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...

Hobby - Wood Work - Some More

Did I say I'd never being doing wood work again last time?  I'll have to check.  If so, then clearly I was wrong.  [ed: I didn't strictly swear off doing more, I just didn't think that I would. Sigh...]

Made a weekend trip up to Sydney to find some wood.  As much as the range at the usual place is better than everywhere else in terms of 'specialty wood', I'd be remiss to say that the quality is particularly good.  Finding clean pieces of anything exotic can be difficult, and most of the fancy Australian wood is all but unavailable due to ever growing logging bans.  Which is pretty stupid because trees ARE renewable if anyone actually bothers doing things correctly and long term.... which they don't.

Anyways, for starters I got a plank of rock maple.  Was 10mm thick which was perfect for my project.  I'd already whipped up a plywood template for senban shuriken.

Roughed them out on the bandsaw...

Finalized the outline, added edge detail and started smoothing with the belt sander...

Hand sanding to get the surfaces smooth and 'nice (...enough)', then burnished all over...

Ending up with six pieces all up. There were initially seven, but I experimented putting a 'traditional' hole in the centre. The piece snapped in half, so I left the remaining pieces all solid.  Makes them sturdier and the hole provided a very obviously (in hindsight) weak point to the grain.

Next up I got a piece of Blackbutt and some Spotted Gum.  The Blackbutt is not allocated to a project yet, but it was a (rare) nice piece of wood with relatively few flaws, and decent weight, so I picked it up 'just in case'.

The Spotted Gum was cut down into a 'jo' length (approx 120cm), and a 'tanbo' length (approx 50cm).

I then used the electric plane to 'octagon' them down from square...

And from them I've just started using the belt sander to smooth the octagon into effectively a round dowel.  The diameter (of both) is about 40mm - the tanbo needs to be about 30mm, and the jo needs to be about 25mm.

Once the piece is 'round enough' I'll start scraping it down to parallel and round.  that's going to take a while and is the more 'traditional' aspect to the work I do.

I'm definitely abandoning the 'everything by hand' approach.  My hands already hurt, and at this stage I'd rather get a result quicker, while conversely there's no thrill in it being done with nothing but hand tools anymore.  It's still going to hurt :)

2024-07-12

Got some linseed oil so I can get things finished off 'proper'.

Have given my poor old bashed up original bokken a taste, and the new senban shuriken too.

Work continued on the bo shuriken (just 4 in this batch) which were off cuts from the tanbo/jo project.

Lefty;  a plywood sizing template for copying the size of the old ones to the new ones... more or less.

Middley;  new pieces now ground to rough shape.

Righty;  my old Bo shuriken. Geez I'm annoyed that ironwood isn't available anymore. Fuck you hypocritical greenies!

Fine shaping, 280grit, 400grit, burnishing and a splash of linseed oil.  Doneski.

I really don't mind the colour they come out, it's pretty and interesting in its own way.

Anyways, these turned out ok.  The surface layer smoothness/sheen and weight is definitely acceptable.

And with that done I have no further procrastination pieces to do before getting back on the tanbo/jo... hahaha.

2024-07-14

Ok, next up, roughing out the jo.

For those not familiar with japanese martial arts...   a 'jo' is a 4 foot stick,  a 'bo' is 6 foot stick,  a 'hanbo' is a 3 foot stick, and a 'tanbo' is a 2 foot stick... more or less.

I started by planing away more stock from the piece (again), then sanded it back to round (again), as below...

I then found a scrap beam and drilled a 30mm hole through it to make a sizing template. I needed the depth within the beam in order to help keep the jo 'aligned' or at least straight(er) within the template hole.

From here I started alternating between carefully machine sanding (80grit) and also hand sanding (240grit), getting the stick to just fit through the template. When the stick binds in the template hole it leaves a shiny patch which makes it easy to see where the high points are that need reduction. Not rocket science.

Had to switch the template to vertical as the stick bottomed out on the floor. And this is the piece done, with a maximum of 30mm diameter all the way along.

From here cleaning up any ugly grind marks or divots as best as possible. It's not a perfectly symmetrical cylinder, but if you want a machine-made dowel then go to bunnings.

This is a (more or less) before and after the processing...

At this stage the entire piece has been hand sanded to 240grit.  I can feel imperfections along the length which isn't really a problem as far as I'm concerned.  I will probably review it to get it as straight and consistent as I can by eyeball, but it's effectively at final shape.  The original spec was for 25mm diameter and it's probably about 27-28mm on average now - I won't be taking it all the way down to 25mm, this diameter is where the wood said it wanted to go.  Swinging it around, it already feels very smooth and manoeuvrable in the hands.

The shaping stage is the most time consuming.

2024-07-15

Repeated the shaping process for the tanbo.  Drilled a 35mm template hole and removed the excess stock from the piece.

Worked on the more obviously ugly scratch blemishes on both pieces but at this stage there's still some minor imperfections, which adds texture or 'rustic-ness' or 'authenticity'... which is obviously a cope cos I'm lazy hahaha.

The tanbo finished at about a 32mm diameter.

Both then got a sand over with 240grit and down to 400grit.  Really liking the results.

Later

Did a little more surface work but there wasn't that much required. Once over with 240grit, then a couple of parses with 400grit, then a sand with 600grit.

Burnished both of them, put my mark on them, touched up with 600grit and reburnish.  Then a thin coat of linseed oil.

And they're done.  A lot of fuss over a stick... yep, maybe.

I do have a couple of other small projects in the works but this is it for the immediate future.

The process has been enjoyable - the fun is working out how to get the result as much as getting the result.

Until next time...