Thread: Wooden swords for local ti-chi class

Looking good.

Very nice well made.

Cheers Jerry

They look great Rattrap, look forward to seeing the jig
you used.

Wood or not, I'd still rather not be whacked around the head with one - nice work and it looks like you've found a niche - go fill it.

Hi guys, thankyou for the kind words. Dragonfly it was pointed out to me part way thru these that maybe i needed to round the point off a bit & ease the blade bevel some as at one stage they were downright dangerous & after i accidently walked into the tip while it was mounted in a wood vice right at the height of my private parts i quickly argeed! ouch!!!

Busy day at the community shed yesterday, lots of hand sanding of the sword handles.
First up is a pic of the swords as they were yesterday morning, 1 finished ready for its oil treatment & 3 more with their handles freshly rounded over with a 1/2" round over router bit. I used the u shaped support jig to rout the roundover of the handles. Because of the constantly changing angle of the handle & the severe tendency of blackwood to chip out i back routed the whole roundover leaving me with very little chipout to sand out.
In the main sword routing jib u can see a screw hole in the handle area as well as an extra pice of timber on the tip where there is another screw hole. The starting plank of timber is screwed down in these spots while i ran round the jig with a spiral bit with a bottom mounted bearing, this was also back routed due to the changing angles & some fiddleback in the grain. To save the spiral bit from needing to do so much work i cut away the bulk of the waste on the bandsaw leaving only 2-3mm of waste. The bevel for the blade edge was done freehand on a big boy belt sander.
I've got all but 1 sword all oiled & finished at this stage, just needed 1 more hour for the glued pommel to set before i could finish the last but just ran out of time. Oh well it'll give me something to start my day off with on tuesday.
Have a great Easter all!