Bokken Bashing

Copied from EJMAS site with kind permission of the author, Mr. Kim Taylor

"Will your bokken stand up to full contact practice?"

I get a lot of that sort of question, along with "What's the best wood for hard contact?" and "I'd like a bokuto that is the same size and shape as my shinken with the same balance but just a bit heavier". But my all-time favourite has to be "are your bokken guaranteed for life against breakage"?

Let me answer the last question first. No. I know most of the other practice sword makers around North America and I don't know any one of them who, even if they once had such a guarantee, still offers it. Why? Because someone, somewhere is going to figure out how to break anything you make, from any material at all, up to and including steel, hell I've done it myself. As a kid I once took a stubby, thick, prybar type hunting knife and started to split kindling with it for a campfire. I placed the edge on a stick end, grabbed another stick and hit the back near the point to drive the blade through the wood. I wedged the blade firmly into the wood alright, and snapped it off at the hilt within 3 not particularly hard hits. Sent the knife back to the manufacturer and got exactly nothing in return, not even a letter that said "our knives aren't axes". Stupid marketing but hey, do they really want a customer that uses their product in a dangerous and unsafe way?

Do I?

OK let me ask another question. Would anyone out there take a Japanese sword and swing it full force into another steel blade and expect it to last? OK that's not fair is it? Shinken are very expensive so you wouldn't want to ruin a $600 polishing job, or snap a $5000 blade right? So let's talk wood which is intended as a practice weapon to keep our shinken from being damaged. In fact, let's talk a very chunky, tough piece of wood... a baseball bat. Now, would anyone swing two baseball bats into each other repeatedly and at "full contact" and expect them to last for more than about an hour of "practice"? No? So why a bokuto?

Fig 1. Hickory bokuto and jo broken during demonstrations on how to generate power in the swing.
Note that they split rather than snapped in half.

Enough sarcasm, let's talk about what wooden weapons are designed for shall we? They are, first and foremost, to allow students to practice in a controlled and concentrated manner without killing each other. This is accomplished by having something that is lighter than your steel blade (thus more controllable when swinging at your practice partner) and without an edge (bruises instead of cuts is a good thing), which is essentially disposable, so you can throw it away at the first sign of a crack or split (whereas if it was as expensive as a shinken you might be tempted to get just a little bit more life out of it). It can also be sanded down to get rid of the sawtooth dents that you would rapidly get in a metal practice blade.

Please note well that the Western term for the equivalent of a bokuto is "waster". I've seen it written as "waister" but I can't imagine why, it's obvious to anyone who has practiced martial arts which involve any kind of contact between blades that a wooden sword is intended to be "wasted". (See Fig. 2) I've watched some of the western folks revive their martial arts, and I've seen the bruises, broken bones and lacerations as they slowly work their way from "full contact, realistic training" back to something that will let them go to work on Monday morning after a weekend practice. The Japanese sword arts have long since been adapted to methodologies that allow students to train with enough safety that the arts weren't outlawed outright to prevent too many of the students from being kept away from their livelihood. Wooden swords mean controlled, light and angled contact. If you want "full contact" you use the proper protective equipment and weapons... you use kendo armour and bamboo shinai.

Fig. 2. Hickory wasters that have been broken, again note that they have split rather than snapped in half.

What about other cultures? How about the Filipino stick arts? Well I've been asked if I can recommend a wood for arnis that is "as tough as rattan". Hunh? Rattan is a vine, it's light and won't usually kill you if you get hit too hard by mistake during practice. After too much stick to stick hitting it goes floppy instead of snapping in two. What happens if you substitute a hard, stiff, heavy wood for rattan during practice? It may last longer if you tend to whack them together too hard, which is of course the reason for looking at wood. But, even if you're lucky and the students don't make mistakes and kill each other with full force strikes to the head, eventually the sticks get beat up enough to snap and go flying across the room. They have wood in the Philipines, they chose rattan for a reason.

Lighten up on those strikes. With wooden sticks you work in patterns slowly, carefully, and lightly. You don't hit full force unless you don't know what you're doing.

England? Well there was once the singlestick, and with that you might have practiced to "pinks", where you won the bout (oh botheration, call it a duel) if you opened an inch of blood on your opponent's head. They used wood. Which wood? Well it wasn't oak and it wasn't an inch thick and it wasn't anywhere near as heavy as a backsword. It was a 1/2 to 3/4 inch wand of ash which, as likely as not was kept in a barrel of water. Ash is light, not prone to breaking, and very flexible. Soaked in water it gets even more flexible. Would it have dented with all that contact? You're darned tootin' it would have, and it would have been replaced at the first sign of cracking or splintering. Wonder how many of the old singlestick boys lost an eye by mistake.

Wooden weapons are also, moreso in the past than now, a way to allow practice without damage to the steel sword. Unlike today when we can pick up Chinese made metal blades for a couple hundred dollars, putting them into the price range of a wooden practice sword, the sword student of the past would have spent a substantial proportion of their yearly wage on a steel blade. Think what a traditionally forged blade costs today... think most of a year's wage. We're not talking about collectors paying $5000 for a 400 year old antique, that blade has already been paid for by the first fellow who paid the smith for it. Aftermarket prices don't take into account the cost of production, only what it's worth to a collector.

Back to the original questions.

