Combat Blunts: Buhurt, HEMA, SCA & Stage Steel

The LARP world fights mostly with foam and latex — no grinder required. But wrapped around it is a real steel-fighting economy: armored combat leagues, HEMA clubs, SCA rapier lists and stage-combat troupes, all buying purpose-built blunt steel to written rules. For a maker, each scene is a different spec sheet and a different customer. Here is the map.

BUHURT: THE ARMORED LEAGUES

Buhurt (HMB, and IMCF’s parallel world) is full-contact fighting in real armor with rebated steel weapons, and its rulebooks are refreshingly dimensional: every striking and non-striking edge blunted to a minimum thickness of about 5/64 inch (the rulebook’s 2 mm), edge radii above roughly 3/8 inch (10 mm), no sharp points, and thrust-only weapons prohibited outright — plus per-category weight caps. The buyer is a team fighter who breaks equipment on schedule; the products are one-handed swords, falchions and polearm heads in tough spring steel with generous engineering margin. Weapons are inspected at every tournament, so build TO the current rulebook (they revise) and quote it on the listing — buhurt customers shop by compliance first.

HEMA: THE FENCING SCIENCE

HEMA’s steel is the feder and the blunt trainer, covered in depth in the modern sword culture guide: 9260-class spring steel, thickened edges, flexible last third for thrust safety, flared schilt — engineered flex, per the sword steel logic. Club standards and tournament gear checks set the specs; the maker’s lane here is trainers, feders and the blunt single-handers clubs burn through.

SCA: KNOW WHERE THE STEEL ACTUALLY IS

The handoff mistake outsiders make: SCA heavy combat — the armored field battles — is fought with RATTAN, not steel; a steel blunt is not legal equipment there. SCA’s steel lives in the rapier program: unsharpened flexible blades with securely capped tips (rubber/plastic over a blunt tip), flex-tested per kingdom rules, plus the cut-and-thrust variants. A maker serving the SCA sells rapier-legal blades, tips and furniture — or rattan-adjacent hardware — and reads the current kingdom marshal’s standards first, because legality is kingdom-by-kingdom.

STAGE COMBAT: THE THEATRICAL SPEC

Stage steel overlaps the display-and-stage geometry guide: spring steel, substantial radiused edge flats, generous tip buttons, and specs set by fight directors and insurers rather than a league rulebook. It is the scene where finish and period look matter most, which pulls it toward the faire economy — the same troupes perform at the faires your booth serves.

WHAT THIS MEANS AT THE BENCH

Four scenes, one discipline: the rulebook is the spec sheet, and it outranks your judgment and your customer’s nostalgia. Build in tough spring steel at resilient hardness, dimension edges and tips per the rebate guide, quote the standard you built to on every listing, and never ship a blade into a scene whose current rules you have not read. The steel-fighting world runs on equipment trust — earn it once and the club buys forever.