About

Preferred Arms was founded by Robb Hunter, a Certified Fight Director and Teacher for the Society of American Fight Directors to create a reliable and professional resource dedicated to providing quality weapons exclusively for use on stage and screen.

Actors often have to deal with weapons that are not only wrong for a particular production but also woefully inadequate and even dangerous to use. Stories abound in the “industry” of broken swords flying into an audience because they were cheaply obtained or poorly maintained. Although even the strongest and most well crafted steel sword can break, these instances should be extraordinarily rare. Our job at Preferred Arms is to ensure that your actors, audience, and crew are as safe as possible, while making your production look its best.

VIEW FIGHT DIRECTION EXPERIENCE & CERTIFICATIONS

VIEW STAGE COMBAT INSTRUCTION EXPERIENCE & TESTIMONIALS

Why Preferred Arms?

VALUE

We aren’t interested in providing the cheapest weapons on the market. We want to provide the best value. Where the safety of both actors and audience is concerned, “cheapest” never factors into our equation. We hate to use such a cliché but you really do “get what you pay for” and we strive to give our clients what they pay for plus a good bit more.

QUALITY

The majority of our weapons are crafted by the best sword cutlers in the country, each of whom has decades of experience in building weapons for the stage and screen. Our props are made to withstand the punishment that only an intense “method” actor can dish out. They are not costume pieces, wall hangers or the so called “battle ready” weapons that look great but break in the first rehearsal. Years of actual stage experience goes into the building and selection of each and every weapon we rent.

CARE

Our weapons are carefully inspected and cleaned upon return; blades and other parts are “de-burred” or replaced as necessary and they are oiled and stored until you request them. Before they are shipped out to you they are cleaned and inspected once again. Our weapons may not actually be our children but we treat them like they are.

KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE

Robb Hunter and Preferred Arms have provided weapons to hundreds of venues nationwide including Treasure Island Resort, Six Flags Theme Parks, Shakespeare festivals, Broadway, Off-Broadway, regional theatres, community theatres, Harvard, Yale, Vassar and a host of other universities, colleges and high schools all across the country.

But equally, if not more importantly, Robb has more than a decade of practical experience directing violence and teaching stage combat up and down the east coast. Knowing first hand exactly how theatrical weapons (and actors) will perform in a variety of situations is invaluable when providing them for your production.

CUSTOMER SERVICE

We love what we do! If you want advice on providing anything weapon related we are glad to help. If you don’t know anything about the sort of weapons that would be appropriate to your production, send us your questions and we will lend you our expertise. If we don’t have what you are looking for we will do our best to get it for you or we will direct you to someone who can.