We used to call the half round one's cheese cutters and apart from baking them we would sometimes soak them in vinegar which was also supposed to toughen them up.

Landy

Magnarc wrote:

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When I was a lad conkers were a big item on our daily agenda. For the unitiated conkers are horse chestnuts derived from a chestnut tree. In their natural state they are covered by a spiky outer covering which had to be removed to reveal the nut inside. Now there was a school of thought that said that the nut needed to be baked awhile to harden it in order to enable it to better stand the rigours of a conker game, I did not subscribe this method as it was my experience that the nut was far more robust when it was green.

         Having freed your nut from its outer covering the next step was to drill a small hole throught the centre, get a piece of strong twine, about eighteen inches in length, put a good size knot at one end, then thread it through the hole so that the conker now rests on the twine. You are now ready to attempt to own a ten timer.

A ten timer was a conker that had destroyed ten opponents conkers and lived to tell the tale. Now, boys being boys, one would often come across so called ten timers which were, in reality no such thing. Since these claims could very rarely be verified we tended to view them with some suspicion. I never had a real ten timer and I strongly suspect that not many ever did, but a bit of bragging in order to strike fear in ones opponent never did any harm.

The game was played mainly on a one to one basis, tossing a coin or a piece of wood to determine who went first. The toss was critical as often the first strike would be enough if it was delivered correctly. You faced your opponent who would hold his conker at the end of the twine, he had to hold it still. You then, if you were right handed, held your conker with your left hand, and raised your right hand up bring it down trying to hit your opponents nut. (not nuts!) If you missed he would then attempt to do the same to your nut, this would go on until one of the nuts shattered, the winner would then have a one timer

I have known this game to start in the morning on the way to school and still be going  strong on the way home. Conkers were an integral part of life for us lads, that and marbles, both entailed a great deal of time and effort. Sure beats war games in front of a computer.

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 The pain to your knuckles when the strings became entwined after a bad shot.Some had a theory that if you soaked the Conker in vinegar it would it would make them tougher,a fallacy I think.Conkers,potato pistols,Milbro catapults,Jet X engines in model planes,Steam Engines powered by metho.Those were the days.Lol

vk6tnc wrote:

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I read a wiki were they said that conkers were banned in the UK in 2004 due to OHS and nut allergy issues....

I hope all parents sterilise the controllers of Playstations and X-boxes......

So glad I grew up in the decades I did.

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 What was more of a hazard was the larg sticks that we used to throw into the tree's 

to knock the conkers down.

   Landy.