Rain at the Ren Faire? You need a Sword-brella

A while back my friend Paul Laster (of buckskinning.org) pointed out to me the existence of the Sword Hilted Umbrella. Although I thought the idea of  an umbrella with a sword hilt for a handle was a product that was long overdue, I couldn’t come up with a good argument to convince my wife that it was a necessity. Until now…

My wife pointed out to me that there is a 60% chance of rain for the Texas Ren Fest when we will be there this weekend. This means i’ll need an umbrella – no, a sword-brella. I have two problems though. First, the sword hilted umbrella above does not have a cutlass hilt (and wouldn’t be very piratical) and second, I’m not spending $40 on an umbrella that I may use once a year if I’m lucky. Time to get out the tools.

I bought a $10 umbrella and a $3 plastic sword. I removed the screws from the plastic sword handle and popped out the blade. I twisted the black end-cap off the umbrella and flattened the bottom section down to the width of the plastic blade so it would fit inside the handle. I marked and drilled 3 holes in the bottom of the umbrella where the plastic post inside the handle connect the two halves. I seated the bottom of the umbrella over the posts inside the handle, screwed it back together, and wrapped it in some leather scraps I had (it was originally wrapped in some really thin, crappy, cloth strips). Here’s the result: