Nothing like a nice piece of hickory...

One of the black belts at our studio found a place that makes really wooden Japanese weapons from Appalachian Hickory. It's Kingfisher Woodworks.

In addition to the really nice and appropriately priced finished weapons, they occasionally sell 1 inch diameter staffs, about 56" in length.  These staffs are not up to their high standards, so they are selling those for only $8.

The fact that these staffs are 56" long has an interesting side benefit.  Cut them in half and you have two 28" long sticks.  The standard lengths for Escrima sticks is 26" to 28".  So for $8, plus shipping, you can have some really nice solid hickory Escrima sticks.  A nice step up from rattan.

Tom, the instrutor who found them, ordered a staff for each of the other instructors at the school.  I've got mine and will be cutting it and sanding the two resulting sticks smooth.

I'll post pictures of the process.

Here is picture #1.  A 56" length of Hickory.

Picture #2.  Cut it into two 28" sticks.  One is 3-5 mm longer than the other, but I'm not sure I want to bother evening them out.  They got a light sanding with 300 grit sandpaper first and then 800.  After I took this picture, they got a light coating of lemon seed oil.

I'll give them another dose of lemon seed oil after I buy some more.

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.