Waster material

[David Kite]

This is sort of an offshoot of the other waster thread ongoing now, but different enough I think to need its own thread.

I've had a bad run of luck with wasters recently. Since I've finally gotten a practice partner (Steve Ames) about a year ago, I've gone through three, and that few only because I milked them for all they were worth. By comparison, Steve's one waster shows no wear whatsoever, and has obviously gone through at least as much use/abuse as my own. I understand that wasters are perishable, but I believe several here have had wasters last for years, and my going through three in less than one year seems (a tad) excessive, not to mention expensive.

My wasters have been two commercial and one homemade (brand doesn't seem to be the issue). All have been made from hickory with straight and tight grains and no knots. All have been pretty well oiled with either boiled linseed oil/mineral spirits mix, or straight mineral oil. All splintered principally around the mittel of the blade, and no matter how smoothly I sanded them, they still splintered quickly.

For those of you who make your own wasters, are there certain traits you look for when selecting wood? Are there different grades of hickory or anything else I should be aware of? My one homemade waster, though of the same dimensions as another of my wasters, was feather-light by comparison, despite being hickory, and was destroyed within a couple of hours of use.

Another question is will different types of wood be destructive to each other? I've gotten ahold of some ipe (iron wood) and was thinking of making a waster from it. My concern with this is that it is quite heavy, and I'm worried about its hardness being destructive to other, "softer" wasters it will impact, such as the standard hickory. I'm tired of going through my own wasters, and I'd feel bad causing other wasters to need replaced.

thanks for the help
David Kite
GFS, ARMA in IN

[Mark Driggs]

I had a similar problem with one of the hickory Long Sword wasters I purchased from Brian Hunt. It was having really bad splintering problems in the middle of the'blade area and I kept on sanding it down to no avail. I showed to him at one of his local armor clinics and he fixed it using an interesting technique. He basically used a hair dryer to heat up the wood over the splintering portion. Next he poured some type of superglue (I can't remember the brand) until the whole splintered portion was saturated with it. After waiting for it to dry for few days, you can hardly notice the splintering and it stopped it for good! It's been at least 8-9 months since he performed the procedure and it's still going strong. That being said, finding a perfect batch of wood is nigh impossible (for cheap). It's good to know how to deal with what we have and stretch it out to it's extreme. Perhaps if Brian notices the thread, he could elaborate on any details I've left out or give a more formal procedure for fixing this problem.

[Ben Michels]

One of the little things I remember picking up along the way was using damp paper towels and a sautering iron to reduce dents in wood. I'm not sure how well it'd work on the oiled wasters, but after extended use that oil tends to wear anyway. Before sanding down wasters, it might be useful to attempt steaming out the dents to minimize the amount of sanding required and possibly extend it's life.

[Steve Ames]

You know you want to switch to plastic anyway. Those plastic longsword wasters that Stu Feil brought to Columbus were very nice. As soon as I can get contact info for the plastic waster-meister (Eric?) I'll be forking over whatever deposit/payment he requires to get on the waiting list.

There's that thread going on the e-list about the NSA wasters. The general consensus is that wood is a natural/random product and that you can just get a bad run. The guy who started the thread killed two NSA wasters in just a few months (granted he was beating a pell... which I think is an ideal app for the $5 homemade version that doesn't have to look as pretty)... so it could just be that you got a couple of bad wasters.

My current waster is a Purple Heart that I got just before joining ARMA. I'll be sad when it finally dies as I doubt they'll be willing to send JC a formal apology just so that I can buy a replacement

[Shane Smith]

I choose the straightest and tightest grain I can find. Even at that, I break a few wasters a year.