Crafting your own bokkenFor some time I have been wanting a heavier

bokken to practice my suburi with, since I find the path of least resistance easier to discover when working with a heavier weapon. As I haven't been able to find a commercial one that has matched my criteria, I decided to see what I could do on my own.

Let me start off by saying I am not a wood worker. The last time I even held a block plane before this project would have been in year 5, in woodwork class. The approach described here is certainly not the only one, or the best one, it's simply what I did.

1 – ResearchA bokken is a weapon, and as such a suitable

wood must have a number of properties. It must be strong, yet ideally somewhat flexible so it can absorb impacts instead of depositing all that force straight into the hands. It must be hard enough that the grain doesn't crush on impact and weaken the bokken over time, yet not brittle – having a weapon fail catastrophically in partner practice and explode into a cloud of splinters is not something you want!

Finding a wood with all these properties isn't trivial, so I turned to the net to read up on what others are using. There is some great information out there, though most of it is for North American and Japanese woods. The Aikiweb has a great article1 by James Goedkoop on woods suitable for weapons. Over at AikidoFAQ there's another good article2 by Kim Taylor which also covers a power-tools approach to making a bokken. Since I don't have a proper workshop, I intended to make mine “the hard way”, using only basic hand tools. To boost my confidence in the feasibility of this, I had a look at youtube and found a very good four-part how-to series3 posted by Rich Myers from the Circle of Harmony Aiki dojo. In the first part he covers choosing a wood and a specimen, and the information on grain orientation was very valuable to me. As someone not used to working with wood, it's something I might have overlooked otherwise.

Finding a good native hardwood proved to be a challenge due to the lack of readily available information. As mentioned, most articles only cover North American and Japanese woods. Eventually I found a quite extensive compilation4 at the site for Toda-ha Buko-ryu Naginatajutsu. It

1 http://www.aikiweb.com/weapons/goedkoop1.html2 http://www.aikidofaq.com/making/bokken.html3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_va9J0s1mk4 http://todahabukoryu.org/wp/?page_id=33

is the most comprehensive list I have found, and I encourage anyone thinking of making their own weapon to consult that list.

In the end I narrowed my options down to Red Ironbark, Red or Grey Box, or Karri (not to be confused with Kauri, which is not suitable for weaponry). While I had initially considered Jarrah, this got ruled out due to it allegedly being very nasty when it fails.

2 – Sourcing the woodAfter hitting up various woodworkers' forums,

three timber suppliers in Melbourne stood out. Australian Furniture Timbers5, Mathews Timber6, and Trend Timbers7. Australian Furniture Timbers provided a very nice wood density table, seemed to carry a substantial range, and with them being in Port Melbourne they ended up being my first port of call.

I had some hesitation about rocking up at a timber yard going “Hi, I'd like to buy a bit of timber. No, literally, a single small piece of timber, please.” My fears proved unfounded, and I found the guys at AFT to be very helpful.

As it turned out, they had a small stock of Red Ironbark (which was my preferred option), and luckily for me most of it was cut into 60x30mm boards – exactly the dimensions I wanted. Finding a piece with good grain orientation had me going through a good chunk of that pile, though.

If I do end up making another bokken, I'll make sure to bring gloves for when I go looking for timber. I would suggest you do too unless you're into splinters.

3 – The toolsWith me not even owning a block plane, I

dropped by a hardware store to pick one up for $15 or so. I had considered getting a surshape as well, but between looking at it in the store thinking “this cannot possibly cope with Red Ironbark” and them wanting $35 for one, I opted against it. I did however grab a small trimming plane for less than $5 – it seemed like a useful item at the time.

5 http://www.afttimbers.com/Density%20of%20Timbers.htm

6 http://mathewstimber.com.au/timber-species/7 http://www.trendtimbers.com.au/complete-timber-

list.html

Red Ironbark - 30mm x 60mm x 1100mm

I already had a fairly rough wood file, some P50 and P120 grit sandpaper with sanding block. An old saw-stool, a pair of f-clamps and a spare bit of wood for clamping against rounded up the tool selection.

The one thing I haven't yet mentioned is gloves. You will want a pair of good leather gloves. It saves you not only from splinters and serious injury due to tool fumbling, but they also enable you to quickly clear out any stuck shavings from your plane without slicing your thumb to bits.

4 – The crafting, day 1The first thing to be done was to cut the

desired curve. I simply used one of my existing bokkens as a template, though I deliberately made the outline somewhat wider as I was aiming for a heavy weapon. Given the dimensions I used, this makes the weapon span the full width of the wood.

With me lacking in confidence in handling both the tools and the wood, I started with the easiest part – the curve of the blade side. I started late morning, and by lunch-time I had it cut down to the outline. After a long lunch, I started on the curve for the spine. With this being concave, it's a bit more challenging to cut with a plane, but with judicious angling this was quite doable. The Ironbark, while not exactly easy to work, was quite forgiving of mistakes precisely because of that. An accidental cut against the grain only results in a lift of a couple of millimetres, making it easy to

recover from. This was quite a relief, as my experience with beech in the past has been that one bad cut can end up ruin the piece you're working on.

