One of the simplest training tools for practicing strikes in Renaissance martial arts was the pell. The pell was an ancient training device for practicing swordplay and training soldiers in arms. It typically served as a practice target for striking with a shield and a wooden sword. A pell is something like the Medieval equivalent of a boxer’s punching bag. It consists of an ordinary wooden post or tree trunk planted firmly in the ground. A pell might be man-height and roughly six to twelve inches in diameter.J. Clements, On The Pell

This article got me started with pell works. While a pell does not replace a proper sparring partner some techniques can be trained on a pell. More on this topic can be read on Essential Training: The Pell by Stewart Feil.

I’ve a lot of material around and decided to make some use of old wooden beams that fell pray to woodworm and weather. The beams are roughly 9.5 cm per side and can not be used for supporting constructions any more.

First a beam was selected and reduced with a pit saw to almost human size without further measurement. The remains were simply split in two for supports and supplemented with two more pieces of the same beam type.

Now I needed some struts for the supports. For that I used roof battens that remained from the new roof for our shed last year. I simply bevelled one side with the pit saw. Still no dimensions since I just used my eye and my thumb, sorry.

This is how everything looks slapped together. I used at least two 180mm long sunk screws for the beams and some smaller ones for the struts resulting in a pretty stable base. The pell is really heavy now but can still be moved around by one person.

Updated 2025: Initially I did wrap an old camping mat around it. An old rug may be used as well but I didn’t have that around. It didn’t survive very long though and I never added another mat or rug. Also I stopped using wooden wasters with this. They broke way too often.

This set-up is working nicely for many years now and I only have to replace the beam occasionally.

That’s it. Happy pell work 🙂