The staff at Weta made original "hero" weapons, then cast them and mass-produced polyurethane replicas that were lighter weight, for action shots, stunt and riding doubles, and to reduce fatigue in long running shots. They padded the blade handles with a shock-absorbing rubber (the kind used in skateboard wheels) which prevented them from having a high level of stunt sword casualties, as was notorious in other productions.
Viggo Mortenson, true to form for his dedication to the rest of the film, preferred to use the hero sword as often as possible, even carrying around in the sheath, even if it made him more tired because, he reasoned, what would be true for him as an actor would be true for Aragorn. It was even his idea to have a sharpening stone among his possessions. (You see him using it when Sam is reciting his humble poem about Gandalf's fireworks in Lothlorien - extended edition only.)
According to "The Lord of the Rings: The Making of the Movie Trilogy" by Brian Sibly, they made bows of wood, but that didn't work well because of the "dry" firing required for CGI arrows. (Sometimes, you can see Orlando Bloom as Legolas feinting to draw arrows but not really, because his hand motions don't match what they actually would be if he were holding and notching an arrow...a pet peeve of mine is the extended scene on the Pelennor fields where orcs rush at him, and he basically kind of throws his hand back to the quiver, then drops it - open-handed! - to the bow and kind of twangs the string, never aiming, never even looking half-realistic, and the orc falls anyway.) The energy of the swing acts on the wood instead of the arrow in a dry fire, and the wood quickly broke. So the bows were injection-molded in rubber. They were, however, still functional to the point of being lethal.
Sometimes they did use real arrows for close-ups (I believe Legolas firing the arrow into the Uruk's exposed back at Amon Hen was real, and I know that the arrow he fired at Wormtongue was real...Bloom simply fired into a target mounted off-camera.)
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I seem to recall Bernard Hill complaining about the weight of his sword in Return of the King.
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I was amazed by the weight of that sword. I've held several of the official replicas, and own several unofficial (IE, less expensive) weapons from the film, but Herugrim's weight astounded me. And I'm no weakling at the wrist.