Axe Waster

[Phillip Dahlager]

Hi I'm having a very hard time finding a variety of wooden Axe wasters. Can anybody help me out with some ideas for making my own or links to a site I may have passed over?

[LafayetteCCurtis]

A wooden axe waster is likely to be a bit more dangerous than a sword waster, so a compromise my group worked out (when it still existed) was to use some foam (the kind used to make shoe/sandal soles) to form the axe's head and glue it to the haft/handle. It's quite simple; a large chunk shaped like a bowtie (or a butterfly) wraps nicely around the top end of a handle and into an axe-shape. You'll have to experiment to find a desirable firmness and stiffness, but in my case two layers of 4mm foam (making up four layers / 16mm along the actual edge of the axe) works just fine.

[Phillip Dahlager]

A wooden axe waster is likely to be a bit more dangerous than a sword waster, so a compromise my group worked out (when it still existed) was to use some foam (the kind used to make shoe/sandal soles) to form the axe's head and glue it to the haft/handle. It's quite simple; a large chunk shaped like a bowtie (or a butterfly) wraps nicely around the top end of a handle and into an axe-shape. You'll have to experiment to find a desirable firmness and stiffness, but in my case two layers of 4mm foam (making up four layers / 16mm along the actual edge of the axe) works just fine.

Thanks alot. I'll give it a try.

[Eddie Smith]

heavy leather, like shoe sole leather, also makes a good head with some flex for safety. it also can look more 'historic' as dussacks were sometimes leather and practice halberds, at least modern, are often so. I did have an all wood Danish axe made years ago by Purple Heart armories, it is a 38" haft IIRC. still have it but it is a bit heavy for safe sparring as it is heavier in the head than the axe I have that it is baised on. it is wonderful for solo stuff however. If you contact most any maker of wasters and send the spces of what you want most would be happy to make one. and since many do leather stuff also they should be able to do the head that way.

[RayMcCullough]

A wooden axe waster is likely to be a bit more dangerous than a sword waster, so a compromise my group worked out (when it still existed) was to use some foam (the kind used to make shoe/sandal soles) to form the axe's head and glue it to the haft/handle. It's quite simple; a large chunk shaped like a bowtie (or a butterfly) wraps nicely around the top end of a handle and into an axe-shape. You'll have to experiment to find a desirable firmness and stiffness, but in my case two layers of 4mm foam (making up four layers / 16mm along the actual edge of the axe) works just fine.

That would be a horrible design that would make a large portion of possible actions unusable. The foam is not hard enough to hook and pull limbs or stop the cuts of swords.

[LafayetteCCurtis]

The foam is surprisingly hard once layered and glued together. We did hooking and trapping movements all the time, and knocking aside blows from wooden wasters or synthetic ones (though not steel blunts) is perfectly possible. If anything, the foam is still too hard for us to perform full-contact, full-power blows safely, but it's pliable enough that we didn't have to exercise more control than we had to in sparring with wooden/synthetic sword wasters.