And now, in the tradition of Beowulf, here's fifty lines of text about the sword before we actually get to the battle itself:

In the early days I always made a new piñata stick for each piñata, but it seemed like I was making a lot of swords, so eventually I just started reusing the swords.  This stick is one of my early swords.  The blade is aluminum foil wrapped around a 1/2" white pine wooden rod from Home Depot.  I wanted to use foil so the blade would be shiny, but I couldn't get the foil to lay down flat, so the surface of the blade is all bumpy. Later swords were made by spray painting the wooden rod silver.  The sword used by the Warlord of Nibblecheese is another aluminum foil covered blade, but the sword the kids used to defeat him was spray painted silver.

The hilt of this sword was made from two small paper plates painted gold.  Later swords used disposable plastic bowls instead, which have a better hilt shape.  (The sword used to battle the Warlord of Nibblecheese has a plastic bowl hilt, but the kids had already broken it by the time you see it in the photo.)  The black handle of this sword and later swords use black cloth wrapped around the handle.  I just hot glue one end, wrap the cloth in a tight spiral pattern around the handle, and then hot glue the other end.  This sword has a yarn tassel on the end, which tore off during the whacking.  Later swords have pommel balls instead, made from painted styrofoam balls.

A couple words of warning about making swords for piñata sticks:  1)  you can't spray paint a styrofoam ball. Spray paint is dissolved in a solvent which will also dissolve the styrofoam, so when you spray it onto the ball, the ball begins to dissolve, and you never get good color coverage.  2)  hot glue is hot enough to melt a disposable plastic bowl, so you've got to be careful about where you apply the glue.

And now, back to the battle!

Roar!  Growl!

* *  Snicker-snack!  * *

"I'm just resting my eyes."