Wood used for wooden weapons

[morpheus]

I have always understood that the traditional wood of choice in Japan for baking bokuto was white or red oak. Is anyone familiar with the use of persimmon for making bokuto?

Thanks
Jeff

[Ellis Amdur]

Jeff - I'm having a plank of persimmon laid aside to dry for some practice weapons - but probably won't have info on it for six months. Two things:
1. It's really expensive
2. Japan has a lot of persimmon trees, but hasn't used them for weapons. Perhaps the quality of the wood is different, perhaps it's just custom (birch, a wood used for furniture in the states is considered a useless weed in Japan), but I don't recall any use of persimmon for weapons there.
While on the subject - other woods I've tried (I've not made them, btw)
1. Lignum vitae - VERY different qualities than oak, but I love it - very heavy, yet "alive" - an endangered species now.
2. Vera wood - similar qualities to Lignum. Also called "greenheart" - sawdust is toxic/caustic. Sap can causes allergic reactions - I coat mine with a varethane to seal off the odor. My vera wood bokuto are simply wonderful.
3. Ipe - one of many woods called iron wood - quite hard, very heavy, but it feathers on impact after awhile - makes nasty splinters - also has a "dead" feel - not my favorite.
4. Hickory - very similar to Japanese oak, but quality is really varied, due to growing conditions - kind of light (too much so for my taste)
5. European beech and ash - usable, but too light, not that strong
6. Osage orange - one used once. I've heard great things about it, but the one bokken I used broke rather quickly.
7. Wenge - beautiful African wood - beware - breaks in spear-like shards
8. Bubinga - hard, beautiful, brittle
9. Purpleheart - pretty hard wood - - - - - pretty wood. Kind of light.

I would look for Evergreen Oak - live oak - particularly if you live in the south. There were a lot of downed oak trees in the last hurricanes, and I wonder if someone was intelligent enough to salvage the trees - live oak is like a heavier Japanese oak.

Best
Ellis Amdur

[morpheus]

Mr. Amdur,

Thanks for your response. A young man I know made the statement that persimmon was the traditional wood used by the Japanese to make weapons. I had never known this to be the case.

His family had a downed persimmon tree that he used to make a bokuto. It was bit oversized and too heavy to train with on a regular basis. Somewhere in size between a suburito and an Iwama style bokuto. I think it was his first attempt at making a bokuto. He also made some additional statements about the appropriate size of a bokuto that I had never heard either.

I have only used oak, hickory and the cheap pressed wood weapons that are commonly used by new students. I have a set of training weapons from Kingfisher and was really suprised by how light the hickory weapons were in comparison the oak weapons I have.

Thanks again for the information.

Jeff

[Ken-Hawaii]

Jeff, I keep a long list of relative wood "hardnesses," called Janka values; I guess it was a guy named Janka who established the parameter....

Here are the values for the woods named so far:

Lignum vitae=4500
Ipe=3864
Bubinga=2690
Greenheart=2350
Persimmon=2300
Osage orange=2040
Purpleheart=1860
Hickory=1820
Wenge=1630
Oak, white=1360
Ash=1320
Beech=1300
Oak, red=1290

So you can see that persimmon is well up there in hardness. But as Ellis points out, there are lots of other factors in selecting woods for your bokuto & other contact weapons, including splintering, brittleness, & toxicity. I suggest that you PM Kim Taylor, who makes some beautiful (& gorgeous!) weapons, Jeff. He made me matching bokken & kodachi/shoto made from four laminated woods: pau ferro (Janka=3692), purpleheart, ash, & pau ferro again. I've been using them both for several years in SMR jodo training & kendo kata, & there's not a single mark on either of them. I certainly can't say the same for my white oak jo :D !!

I also have a jo made from ipe; it feels totally different from my oak jo, & certainly has more "impact" on uchidachi's bokken, but it also weighs about twice as much, & so is somewhat slower to use. Bokuto are somewhat lighter, so the weight shouldn't make much difference to you.

[Chidokan]

laminated bamboo is nice... I got one a while ago, but it dents easily. Also beware some wood is poisonous.... Purpleheart is evil stuff to work (nasty splinters) and is really brittle if used in small cross sections, hence I reckon the ideal balance is a top grade hickory or similar... will take impact, has a tight grain so is easy to work, no knots to weaken it, etc.

[Kendoguy9]

Jeff, maybe the bokuto was a Jikishinkage-ryu bokuto? They are larger then an Iwama bokuto and as heavy as a kendo suburito (you should see what we use for a suburito). Like anythin, you get used to it as you use it.

