New Waster

[Jay Vail]

1. Where do you get your wood?

and

2. How do you get the edges rounded?

[scott adair]

Jay,

On the wasters I have made previously I have used a wood rasp to round the edges. Jared mentioned using a power planer. You could use a sander. I am about to build some new wasters and will probably use a router with a 1/2" roundover bit or a 45 degree chamfer bit. It will be quick, easy and consistent.

As far as wood goes I get my wood locally and have been using hard maple. Have'nt really impact tested these as I do not have a training partner and my pell is well padded. I have started a batch of wasters with a possible training partner out of what was called " a pile of mixed hickory and pecan".
I would like to get my hands on some good quality hickory.

,Scott

[scott adair]

Jared,

Can you tell any difference in wasters with a distal taper versus those without?

Question to all:

Most of the wasters I have built have had parallel edges primarily because they are easy to rip on my friend's table saw. Do I need to make tapered blades?

,Scott

[John_Clements]

There are two students in Houston that make very good ones for their own use.

JC

[Jared L. Cass]

Hi all,
What I've noticed with tapered/distle tapered wasters, is that it's much easier to achieve a good balance. The only problem with creating a taper/distle taper is that you end up sacrificing over-all weight.

I use my hand planer to round off the edges and to create the distle taper. As mentioned above, a router with a round-over bit or a 45 degree bit would be the easiest-but then for a beginner, you're going to be spending a load of cash compaired to just around $20 for a good hand planer. For those of us who already have wood working equipment, this isn't a problem.

For those of us here in the USA, any home improvement werehouse, like HomeDepot, will carry a good selection of oak, maybe even maple (Soon, I too am going to make one out of maple. I'll probably just accept the financial loss and abuse the #@&% out of it too see at what point it's destroyed) . As mentioned earlier, specialty woods will have to probably be aquired through a cabinate maker. Especially for somebody with limited tools, making their first waster from lumber aquired at a place like Home Depot would be pretty easy-since they have various lengths and widths readly avaliable. Just take a look around and you'll find what you need.

I cant wait until I get me Associate Membership confirmation! Then I'll get the chance to work out with you guys...and look at all the variety of wasters in use!

Hope this helps,

Jared L. Cass, Wisconsin

[Webmaster]

Kyle told me that he got the osage at Houston Hardwoods. They happen to be a website client of mine where I work, so this is a shameless plug, but they have a great selection.

If you're not close enough to Houston to buy from them, you might look for similar hardwood suppliers in your area.

[Shane Smith]

A router with a 3/8" round-over bit is perfect for radiusing the edges of a waster.A good 1" or 5/4"(there really is such a thing as ""five-quarter" board by the way) thick board of ash or hickory is a good starting point.Straight-grained oak can be used but tends to be much less durable(though still perfectly serviceable).The trickiest part of waster construction is pinning the cross in place with those hardwood dowels while keeping everything aligned and square without splitting anything.

[George Turner]

I've become very interested in ipe lately, as have many bowyers. It's a very dense, extremely durable, straight grained wood, and possesses very good engineering properties. It's also so cheap that they're selling it for decking material. It hasn't been commonly available in the U.S. till fairly recently, but is catching on. Someone should try and make some wasters from it, and see how they hold up. It might be better than ash and hickory in this application. My previous waster was cocobolo, another pretty good wood, but sometimes afflicted with some snaky grain that's hard to notice till it's too late.

Best Regards,

George Turner

[Shane Smith]

Hello George.Joel Thompson(ARMA VAB's illustrious leader) has done just what you suggest with the ipe wood.His results were NOT positive as I recall.Something about splintering/splitting I believe.Hopefully he will see this thread and add some detail to my hazy memory. <img src="/forum/images/icons/crazy.gif" alt="" />

[Guest]

WOW! I'm off the Forum for a week and look at what I miss. Alright Kyle How Much? <img src="/forum/images/icons/ooo.gif" alt="" /> Are they available for sale. Can you bring some to the Event? Shoot me an e-mail when you have the time. Cheers

Todd

[scott adair]

Shane and Jared,

Thanks for the responses! I will post how the maple wasters hold up over time. I finally broke down and picked up a router and bit set today. I have a pile of wasters in my garage(1 maple dagger and 1messer; and 5 hickory longswords) and I was not looking forward to sanding and rasping. This evening I used a roundover bit on the dagger and messer handles and a 45 degree chamfer on the edges. It was 10x faster than a rasp and looks much more professional.

How do you cut the notches in the guard? I assume everyone uses two halves with notches. I was thinking about using a 5/8" straight bit and routering them rather than sawing and using a wood chisel which is what I did on my short sword waster.

,Scott

[Shawn Cathcart]

Maple is a good choice for a waster. Not as good as hickory or osage of course, but I prefer Maple to Oak. The problem with oak is although it is a very hard wood, its very...non-flexible. Hard to explain, but basically Oak doesn't give very much, or at all, so when doing hard beats, rather than give a little, Oak is likely to snap or split along the grain. At least more so than Maple. You need a wood that is hard, but also has some flex in it as well. Keep in mind these are very hard beats at speed, Oak can still take a lot of punishment, but Maple seems to take even more.

Also, for anyone that has a waster that has started to splinter, or has a crack in the blade, but hasn't split yet. Wrap the entire blade in Fibre tape. It will give some added life to a dying waster, and let you use it a little bit longer.

[Shane Smith]

I can't speak for the merits of fiber tape,but I KNOW that duct-tape is great for extending the serviceability of a waster.You can fix ANYTHING with duct-tape! <img src="/forum/images/icons/grin.gif" alt="" />

[Shane Smith]

I would recommend cutting two-piece guards with either a jig-saw and a chisel,or better yet, a straight-cut router bit with a chisel to clean up the corners(use a guide with the router.Trust me, free-handing with a router is a losing proposition).

I have a couple of wasters with 4-piece crosses that do not require notching but assembly is much tougher.One came out great,another works fine,but doesn't look so great...but then,neither cost me more than 5 dollars to make either. <img src="/forum/images/icons/smirk.gif" alt="" />

[MurrayMoore]

As a native Texan, I heard a while ago that an Osage Orange tree was often used as the corner post on a fence line.

The tree is also known as a "horseapple".