A tool is a tool

I thought that given I have now been training in ninjutsu for two years that I should invest in some of my own training tools. For those of you who don't know a training tool is any non lethal item modeled on a weapon. The tools we train with in ninjutsu include the following:

Bokken (wooden curved sword)

bo (6 foot wooden staff)

Hanbo (3 foot wooden staff)

Naginata (wooden spear with a curved wooden 'blade')

Yari (long spear with wooden 'blade')

Kusarifundo (3' length of rope, knotted at both ends)

Shoto bokken (wooden short sword)

Kyogetsu-shoge (9-12 foot rope with a wooden sickle at one end and hoop at the other)

Wooden/rubber knife

Rope

Sarah, of course thinks all of this is hilarious. "it's like a bunch of ten year old's playing with wooden swords".

Whatever.

"Didn't real ninjas use real swords?"

Like I said: whatever.

 

Some of my training tools.

Anyway my instructors keep telling me that the best way to obtain these training tools is to make them. As you can see above I have already 'made' my kusarifundo, if you can call knotting two ends of a short rope 'making', so how hard could this be? I decided to make a bo staff.

The bo staff was easy enough. A 6 foot broom handle, sheet of sandpaper,and three hours later I had a respectable bo staff. I tried it out in the garden.

All went well, the sanding had smoothed out the staff and rounded both ends, it was the right length, and strong enough with just the right amount of give. A few bofuries and katas later I was a very happy ninja. I looked up to see Sarah and the two girls staring at me from the kitchen window. I smiled back but all three of them frowned, then Sarah opened the window.

"People can see you through the hedge you know".

I shrugged, pretending not to care, like a 12 year old caught singing in the bathroom. "Can they?"

"Evening." a wry voice from the other side of the hedge as someone walked his dog past our garden. Probably best to call it a night.

For my next project I chose a naginata.

A maniac wielding a wooden naginata, 

some day I hope to be that maniac...

Okay so this is a little more ambitious and may well be out of my reach, but I thought I would give it a try.

I got hold of a huge piece of wood, a hand plane and started at it. Trouble is it has to be a piece of wood as thick as the curve on the blade. That is very thick.

five days later I was still going. The naginata is starting to take shape, but still way too thick to hold and too heavy to use. Still, proud of myself the next time I found myself at ninjutsu training I mentioned it to our shidoshi.

okay so maybe I underestimated the task, and maybe I underestimated the length. I have ended up with a 6 foot, too thick to hold and too heavy to use naginata that should be 7 or 8 feet long. I will give it another try. In the mean time Sarah and the girls surprised me. I have a birthday soon and they have bought me a (blunt) folded carbon steel katana. It is from china, it is not Japanese, but it is hand made, folded, did not cost the earth and importantly is totally blunt.

The perfect training tool.

 My birthday present from my 

thoughtful and very lovely wife.

The sweat and sawdust paid off. Thanks babe, that is the perfect birthday present for your idiot ninja husband.

Happy training everyone.