Quick review of the Regenyei Armory short feder

Regenyei Armory (their spelling, not mine!) has been a household name in HEMA circles for the better part of a decade thanks to their feders, which have helped make steel weapons more affordable to HEMAists all around the world. Unfortunately, their standard feder — about 132cm long in total and 100cm in the blade — has always felt rather too long for me, especially since I’m barely 160cm tall and thus much shorter than the European men for whom it was originally designed.  This changed in 2015-2016 when they brought out a new shorter model in collaboration with Eliisa Keskinen for the women’s Nordic leagues — the best explanation of how this came about is on Michaela d’Orlando’s tumblr.  This new standard model was called the “Women’s Feder” at first but it was soon wisely renamed into the more straightforward and descriptive “Short Feder.” There were multiple reasons for this, one of which is the fact that things marketed as “women’s” products are often (misogynistically) perceived as being of lower quality, but the renaming had some personal significance for me too because it acknowledged the fact that a shorter feder would be useful not just for European women (some of whom are, after all, quite tall and strong) but also for shorter Asian men like me.

Fast-forward by a couple of years and the PHEMAS folks from Singapore invited my group to tag along in their group order to Regenyei. I already had a personal feder for my own use from Danelli but needed a loaner for use by the rest of the group members in Bandung, so I took the opportunity to grab Regenyei’s short feder for comparison.