How to make a targe waster.

[Ben Kerr]

Hey,
I noticed a lot of us are beginning to use targe in our practises and I think this is brilliant. I thought I would post some information on the method the academy uses to construct their targes so that those who haven't yet found a method of practising this fascinating tool can try it out without huge financial commitment. This is not the method used for the CW practise targe or for a real targe (DO NOT USE THIS AGAINST STEEL!!!!) We use wooden wasters and are finding the targes hold up fine. I will be posting video lessons about the Academy targe method via the blog at a later date, so even if you haven't been able to learn this discipline up to now you should have a good starting point.

http://historical-academy.co.uk/blog...ster/#more-152

In either case if making things isn't your thing the blog has lots of fascinating posts on HEMA, history and craftsmanship so I encourage you to have a read. It is updated every Friday.

Have Fun

¬Ben

[Javan M.]

Hey, do you have any pictures? We've been making ours out of stools that were discarded by a local furniture company. We cover them in leather and make leather straps for them. One of my students went all out in decorating his with brass bosses and stuff.

Here's a video of us playing around with me quarterstaff and him on sword & targe (which we're just beginning to touch on in class).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPFUyz_xVG4

[Alex Bourdas]

One of our earliest posts has a few pictures of the targes in use:
http://historical-academy.co.uk/blog...-of-duellists/

[Ben Kerr]

I am currently in the US and thus targeless but Keith has said he will add pictures over the next couple of days on my behalf.

Alex thank you for responding but stop procastinating on forums and get back to studying I know all these tricks :P but come this time tomorrow you are free and the exam will be over. BTW Good luck

Javan good idea about the stool tops. We just found cable drums were all over the place in Glasgow. I did consider whiskey cask tops but they were far too heavy. The extant targes I have held are all surprisingly light. How did you make your hand grip rigid? Did you run some metal through it or did you cuir bouille the leather?

Anyway if anyone else has any ideas for this project it would be great to hear them, remember the goal is cheap and easy, these are wasters afterall.

[Heiko G.]

Good stuff.

I think, the most important thing about a training-targe is good wood, but also stuffing and good leather. We made ours less decorated, but more stuffed, so they have a softer front-area to absorb most of the attacks with different wooden or aluminium weapons pretty well. Ours are made from the round seats of handmade italian chairs, which I found at the garbage, so they are covered with good leather. The next thing we did was to make a soft inlay also covered with leather (from an old goatskin-jacket) and the armstrings are made of belt- and holster-leather my father gave us, both from cow-hide. We fixed everything with good screws, which are made for wood.

I am thinking about how to make one with a spike, which is safe for sparring also.

[Ben Kerr]

Are you aware of any source suggesting the spike was actually used in combat? I would be very interested to see this as from looking at the extent examples I do not currently believe the spike was used for any more than decoration but it would be brilliant to be corrected on this fact....shield bashing just got interesting :P

~B

[Heiko G.]

I only have a personal speculative guess for that: The Spike could be used to get a better bind of the opponents weapon and for avoiding grappling with thrusts (like with the Dirk when hold left-handed with the Broadsword).

[Chris Thompson]

I don't think the spike was very common, but if you play around with a spiked targe, it does help quite a bit with binding the opponent's sword arm.