While cutting the basic shape I also worked out which end would be the handle. In my case the decision was quite simple, as one end had some noticeable checking in it. At this point I also cut the wood down to the length that felt comfortable. I cheated and used my drop-saw for that. It wasn't very happy about it – the Red Ironbark is tough as nails!

By the end of the day I not only had the curve I wanted, the right length, but I also felt a lot more confident overall.

5 – The crafting, day 2The aim for the second day was to cut the

proper blade shape. Here I started with the spine, since it is technically simpler (I think), with the flat angled back ridges and a flat top. Of course, with the curve it isn't entirely straight forward to cut using a block plane. Again, angling the plane to in effect make the block shorter gets the job done.

Starting with the spine also makes it easier to keep the wood clamped in place, as the blade edge does not yet have its rounded shape.

After lunch I was ready to start work on the blade edge, if it can be called that. Other than being a lot of work, and needing frequent inspection down the blade to ensure it was cut evenly, this was a fairly uneventful affair.

6 – The crafting, day 3The third day was dedicated to shaping the

grip. I had spent quite some time contemplating how I wanted this done, and how to work the transition from grip to blade. Since I have fairly small hands I knew I wanted a slimmer grip than my old store-bought whitened-oak bokken, and that I wanted a more prominent transition than my regular training bokken offers. I have noticed I have a tendency to let my right hand creep up too far, presumably to counter-act the strains of improper technique, so having the shape give it a natural feel at the right point was important to me.

A useful rule of thumb I came across during my research was to use my thumb as a rule, so I

My rather primitive, but functional, work space

First day's progress, in contrast to my old bokken

Second day's progress, compared to my old bokken

drew an outline of my thumb on the end of the timber, together with a vertical line for the center plane to ensure I didn't get the grip and blade misaligned. Cutting down the edges to this outline was another job for the block plane, though at this point it was showing serious signs of wear. Annoyingly enough, this was the one weekend when I didn't have easy access to a bench-grinder to resharpen the blades.

Slimming the width of the grip down was challenging. The small trimming plane I'd bought because it might be useful turned out to be really useful here. While it only shaved off a much smaller amount than the block plane, it did so more reliably and with far better precision. Of course, having a much smaller blade, by the end of the work its blade too resembled a mountain ridge line more than a straight edge.

As I worked on the grip, I moved away from the more typical oval shape and more towards a cross between oval and triangular to fit my hands better. Given the weight of this bokken, having a slightly flatter top surface felt better to my palms, while the narrower bottom edge felt better to my fingers.

The tip got shaped mostly with the large block plane, and the final shape was a result of wanting to cut away a small split in the end, to prevent it from growing. Ideally I would have cut off that bit earlier, but I had already used up what slack I had length-wise in removing split wood from the grip end. As such I simply had to make do with what I had, and make the best of it.

7 – The crafting, day 4The morning of the fourth day saw me packing

away my planes and pulling out the file and sandpaper. This was the point where I got to straighten out the lines of the spinal ridge, and really work out a smooth transition from grip to blade. The spinal ridge had a lot of places where the plane had caught the cross grain and lifted out small chunks, and it took a significant amount of filing to work this down to a smooth level. Someone more skilled at wielding a block plane might not have such issues.

Using the wood file it was easy to round off the back edges of the grip as well as neaten up the tip.

As well as working on getting the spine ridge line straight, I also spent a good deal of effort on getting even lines for the flat parts on the side of the blade. This is the area between the angled spinal planes and where the curve of the “edge” begins. I had tried to be even while using the block plane, but with limited success. Filing it however, made it much more feasible.

With all the pits, cuts, and unwanted ridges filed out, the file made way for the sand paper. There's not much to say about this – I used the P50 until I couldn't feel any more imperfections on that scale, and then moved on to the P120. Aside from ingesting too much Red Ironbark (it's actually not a bad taste), this was all fairly quick and easy. By lunch-time I was satisfied with the result, and put the first coat of oil on.

8 – Final thoughtsI am very pleased with how this turned out,

given this is the first bit of real woodwork I've turned my hand to. Things I would do differently, given the benefit of experience:

• Wood specimen selection. I didn't notice some of the checking on the left side, and I underestimated how far into the end the wood had split in one end.

• Having done it once, I'll be quite content to find someone with a band-saw to cut the initial curve if I make another bokken. It's a lot of manual work, and other than putting a bit more of your energy into the bokken, it doesn't really affect the final outcome.

• Per Darryl-san's suggestion, I'd look at getting a spokeshave as well. It should make the back curve less time-intensive to work with. I did find the block plane fairly easy to work with, especially in a one-handed cutting-towards-myself motion, but a spokeshave looks easier on the hands.

As a concluding thought I can say that I am very happy to have done this. It was a lot of work, but I now have a bokken to my own specification.

Johny MattssonPure Aikido / Aiki no michi Aikidojo

© 2012, all rights reserved

The edge of my block plane, after a couple of days of work on the Red Ironbark

Third day's progress, by now fully shaped

Right-side view, after first coat of oil

Left side view, showing the character of the grip