Last night my little nephew came by and was absolutely blown away by my sabers, so we had to take them out back and duel.
Later on, when there were a couple more kiddos out there, I supervised everything and stressed safety repeatedly; no head shots, watch your hands, watch your sister's hands, it's not a baseball bat, control, control, control! You're absolutely right, Vex; when they're 8, 9, and 10, with no martial training, you have to expect very little in the way of control. Inadvertent wild swings happen, and even when they're just clashing there are bound to be lots of near misses to little hands.
With the opening of "Last night..." I knew this was going to end badly.
It is interesting how many duelers here deal with younglings...I mean most of us have kids or have them about from family connections or work...but to allow them to whack the crap out of each other without putting swim noodles on the sabers is a bit baffling to me.
All, and I do mean ALL of my stories of woe dealing with martial practice, fighter practice, and other weapons practice comes from dealing with younglings...and nearly all of these stories deal with the little ones getting hurt.
An adult oops and then the kid has a broken nose, severely twisted ankle, poked eye, minor/major laceration, fractured wrist, etc.
I have no experience with kids using unpadded martial tools so no point of reference for that aspect.
Again my thoughts go back to minimum ages for dueling...the general consensus was 16yrs old.
But the story at least was not tragic...the moral of the story...buy swim noodles if you are ever going to entertain the thought of <16yr olds using your tools to duel with
PS
Too be sure there were many regular injuries when dealing with adult to adult, but these pass from memory as these are expected wounds
