My martial arts school had an informal gathering this afternoon. Why?

Making canes. 🙂

Kuk Sool’s weapon curriculum is wide and varied: swords (short and long, single or double, straight or inverted), staff (short, middle, long; single or double), jointed staff (double or triple), spear, cane, rope, fan, archery, knife throwing, trident, moon knife, and a few other things. I prefer the staff-based weapons, because I find them more practical. Dan bong is certainly one of my favorites. But what I really look forward to is cane.

A cane is one of, if not the, the most practical weapons. It can be used for striking, locking, blocking, trapping, throwing. It provides reach and distance, yet can be used close in. The largest appeal is you can take a cane anywhere. Almost any other weapon has some sort of “carry” problem, because either you can’t carry it (a 6-8′ staff), you’ll look odd carrying it (a trident), it may be illegal to carry it (swords, in some jurisdictions), or if there’s nothing odd about carrying it it may just raise an eyebrow (a dan bong may be “just a stick” but at least to the uninitiated it looks like it could be used as a club; why are you wandering town with a length of rope in your hand?). A fan is probably the only other such inconspicuous weapon, but it doesn’t have the same advantages as a cane (e.g. reach). The teaching of a cane as a weapon is a large reason why I opted to study Kuk Sool (or one of the other relative arts, like Hapkido).

So today we made practice canes. Most “drugstore” canes out there are not suitable for the abuse that martial activity would put upon them. While some martial arts that teach cane may desire a straight cane, Kuk Sool prefers a cane with a crook as the crook can be used for many things. While there are folks out there that sell canes, such as Cane Masters, Goju-Shorei Systems, and there are others, many of these canes are not suitable for practice because there’s too much risk for injury. The crook may be too narrow, which is great for street use but not for being forgiving to your training partner. As well, being struck even lightly with solid oak hurts onehelluvalot; we all have jobs and families to go to. Thus, we fashioned practice canes out of thick conduit PVC. It’s stiff and strong enough to take the abuse, yet soft and flexible enough to be forgiving to your partner. 

Making it was fairly simple. Cut to length. Cap one end. Fill with sand (to provide structural rigidity during shaping). Cap other end. Use a heat gun and bend the PVC around a form (in this case, a large/institutional/food-service tin can) to fashion the crook. Let cool. Hacksaw off the caps and dump out the sand. Continue to hacksaw to the proper length. Find caps to round off the ends (we’re still looking for some), and wrap with tennis racket grip tape. Viola. Practice cane. I need to get to the sporting goods store to get myself some grip tape, and need to search around for some end-caps. To use the standard PVC end-caps isn’t suitable, at least for the crook-end because it has a lip, which won’t feel that great on your neck.

That was a fun time. It’s nice to work on projects like this as it keeps interest high. Plus it’s just nice to have some informal time… heck, we don’t often see each other in normal street clothes, so it’s amusing just for that. 🙂