Foam Noodle Swords

(Click on Picture to Enlarge)

Here’s a fun one for your kids (or maybe as a fun and playful way to resolve adult disputes–foam swords at 5 paces, anyone?)

For materials, you need an old foam noodle (a new one works too, if you have to) and a leather or leather-like material. (I used some cheap almost-leather material, but I suggest that you use actual leather.)

First, cut the leatherish stuff (from here out, I’ll just call it leather, okay?) into strips about 1.5-2 inches wide and as long as your material will allow.

The next step takes a lot of muscle, unless you find a different way to do it–if you do, let us all know, will you? Give yourself some room at the end of the noodle (something like 4 inches) and begin wrapping the leather onto itself to make the handle. Compress the noodle’s hollow middle while you wrap to give it the look of a handle and to make it easier for little hands to hold. Don’t be too upset if this takes you a few tries and you have to rest after making a couple of them in a row–it’s hard work.

Once you have the handle wrapped, you need to secure the loose end. (Here’s when it is nice to have the tension of the foam you just compressed.) Wrap the handle all the way to the end of the leather strip you are using, then place your thumb about a thumb’s width from the edge of the strip-end.

Carefully unravel the strip 1 time around the handle, then, while holding the strip behind your thumb, with your second thumb (this can be difficult unless you somehow have three or four?). Move the first thumb under the strip you unraveled, but in exactly the same spot. Now, re-wrap the end (you can remove your second thumb now, if you want) and wrap your first thumb into the handle.

Now, once re-wrapped, the strip-end should be next to your wrapped thumb. Place the end under your thumb, and use the thumb to pull the strip under the wrapping–make sure you pull enough through to get caught in the handle, but not too much, or it will show and look bad. The tension from the compressed foam will hold the handle on.

We made these for our nieces and nephews last year for Christmas, but a couple of months later, I ended up fixing them because the foam stayed compressed–so the poor little beasts (speaking of the swords, not the children) have a shelf life of about that long (2 months)

However, I have a suspicion that once you re-wrap them after 2 months, you could put rubber cement or Barge’s glue, or perhaps even Gorilla glue in there and they might be good indefinitely–who knows?