Traditional martial arts weapons

I was giving the topic of traditional martial arts weapons some pondering, and I decided that a traditional Kempo weapon would be the machete. Your basic, traditional sugar cane cutting tool.

Butterfly Swords

I picked up a set of practice Butterfly Swords, steel ones, not the lightweight aluminum ones.

These are really fun! They come in pairs, one for each hand, and are pretty heavy for their size. Using them is an upper body workout in itself!

They are not a common weapon system in most martial arts. They come from a Southern Kung Fu tradition. I've only seen reference to them in Hung Gar and Wing Chun. Here is a Wing Chun form I found.

Shaolin Kempo technique archive

I'm remiss in plugging a very good site that has taken the great effort of collecting and publishing the techniques of Shaolin Kempo. It's the Kempo Info site.

It really is a great resource, but personally I can't watch some of the videos of the Black Belt forms. IMHO, some of the forms are being performed as hard style karate forms, instead of more flowing Kung Fu forms. They just look wrong to me.