You tried to put on a brave face when you hands were being caned. Generally the most painful place to be caned was on your fingertips, my sixth grade teacher caned on the fingertips, fortunately I avoided this. My headmistress Mrs Joss preferred to cane the palm of your hand.
The worst part was seeing the cane approaching your hand and sharp swish sound, the canes that were used on me were fairly whippy and long.
yes, a lighter cane was used when caning on the hands.
there were two ways of carry-out this punishemnt — one was to cane across the hand, hitting fingers as well as the base of the hand
the other was to hit diagonally across the palm
i knew of one teacher who, before he caned, would put a sixpenny piece in the centre of the palm, and the boy was told he could keep it if the teacher missed it! he never had to give any boy the tanner!