Wasters and their Importance in Western Martial Arts Training

Article Address: http://www.thearma.org/essays/wasters.htm

Today I just want to blog a little bit about a very simple but important piece of equipment both for the modern practioner of Renaissance martial arts but also for practioners of swordsmanship during the Medieval and Renaissance eras. It would have been very expensive for knights, men-at-arms, and other sword practioners to keep having to replace their steel swords from wear and use. So, a simple solution was devised. Soldiers, knights, men-at-arms, and other sword practioners made practice swords out of wood. They called these wood swords wasters since they were used for practice and when they were used up they were often discarded. These swords were often made of hickory wood or some other extremly hard wood. The swords wre skillfully made to weigh about the same weight and made to the same length of the steel swords. Roman legionares made wooden wasters of their Gladiuses they used and sometimes made them heavier then their real Gladius so that their steel Gladiuses would seem lighter. These wooden swords were often more rounded on the edges so that they would last longer then if they had square shaped edges. Many modern practioners use wooden wasters when learning sword techniques and some people even use plastic. The wooden swords have great reliability and can last the user a number of years if properly taken care of. The only draw back to wood is that the blades do not slide along each other in binds as two steel swords would. Plastic behaves a little bit more like steel when in a bind in the sense that the swords slide along each other more like steel in a bind. This is considered the most basic piece of equipment for the modern practioner of today as it was for practioners 400 and more ago.