Will any wooden bokken out there stand up to full contact practice? NO. Nor will any steel, titanium, aluminum, or plastic bokken. Some will last longer than others but none will last forever. Think engineers haven't looked for that material?
What is the best wood for hard impact? None are good, none will last. Those that will perhaps last longer, more safely, are those that will flex, woods like ash and hickory, woods that will dent and splinter but usually not snap in half to become projectiles.
What wood will resist denting well? A wood that is dense and hard... but that usually means stiff and brittle which of course means prone to snapping in half. (See Fig. 3) Please note that wood is not homogenous, and some hickory weapons may snap in half while some oak weapons may split without snapping. When I talk about different woods I talk about their "tendancies" rather than what will happen to them when they fail. Grain has much to do with the strength of wood, as do knots and other flaws.
What do YOU recommend? Well as an instructor and as a researcher into training methods for martial arts, I recommend lighter wood that is flexible with a reasonable degree of resistance to denting and also a reasonable resistance to snapping in half, one that will usually splinter, crack and split first, giving some warning before complete failure. Hickory, oak, perhaps ash. I also recommend not practicing with different woods if more than very light contact is made. Receiving a heavy strike from a cocobolo bokuto with one of ash is asking for trouble, the difference in density and weight will ensure that the cocobolo digs well into the ash.
What do YOU recommend (2)? As someone who makes these things for filthy commercial gain... I recommend heavy, hard, beautiful weapons that will pound the dickens out of all the other weapons in your club, thus creating more market for my hard, heavy beautiful weapons. With, of course, all the proper legal caveats about not using anything I ever made in any manner that could possibly, under any circumstances whatsoever injure you in any way at all. That includes not keeping them on the gun rack in your truck by the way, where they could become loose and hit you in the back of the head during hard cornering, thus distracting you and causing you to go over the cliff into the river and drown. Does anyone doubt I'm being facetious here?
Can you make me a wooden sword that mimics a shinken? No, I can't I'm afraid. Steel is more dense than wood (wood floats, steel sinks). To get the same weight I need to make the bokuto a lot thicker than a shinken, so it won't feel the same. I can, in a lighter weapon, approximate the balance but then my problem becomes which shinken? Shinken are different weights, lengths, and balances. Some are tip heavy, some hilt heavy. Some are more curved than others and that affects the way they feel while being swung, regardless of the balance point. Then, when all that is said and done, your wooden blade is going to feel different than your steel blade when it hits something. Most sword steel is a hell of a lot more stiff than most wood. It breaks or bends rather than flexing when deformed (unless we're talking about spring steel which, as far as I know, doesn't hold much of an edge).
How long should a sword last? That depends entirely on how you use it and what you use it against. I've used very thin and light bokuto in jodo practice where you receive quite hard strikes with a jo. The jo is heavier and is swung quite fast, but it strikes at an angle to the bokuto and if it doesn't just snap it out of your hands, you move with it to absorb the impact as the sword is moved out of the way. I've never had a bokuto or jo break during practice, and rarely collected a dent worth sanding out except when a tip hits a shaft straight on. Want to break your bokuto? Hold it real strong and strike it at 90 degrees. I once had a sensei strike one of my nicer bokuto (I had just bought that one from Japan) across the back from 90 degrees. I got smart and let it go so he wouldn't break it... it broke from the impact of the tip on the floor (but my instinct was right, there was a 1/2 inch dent in the top but no break where he hit it). I have now come to the point myself where I can break a bokuto pretty much at will, and sometimes do in class when demonstrating how to generate power in a tip. (See Fig. 1) Since I make the things it's no big loss to me to break them. So, in proper practice, with the correct grip and correct hits according to the good practice methods handed down by experienced instructors, they ought to last a long time. But when you get experienced enough you should also be able to break one on demand. If you are told to train "full contact" don't expect to have your bokuto last more than a week, much less when you learn how to apply power to the thing.

Fig 3. Shiro kashi (Japanese white oak) weapons from Japan. On top is an E-bu for naginata, and at bottom is a bokuto which had dangerously flawed grain, yet was sold for use. (Neither weapon was made by the author and the E-bu was broken in Japan.) Note that shiro kashi, while being denser and more dent resistant than hickory, does not have the flex, and length of grain that hickory does, and so can break in half when it fails.

When I get questions about "full contact" I worry, quite often in fact, that people are misunderstanding what bokuto are meant for. They are not, were not, never will be intended as "safe" for full contact. As long as you are swinging lumber at each other you are at some risk of being hurt, if you do it without proper training and supervision, if you do it with weapons that are in poor condition, if you do it without the greatest concentration and care you can manage, you could be injured. You wouldn't swing a hockey stick or baseball bat full force at a teammate would you? And they've usually got helmets on! So why would you do it with a bokuto at someone who is unarmoured? The proper safety equipment exists to make that kind of practice survivable. Use bamboo and kendo armour, use foam chambara weapons and helmets, use rattan ulysses or ash singlesticks if you must learn through welts, but please, please, use wood and metal only in light, controlled kata, under proper supervision from trained and experienced instructors. Or if you don't, at least buy your bokken from someone else so I can sleep at night.

Kim Taylor is publisher of EJMAS and a maker of bokuto, you can see some of his work at http://sdksupplies.com/