Wooden wasters.

[Uryen]

Has anyone made their own wasters? Ive had pretty poor results with mine. Looking at a few supplier's websites shows hickory seems to be the wood of choice. I looked around and couldnt find a single wood supplier that had hickory in any form (I guess it doesnt grow in Australia). What is the best wood(s), and how can you make a waster that lasts?

[Sean Swanberg]

Me and a couple other guys here have been making some wasters with varied results.

To get planks of hickory (1X2X5') we had to contact a furniture wood supplier, and they had to special order it. They only cost $10 a plank but we've yet to test them out against our purpleheart armoury greatsword wasters (which are superb!)

We're not sure what grade of hickory we purchased and don't know how well it will fare against other woods.

Besides that, you can use axe or sledge handles if you find them of the appropriate size. Single handers will be short (about 26" blade) if you use sledge handles, and you can forget trying to make long/greatswords out of them. They need to be planed down to a sword shape before putting on swords and pommels.

For crossgaurds you can choose just about any decent hardwood, we've even used a heavily treated pine with decent results. You can take a large block, drill out a hole in the middle, and carve it large to fit (dremel tools work well here, as would a mortising machine.) Wheel and Brazil nut pommels are easy to saw out and sand into shape but scent stoppers are trickier. I made a couple using a lathe and a block of walnut but they proved tricky to attatch.

On the short waster I made last week we just drilled out a hole in the brazil nut pommel and sanded the bottom of the sword waster round to fit snugly. Pound it in with some wood glue to finish it. The crossguards are centered somewhere above the grip and drilled through (the cross and the main blade) and pegged with a dowel rod. I'm experiementing with the latest waster and only used 5 pins (on each side) to set the guard in place.

The best way to make a waster last is to start with a good hardwood. Impact grade hickory is the best you can get, but be careful, not all hickory is "impact grade" and is only mediocre in durability. Even some of the sledge handles we've used have broken with surprising ease. Using oil and saturating the wood goes a long way in preventing damage. Of the two purpleheart armoury greatsword wasters in use here the one oiled regularly has suffered much less damage. Don't thin the wasters out with distal tapering or give them much profle taper either. Get the balance close to a real sword but don't fuss too much about it. Most of ours balance out further than steel but it's negated by the lightness of the wood.

I've got a good graph of alternate woods for wastesr but I can't find it.... When I do I'll post it here.

-Sean

[white mountain armoury]

Ive built my own, i used purple heart, it held up better than the weapons i was fighting against, a very very hard wood

[Gaston de Clermont]

What do they make your cricket bats out of down there? That's got to be pretty stout wood.
Gaston de Clermont

[Sean Swanberg]

Here's a useful graph. I snipped it from an old online JSA article comparing the strengths of wood used in bokken impact tests.

http://www.boomspeed.com/swanberg/graph.gif

-Sean

[Uryen]

Interesting graph. I might try some of the more available woods in the middle and upper ends of the range and see how they go.

Cricket bats are traditionally made of willow.