training partners at risk; some have weak tangs, leading to a high chance of breakage; some are made of low-grade steel which chips, flakes, or bends, leading to sharp metal shards on the floor, among other things. We want none of this! So please check in with us before buying a sword that is not on this list.

‘Heavy’ Gloves

The ‘light’ gloves we recommended above are enough to get you started for foam boffers, but if you want to graduate to more vigorous drilling, sparring, and free play with steel, then you’ll definitely need to get a set of ‘heavy’ gloves, too. Protect those fingers!

The best option currently on the market for heavy gloves, largely for their price and durability, are the HF armory “black knight” gloves. These are very similar to other popular heavy gloves such as the SPES clamshells, but cheaper, more protective in some areas (such as the wrist, fingertip, and thumb) and somewhat lower profile. They come from a manufacturer in Ukraine, and can be ordered directly from their site. for cheaper shipping and combining with orders for other gear, they can be found on purpleheart armory or socal swords, though they are frequently out of stock, and ordering directly from the manufacturer is often the quickest way to get them.

PLEASE NOTE: If you’re intending to drill, spar, or play in a vigorous fashion, please DON’T BE TEMPTED TO BUY CHEAPER GLOVES that are not on this list or otherwise recommended by the club! Yes, there are cheaper gloves out there, but none of them, to our knowledge, offer enough protection for what we do. Longswords hit hands hard, and your fingers are important!

Jacket

The next step is an appropriately padded and stab-resistant HEMA fencing jacket.

The Polish-made SPES ‘AP Plus’ jacket is the industry standard. You can get it from a US supplier here: https://www.woodenswords.com/product_p/spes-jp-m.htm  

There are many other jackets available, from many different manufacturers – but some offer too little protection for what we do, so it’s wise to check in with us in class before buying one.

Some SPES (and other brand) jackets come in “pro” varieties, or otherwise with hard forearm, elbow, and sometimes upper arm protection built in. these are all allowed and encouraged (and will make getting hit with a sword much more comfortable), but note that hard elbow protection is MANDATORY for most weapons (including longsword). You can just as easily buy a jacket without hard elbows and buy some separately to add on to the built in mounting points, and many take this route. One of the best and cheapest options for elbow guards is here: https://www.woodenswords.com/SPES_Hard_Elbow_Guards_Pair_p/spes-elbow-h.htm

Further Protective Gear

There are also other forms of protective gear that are important for vigorous sparring and drilling, and free play.

Depending on the level of intensity you’re using when sparring, you might want to add:

  • leg protection, including thigh padding, rigid kneepads, and rigid shin guards.
  • additional rigid forearm protection
  • hard chest protection