Practice with sharps: advice?

[Shane Smith]

Surely any sword designed for war would be expected to hit wood or steel occasionally ?

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Agreed.

[Roy Robinson Stewart]

I see so the issue (or one of them) is just the high rate of wear and tear if pell training with a sharp, best to get a sturdier edged blunt.

Thanks for answering newbie questions gentlemen.

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[Mars Healey]

How about using it on a tire pell. That should preserve the blade. I use a motorcycle tire; it has rounded edges and more spring than a car tire. I must confess I've never swung my blunt or sharp at the tire, always using wood. But, the tire would surely do less damage to your sharp.

[s_taillebois]

M. Clifford explained in detail the substantial differences between battlefield use and pell work. Thanks for your well written clarification.
So yes, although swords did have to deal with wood, steel, plate and etc, even a good sword will not hold up to years of such treatment.
And with the tapering blade forms of the various bastard types, these were (are) predominately thrusting weapons... so repeatedly subjecting the weaks of such a blade to immovable hard objects could be troublesome. These are much stronger in a linear mode than in the oblique.
And although I have used my sharp for occasional pell work, it has tended to wear it more than would be strictly necessary. And it has damaged the pells, but pells are cheap compared to a good sword.
As Mr. Clifford noted, swords are not axes. Falchions would seem to be considerably more resistant to these type of stresses, but although the falchions were generally popular with the less affluent fighters...it's very likely they also tried to avoid abusing them. And it seems there's really not a whole lot of good quality Falchions being made, most prefer other forms.
Tire pells a good idea, especially motorcycles as these don't have the heavy steel belts of a car tire.

[Stacy Clifford]

Tires might work alright if you pad them heavily enough to muffle the rebound, but I would be pretty wary about aiming a two-edged sharp sword against a bouncy rubber object. If your edge alignment isn't quite right to dig into the target, it could go flying or skittering off in a direction you weren't planning on. Control after the strike is very important so you can make followup strikes and defenses. I could swear I remember a mention or two on this forum in the past of people almost smacking themselves with their own waster after hitting a tire because they weren't prepared to control the rebound. I'm not saying it's an inherently bad idea, it can work, just do it with respect for the properties of the material.

I second Ran's warning about having backup around whenever you're using sharps, by the way.

[Ciaran Daly]

Tires might work alright if you pad them heavily enough to muffle the rebound, but I would be pretty wary about aiming a two-edged sharp sword against a bouncy rubber object. If your edge alignment isn't quite right to dig into the target, it could go flying or skittering off in a direction you weren't planning on. Control after the strike is very important so you can make followup strikes and defenses. I could swear I remember a mention or two on this forum in the past of people almost smacking themselves with their own waster after hitting a tire because they weren't prepared to control the rebound. I'm not saying it's an inherently bad idea, it can work, just do it with respect for the properties of the material.

I second Ran's warning about having backup around whenever you're using sharps, by the way.

Having done tire pell work with blunts, there is simply no way I would take a sharp to them - ever. Hitting yourself, sooner or later, is inevitable. I would hope no one reading this will give it a go.

I will make sure I have backup. Thanks for the reminder.

[Stacy Clifford]

Yeah, since I haven't ever used a tire pell myself I didn't want to rule it out completely, but I appreciate your backing up my memory with your own personal experience. A few layers of carpet or foam over the rubber might make some difference for blunts, but a sharp would quickly destroy those outer dampening layers.

Just something quick to think about, suppose you put the odds of a sharp bouncing off the rubber straight back at you in a manner that could cause significant harm at 1 in 1000. That could sound remote at first, but if you hit the pell 50 times a day for 20 days, that means you face that risk at least once every three weeks. The more times you repeat an action, the more likely it is that the Law of Averages will catch up with you. This is why they say safety must be a habit.