Osage Orange practice sword for Aikido (bokken)

[Weylin]

In addition to being a novice bowyer I'm also a novice Aikidoist. (a Japanese martial art) We practice with wooden swords and staffs in addition to our empty handed techniques. As a gift to my instructor I decided to try my hand at wooden sword making. My thought process was that if I can make a bow I can make a bokken which is essentially a short curved bow that doesn't have to bend. I was pretty much right, it wasn't too tough. (though I'm positive that there are much higher levels of refinement that could be reached and mine is by no means perfect.) I decided to use osage orange because I am aware of it's amazing properties for bow making. It is dense, and tough as nails. It ranks right up there with impact-grade hickory in terms of it's impact resistance making it an excellent wood for a practice sword. I have a hickory sword, which is great, but they are so light that i thought it would be nice to have a sword with a little more heft to it. So I bought a osage board from my local woodworking store and ripped it to the right dimensions and started making shavings. I used dry heat  and weights to bend in the curve. that took a couple of tries to get it right but in the end I'm happy with the results. here are some pictures.

[mullet]

Nice Bokken. I have a Bokken, Jo, and Bo  from Taikaido. Real heavy dark wood, breaks oak in a heartbeat in full speed practice.

[Weylin]

thanks Mullet. Do you practice Aikido too? I'm hoping that Osage will be a decent balance and not be an oak destroyer. It's probably funny the first time or two but I'm sure eventually people get tired of having their weapons demolished. Either way, it's a gift to my sensei so I'm sure people wont be able to get as mad at him if he breaks their weapons, he is the sensei after all!  I have enough of the board left to make another bokken and a jo for myself. the jo might prove to be a little more interesting. My dad has a router and I found a description of how to make a jo with a router. We'll see how it goes. I'm sure it won't be a perfect dowel but I don't think it needs to be. As long as it's pretty close to round, straight and smooth in the hand it should be fine. I had to keep reminding myself that it wasn't rocket science, they're really just wooden approximations of swords and spears that we use for whacking at each other with. all the perfect lines and curves are really just for show.