Hobby - Wood Work - ... Yep

So the day hasn't even drawn to a close before the next adventures in wood starts.

To be fair I already had blanks and a template drawn out for the next project, and today I did nothing more than marking out some lines on them...

These will be yari blades.  Yari are/were Japanese spears, usually reasonably long, and intended for longer range (longer than a sword), hand held fighting (thrusting), not for chucking (i.e. like a javelin)...

The real/metal version is often portrayed like this, with a triangular cross section, though there are quite a lot of other patterns as well.  And I like this style personally.

Back in the day I made a small number of these, with a simpler shape, but I recently gave the last of them away.  I'm contemplating using this basic shape again, mainly because the metal shape mightn't work with a thin part near the shaft made with wood.  We'll see.  [ed: Upon reflection it's quite similar. I think when I get to the shaping process I'll probably see what the wood tells me, rather than pre-planning it.]

2024-07-15

Planed down the blocks to required thickness. Daytime job. And how good are electric planes!?!

2024-07-16

Had a look at the spare block of black butt I have in light of maybe making a new bokken just for fun. It's a fraction too narrow for my usual shape unfortunately.

Am going to look around to see if I can source some alternate wood locally. Old train line sleepers or similar maybe.  So apparently I have been enjoying the process far too much :)

2024-07-20

I started shaping all three pieces. Including roughing out the blade outline and also shaping the 'tang' in roughly.

2024-07-21

Well that rated in as... a whole bunch of effort.

Got a stick from bunnings... yesterday. Horrible wood and not cheap either - pretty disgusting the state of things tbh.  But I'm not carving an entire 2+ meter spear shaft out by hand though. 

Below, cut a slot in the stick, and then matched the blade to the stick, trying to keep enough material in both parts for as much strength as possible in both pieces.

Like many aspects of this project the shape and dimensions were very fluid until they started to emerge as I was working.  Making the main cross-section of the blade was among the easier tasks, not so much the tang and transition section.

But I got there in the end. Turned out as well as I'd have hoped for.  Overall length 2.4 meters which was based on what fits in the car easily.

As per my metal one, I put a fuller on the flat side. It was a really boring flat plane otherwise. This actually made the piece pop, so it was a great addition.

And the top/triangular side turned out nice enough. The base of the blade developed into a nice enough shape once it was mounted on the stick and reshaped. String wrap (and glue) over double pinning for extra strength. The blade is not used for cutting or chopping (with the long blade edge) per se, it's almost entirely a thrusting weapon so there should be enough strength in this connection style.

This turned out to be bloody hard to pre-shape, especially for the transition section (between the blade proper and the tang) which looked really chunky and ugly and bulbous all the way until final shaping right until the final shaping.  Once I had the blade set, then shaped the blade to the stick and smoothed it down, and it just kind of appeared and flowed.  Pretty happy with it really.  Sometimes it just pays to let the wood speak to you as you're making.

It took all day just making one, so the other two are... spare... indefinitely. The main shaping required for the blade, and then for setting, and then for combining, then reshaping... just takes so damn long. It was an enjoyable day, but it's not a batchable job.

I think... I probably do like this shape better than the original ones I made way back when. There's more visual interest there.  The older ones were more or less ovalized rectangles (cross section) with rounded edges.  This is clearly far more.

A couple more pics showing the grain, which is actually quite nice...

Until next time...