I've recently started training in HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts) with a focus on German longsword. I live in a small house with quite low ceilings so swinging a meter plus synthetic trainer around won't work. I'd been using a length of 25mm dowel but you have no edge orientation, ie which side of the sword is which, or crossguard orientation so wanted to improve it.
I've modelled a simple small crossguard and a pommel in FreeCAD and printed them out. I glued the crossguard sections out in petg and have glued them into position to give me a similar length handle to my synthetic trainer. The pommel is glued on first to make sure its exactly lined up and then a screw was inserted into the printed and countersunk hole to make sure it definitely stays in place. The slight challenge with a piece of 25mm dowel is that it obviously isn't balanced in the correct position or weigh anything like a synthetic trainer or a steel federschwert. So to partially rectify this I've drilled (off centre of course!) a long hole into the tip of the dowel and poured in glue and added lead weights. Whilst this doesn't make it as heavy as a steel it does correct the balance point to around 6 cm in front of the guard.
It works really well and whilst it definitely is not as good as getting outside with a full length trainer or steel it is excellent for indoor wet weather sessions or for sticking in a bag for use in a hotel room etc! I've put both the STL and the FreeCAD project files up on Printables here.