As for exotic woods, I'll stick with the real Japanese white oak. A few years ago a young lady in our Daito-ryu group got some pinkish exotic wood bokuto (may have been laminated I have no idea at this point it was too long ago for my short memory). The guy who made it told her it wouldn't dent against any other woods, blah, blah, blah and if it did he'd give her a new one for free. I called BS and pulled out the white oak jodo bokuto I got from Kaminoda sensei (for about 1/3 the price she paid BTW). I held the jodo bokuto out and told her to beat on it with her new pink sword however she wanted. She banged the heck out of it. Her pink bokuto was dented up everywhere they made contact. I still don't have a dent on mine and I've been doing the Jikishinkage-ryu kodachi kata (tachi side) with it for a while now (very heavy contact). I just which I could find a Jikishinkage-ryu bokuto made out of the same wood :(. I think the wood that was used was very dense old growth heart wood. Most of the stuff they sell now is much younger wood. Heck they don't even know which way the grain should go most of the time and you have to look through a dozen or so bokuto before you can find one worth buying. The young lady got a new bokuto, btw.

[yoj]

I just which I could find a Jikishinkage-ryu bokuto made out of the same wood :(. I think the wood that was used was very dense old growth heart wood. Most of the stuff they sell now is much younger wood. Heck they don't even know which way the grain should go most of the time and you have to look through a dozen or so bokuto before you can find one worth buying. .

Have you tried Unka Kim? He knows wood.

I have a few bits of his work, it sure is purdy.

[BJohnson]

As one should not enter Kim Taylor's web presence without a really long rope tied to the point of origin, or a detailed map, :) here's a link relevant to wooden weapons:

http://sdksupplies.netfirms.com/cat_bokuto.htm — page on the styles he makes, with a table of wood qualities near the bottom.

[morpheus]

Excellent conversation and a lot of good information.

Christopher, I doubt that it is a Jikishinkage ryu bokuto as the maker is relatively new to aikido and has no other experience in budo. However, it could be possible that he found specs on line for a Jikishinkage ryu bokuto and worked from those. Great story about the pink bokuto!

I am interested to see how the hickory weapons hold up. The lightness does bother me a bit, they lack the heft that I accustomed to with oak weapons.

Jeff

[Kim Taylor]

Persimmon is the only north american "ebony" (Diospyros sp. and is used for the wood heads of Golf drivers, or was, I suppose it's all metal now.

Wood is a funny thing, the same species can vary a lot, I've seen shiro kashi weapons vary a couple hundred grams.

"Hickory" is sold as a whole set of species, including pecan which gets a bad rap for weapons but I like it.

Ipe is the same, there are species which are much harder and more brittle than others.

Osage is really stiff (which is what makes it good for bows) and gnarly, not surprising to have one break.

There's a Japanese white oak fungus that is really doing a number on the stocks of shiro kashi these days so enjoy it while you can folks. Tends to be what I use most these days... suppose I should lay some aside for my later years.

Kim Taylor

[pgsmith]

Hey Kim,
How close is American live oak to shiro kashi? We have a lot of live oak here in Texas, so I was just wondering if you had worked with it.

[Bill Sampson]

American white oak is not ring pourus, and Japanese white oak is. American white oak is not really as good for weapons as is Japanese white oak.

Another thing to take into consideration is the other guy's weapon. If you have a really dense weapon made from American Hickory and the other guy has a less dense weapon say made of Japanese Red Oak, then one will fair better than the other if there is hard contact between the weapons. After a while, the guy with the heavy weapon is going to have a hard time finding people who are willing to have thier weapons beat up on.

A great source of info is Kingfisher woodworks, where you will find some very fine weapons. http://www.kingfisherwoodworks.com/

http://kingfisherwoodworks.com/about.html for pictures and some info.

And this link, for a really great article on the various types of wood for weapons. http://www.aikiweb.com/weapons/goedkoop1.html

Be safe

Sorry if this was worded funny... it's been a long day.

[hyaku]

Up to now the best I have used for very practical use has been white oak and Ipe I prefer Ipe. The white oak is far too light. Its not so much the wood but the weight of the weapon that is important too.

[Kim Taylor]

Hey Kim,
How close is American live oak to shiro kashi? We have a lot of live oak here in Texas, so I was just wondering if you had worked with it.

Live Oak ought to be worth trying if you can get some decently milled wood. I bought a bunch of the stuff several years ago only to realize it was all rift cut, all the grain runs on a diagonal which makes beautiful furniture and is useless for weapons. Still waiting for an excuse to use it... actually I do make tessen out of it and they're real purty.

It's very dense, no pores. Seems very stiff so I'd have to make a bokuto and try it to see how it actually performs.

In other words, give it a shot.

