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About

Duellatorum

Meet us

Design, craft, and practice.

Michele

Hi! I am the founder and lead designer of Duellatorum. I have a background in architecture and 3D modelling. With 10+ years of experience as both a re-enactor and a fencer, I started the work of prototyping safe simulacra that could be affordable to anyone. What began as a way to raise funds to participate in tournaments by designing t-shirts grew into a passion for product design, so I started prototyping swords with Pietro. Now we have this amazing project together and we're excited to share our products with fencers all over the world. I am based in Rome, where I personally conduct all the stages of design, simulation, testing, administration and customer care. I'm the person replying to your emails or your messages on social networks.

Pietro

I'm Pietro, the swordsmith from "The Troll Forge" who makes the swords you get in your mail! My passion for reenactment and traditional forging brought me to dive into the world of re-enactment simulacra. When Michele approached me with the idea of producing simulacra for HEMA, I did not think it would become more than a few products, but through various iterations we seem to have created items that you like. I'm based in Brescia, where I physically produce each sword while Michele handles the easy tasks in Rome! I love to fuse modern craftmanship with historical techniques to ease the process that in the past would have required months, without compromising on functionality.

Our goal

HEMA for everyone

Even though the Duellatorum project started as a way to fund our participation in tournaments, it was never about getting rich or accumulating massive capital. At the heart of Duellatorum we keep our aim on one thing only: lower the bar of entry into this beautiful sport. We hope, one day, to make HEMA accessible to everyone, by producing sets of equipment that allow newcomers to start without breaking the bank. This is why our products are so affordable: we save on aesthetic and we cut our profits as low as possible, to produce reliable tools that won't disappoint the newbie nor the veteran. You will NEVER see us raising our prices just to make a quick profit.

Our products are not super fancy, they are not mirror-polished, but they are tough and strong. It's performance first and foremost, for those that need a tool that does the job without getting in the way.

Made in Italy

Where it's made, our partners.

We proud ourselves in delivering a 100% made in Italy product, but what does that mean, exactly? Here you can read in full transparency where our materials are sourced and where they are processed.

All of our products are designed in the beautiful countryside of the "Castelli Romani" just outside Rome. The swords parts are laser-cut in Brescia. There they are reforged, welded, tapered and perfected by hand by Pietro. Brescia is a city with a tradition of swordsmithing that goes back centuries.

The leather is produced and vegetable-tanned in Italy, the raw steel sheets, before being laser cut, is made in Sweden by Ssab. The steel is tempered to a HBW value of 450, roughly equivalent to 45-48 HRC. It has an approximate ultimate tensile strength of 1450 MPa. What this means is that our steel is quite soft, allowing for plastic deformation under load, without creating fatal stresses in the blade. So even if the blades bend quite a lot and take that bend, they can be straightened very easily by hand, without fear of snapping. Hardness at the very edge can vary slightly to be slightly harder.

3D printing

Our 3D-printed components were co-designed with Alessandro Turoni and are produced at his beautiful 3D HEMA workshop in Forli. TPU and PLA filaments are sourced from China.

Artificial intelligence

Never in the finished product.

We recognize the incredible power of AI, however, we realize that when a customer pays, they expect a product made by us, and not one generated from the input of countless other people online without their consent. For this reason we have developed the NITFiP approach (Never in the finished product). What this means is that while we may be willing to use AI to help us with website, or automation of tasks, or even research, we solemnly promise to NEVER use AI in our design or production processes. All our products are human-made, human-designed and human-centric and always will be