place of broadswords. Use Historically, students and soldiers used wasters as inexpensive and expendable training tools. The cost of high quality steel weapons, especially swords, would have made them a poor choice for practice weapons. Constant training would fatigue the blade, rendering it far less effective and reliable as a weapon. To prevent the destruction of an expensive weapon and to permit the necessary training and sparring intrinsic to any martial art, wooden practice weapons were created. Today, especially in the reconstruction of historical European martial arts and Historical reenactment, wasters have experienced renewed interest. Wasters provide a number of benefits to the modern practitioner, many of which would have applied to historic trainees as well. The wood construction coupled with unsharpened edges and blunted tip, crossguard, and pommel of wooden swords provides a safer alternative to practising with a sharpened or unsharpened steel weapon. Wasters do not cut flesh, but provide a decidedly blunt impact. The lower cost of ownership in comparison to a steel weapon of the same variety makes the waster a much more affordable and expendable tool. Many modern wasters are fashioned to replicate the original weapon with accuracy, including functional integral sword parts. This functionality allows the wooden weapon to be handled more like its steel counterpart. Wasters are not without their faults. The all wooden construction usually makes wasters somewhat lighter and differently balanced than steel weapons. The difference of material properties between wood and steel creates a difference in performance when training and sparring. The wood wasters tend to recoil from strong contact with other wasters as may occur in a strong parry or absetzen, a phenomenon colloquially referred to as "waster bounce". Steel weapons do not display this attribute to the same extent, usually binding and sliding with minimal rebound instead. The use of wooden wasters is somewhat safe as it lacks a cutting edge, but does not equate a safer alternative to steel training swords. The use of wood with rounded edges prevents any cutting injury when sparring but because wooden weapons typically are typically thicker bladed (compared to flat steel training swords like feders) while being of similar weight to steel weapons, they impact much harder than the thin blades of steel training swords (whose weight is concentrated at the hilt rather than the thin blade, compared to the evenly weighted waster). In addition, because of the waster's strong wooden