TOPIC: SABERSTAFF CHOICES

Hi! I'm new to sabers and have a low-ish budget, but am a huge star wars fan and have always had a fascination with saber staffs and lightsabers in general.

I've been wondering: Would you recommend getting a matching apprentice and shoto combo for a staff, with a 32" blade on the full-sized hilt and an 18" blade on the shoto, or should I get two full-sized hilts with a 26" blade in each.

Please keep in mind that I'm only 5 feet tall, and that these will probably be only used for flow arts and sometimes might be used for double wielding.

I've been looking at the mystery sabers but have decided that with the 20% sale buying two specific sabers is a better deal (less risk and staff will match better)

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

If you wanted it to be balanced with the first way (Apprentice & Shoto) you'd probably want the longer blade on the shorter hilt.

Personally, I would get two exact matching hilts with the same length blades.

You would probably want two Shotos with 26" blades at your height. Possibly 30" thin-wall blades from another vendor (SF only sells thick-wall) to reduce the weight and make it easier to spin. 18" blades are super short and really just meant for children imo. I would recommend the Sentinel/Arbiter or Bastion Shotos.

One thing to consider with Shoto vs. Apprentice is the size of the grip area that they would give when paired up. The Bastion Shoto is 8.25", so two of them paired would give you about a 16.5" grip area (Bastion is the smallest Shoto). The Apprentice Bastion is 10.8", which would come to about 21" when paired up assuming you use the "Staff Coupler Short". Using the "Very Short" will actually make them somewhat shorter, since you lose the length from the pommels... and the "Long" one will add about an inch on average. Do note that the Acolyte/Disciple can only use the "Staff Coupler Long" due to pommel design.

Most Shoto hilts are about 1.5" shorter than their Apprentice version, so you'll average about 3" longer on the Apprentice staff vs the Shoto staff, depending which hilts you were actually thinking of using.

Another thing to consider is that the Shoto hilts have shallower blade sockets than the Apprentice hilts. The Apprentice Oracle in very shallow to begin with, and it's much more pronounced on the Shoto. Deeper blade sockets help keep your blades in better.

I was playing with ideas for an asymmetric bastion staff with a full size and shoto together. I love the look of the bastion and wanted to keep it so I ground the pommels flat and used a threaded rod to bolt them together into a coupler. I was planning on adding accent lighting to it since it has all those slots.

Don't know if I'll be in the position to finish it for myself though, so if you're interested shoot me a message and we can discuss it.