Kim Taylor

[luminescient]

My eye caught this discussion as my jujutsu sensei just had me make my own training 懐剣. He gave me a piece of biwa wood (loquat) and said that it was his favorite for training weapons. It was very easy to work with, and I was pleased with the results despite the fact that the wood did have a crack that I was not 100% able to work around. I am not real familiar with loquat, so I do not know if you would have difficulty finding a full sword-length piece to work with, but if you can I would suggest that you may be pleased with the results.

[Ellis Amdur]

Biwa is quite pretty - but very light. And not so good for bokken that you might use - it dents easily. Other than color, qualities are rather similar to apple wood. There is this legend that being struck with a piece of biwa wood will cause cancer or infection (depends on the locale). Nonsense - but commonly spoken about.
BTW - I did also try to have a weapon made with bloodwood - absolutely beautiful, and rather hard. Did dent rather easily and then broke with none-to-hard impact.

Loquat is an absolutely delicious fruit. I've got one planted in the back yard - a little more than a seedling. So many in ten years, I'll be eating the fruit.
Best

[ScottUK]

I have a lovely set of SDK Ipe HNIR bokuto that are still going strong with very little damage so I would heartily recommend Ipe for medium/heavy contact tomfoolery. :)

[Steve Delaney]

I have a lovely set of SDK Ipe HNIR bokuto that are still going strong with very little damage so I would heartily recommend Ipe for medium/heavy contact tomfoolery. :)

I remember the hybrid bamboo/oak bokuto you had for HNIR. Those were classy.:)

[ScottUK]

Still use them for general keiko, but once the bamboo starts to collapse, it goes real fast! On my second set now!

[Joseph Svinth]

Southern live oak actually refers to several speices. In Texas, you're probably looking at Quercus fusiformis.

That said, the kind they used to make the frigate USS Constitution back in the 18th century was probably Quercus virginiana. This is not as common as it used to be, but it is still the state tree of Georgia. The common name, back in the day, was maul oak, as in maul and mallet handle.

The problem is that you have to get it milled properly for the purpose. The woodworking store probably has it milled for furniture, whereas for these purposes, you need it cut for tool handles. In addition, the wood should be cut during the autumn and winter, when the sap isn't running. Commercial logging operations, though, tend to cut during the spring and summer, when the weather is better.

For background on all this, you might take a look at Seasoning of Wood, 1917, by Joseph Bernard Wagner, and American Civil Engineers' Pocket Book, 1916, by Mansfield Merriman, both available via Google Books.

[jezah81]

Hi guys,

About a year ago I got Kim Taylor to make me a pair of Ipe escrima sticks. They have held up pretty good, considering I have been bashing them on my stack of used car tires, as part of my training curriculum in Arnis. The wood is so dense, it actually sinks in salt water. My favourite wood for weapons would be Japanese white oak and Ipe.

Kind regards,

Jeremy Hagop

[gendzwil]

BTW - I did also try to have a weapon made with bloodwood - absolutely beautiful, and rather hard. Did dent rather easily and then broke with none-to-hard impact.My bokken are bloodwood. They are absolutely gorgeous, and hold up fine for the light contact of kendo kata.

[Mafoota]

I've thought about using Willow to make a bokken. It's used to make cricket bats. It's very tough wood as you can imagine.

[Ellis Amdur]

Didn't know that about Willow re bats. I do not think it is hard or strong enough for impact weapons.
For example:
With a janka rating of 568, it's not even half has hard as white ash at 1320. It's density of 25 is appr. half of average hickory or the above mentioned bloodwood. And it's rupture strength (psi) of 8500 less than a lot of pine and vastly less than American red or white oak, both at about 14,000.
Sorry for all the numbers.

But when it is so much less in strength that even the standard woods for tools or impact, I do not imagine it would be that useful.

But only one real way to find out. Well, actually two. Rather than waste time and money making a bokken, why not get an old, no longer servicable cricket bat, and bash it with a bokken. And see what happens.
Best
Ellis Amdur

[Maro]

I've thought about using Willow to make a bokken. It's used to make cricket bats. It's very tough wood as you can imagine.

willow is probably too flexible for Bokken - that's why they make good bats. Also, you have to "Tap in" the face of your bat with a mallet to compress it.

I have a Sunuke set. Very nice - not too heavy but well balanced.

[Finny]

I've thought about using Willow to make a bokken. It's used to make cricket bats. It's very tough wood as you can imagine.

A large amount of wood is used to make a cricket bat - and the striking surface is hardened, oiled and these days usually covered with either a polyprop or textile cover, for at least a month before use - even so, they don't last long under intense high-grade use.

http://www.cjicricket.com/images/kookblade07.jpg