Of course girls can make these to- instead of saying this is a crafts for boys I should say a craft that boys might be interested in. I do avoid sexual stereo-typing but experience has shown me that not too many boys enjoy scrap booking or bead making as much as girls.
Wow- did kids go crazy for these! I saw these last year but never had an opportunity to make- my sons were too young and it looked like a big task. The kids I saw playing with were 8-16 years old. It has ALWAYS been a challenge for me to get boys interested in any kind of a craft and I was thrilled with how much they liked this.
Well- we have been going a group lately where the kids ( mostly boys) seem to gravitate towards swordplay- broom handles, mops and sticks were being whacked all over the place. It was only a matter of time boffer some one got hurt and it twigged that I had an email about how to make these cool “swords” called boffers. There is a whole culture of making and playing with these things- but for our purposes we needed something kids could use as a sword and not kill one another.
These were a HUGE hit- the kids totally loved them and I was a hero. The great thing about these is my 3 year old was as able to join in and have fun as much as the 11 and 12 year olds.
Basically- You take a length plastic (PVC) pipe and thread it through the center hole of a pool noodle- then wrap the whole thing in duct tape. There are many variations but I stuck with the easiest and fastest as I was going to make about 12 of them.
I used this generic boffer design.

The instructions above say to use 3/4 in PVC pipe, I ended up using 1/2 PVC conduit ( cost me 5.00 / 10 foot length)
If you decice to pursue this and want tp make fancier boffers- Here is list of some other good sites offereing intructions on how to make boffers:

The Art of Boffer Smithing

http://www.dagorhir.com/HowTo/howto.htm

Posted by Administrator in Great Kids Craft Ideas, Crafts- General, Crafts for Boys