Cool stuff I learned this week

[bushido_man96]

That's crazy! From a real high to a real low real fast! I'm glad everything is getting sorted for you. Please keep us posted on how things go!

[aurik]

The road back to normalcy today involved an hour of training in Kobudo (bo and sai), followed by a 1.5 hour karate teaching class. Kobudo mainly involved working the first set of bo hojo undo, a little bit of the second hojo undo, starting to learn the first bo kata (sushi no kun), and then the first set of sai hojo undo.

I may have mentioned this earlier, but there's a lot of muscle memory involved here -- I trained in bo for about year back in the mid 90's (sai, too). So my brain still somewhat remembers the fundamentals. What my body does NOT have is the muscular strength and endurance for bo and sai. There is a lot of lat involvement with the bo kata, which tends to wear those out. And working the sai warmups is pretty hard on the shoulders and rotator cuff. It doesn't help that I've had a partially torn left rotator cuff for decades. It tends to get tired and achy very easily when working new sequences I'm not used to.

The good news is that I'm starting to get the hang of the first set of bo and sai hojo undo, and I was able to follow along through most of the first kata. There were a few sequences that I struggled with (mainly just trying to get my legs to do what they need to). All in all, I'm starting to feel good about how I'm picking up the basics and how they're starting to feel natural.

The other good news is that I wasn't completely gassed for karate after the kobudo class. Since we had a couple of students in for their very first class, our CI ran the warmups and basics. However, once we split into groups, I was running the advanced group. I found myself getting gassed a bit easier than I am used to, but I attribute that both to a) doing the kobudo class beforehand, and b) being about 4 weeks out from regular training. I felt pretty good and strong with running kata today, even though I made a pretty big boneheaded move on Seiryu (required for nidan). Again, I haven't run that in a little while. I found the power and speed were about what I'm used to. The stamina is just a bit short, but I expect that to come back to where I'm used to in the next couple week.

On a slight tangent, I started making my own weapons -- a few years ago, I bought a bunch of lumber to make cabinets for my garage. While I was there, I saw this nice big chunk of purpleheart -- about 2"x8"x78". Last weekend, I took my table saw to it, and cut a couple of 1 3/8" square x78" blanks. One of those I further cut down to octagonal, and now I'm working on turning it into a bo staff. The other I'll also make a bo out of, but it'll be a (slightly) belated birthday present for my CI. After that, I plan on making a pair of nunchaku and a few other things.

[aurik]

I've been quite remiss in updating this thread.

 

A lot of things have happened over the past few months.  I've been keeping up with all of my doctor's appointments related to my incident in May.  I had a nuclear stress test in July, which showed that my heart is still pumping blood how it needs to so that isn't an issue I need to worry about right now.  I spoke with the cardiologist last week, and she suggested that since what I had was atrial flutter (different than atrial fibrillation), there is a surgical way of correcting it.  From what I understand, the surgeon would go in through my femoral vein with a laser and essentially zap away the set of neurons that can go haywire and trigger the atrial flutter.  I'm nervous about it, but it would mean I wouldn't need to be on blood thinners anymore.  I have an appointment to speak with the surgeon in October, so we'll see what he says.  I'm very concerned with complications, but I'll at least see what the surgeon says.  The weight is down by 20 lbs since I had my episode.  It's not coming off as fast as I'd like, but it IS coming off, which is the important thing.  I've had to trim my belt twice, and I'm going to have to start buying smaller pants here soon, so that's a good thing.

In terms of martial arts, I'm continuing to teach my weekly Thursday class, and we just got a new batch of white belts in the class so that's fun.  My Thursday night now consists of an hour of kobudo followed by teaching my karate class.  Saturdays is usually an hour of karate followed by an hour of kobudo, with last Saturday I did an hour of karate, an hour of kobudo, and then a kobudo test.  Our instructors tend to give feedback after the test, and one of the pieces of feedback I got will basically mean I'll need to relearn the way I handle the bo (specifically with the grip changes that are involved).  

I did finish my purpleheart bo, and it's a beast.  I intentionally made it long and heavy with the intention that if I can wield this effortlessly, I can pretty much pick up any bo in the dojo and it'll feel like a toothpick.  I'll get some pics of it shortly.  In the next couple weeks I plan on taking that purpleheart (I"ve still got plenty of it) and making a set of nunchaku.  We have a guy in our dojo who has made quite a few weapons and is willing to help me out on that.  It also turns out that I've got some pretty unique tools that should help with that.  More on that later.

I spent the first 2 weeks of August in Colorado Springs taking an "Introduction to Bladesmithing" class.  I have to say that in those 2 weeks, my forging and grinding techniques improved by leaps and bounds.  I'm now able to take a piece of steel and forge it efficiently into the shape I want, so that there's a lot less time required on the grinder afterwards.  I'm also getting to the point where I can draw something on a sheet of paper and forge within an eighth of an inch or so to that shape.  (That's about 3mm for you metric folks).  There's a LOT left to learn, but I feel like I'm at a point where I'm comfortable making something and giving it and/or selling it to someone else.  So this coming weekend I'll be heading down to Colorado Springs again and starting on a few projects:

- A set of Japanese scabbard chisels (https://www.waltersorrellsblades.com/product-page/saya-nomi-japanese-scabbard-chisel).  It turns out these are also EXTREMELY useful for cutting in the side grooves on a set of nunchaku.  I checked with my friend, and it looks like a 5/16" width is just about the right width for it.  And it so happens I've got 1/4" stock that will forge out to just about the size I need

- Two test blades for the ABS Journeyman test.  I made a couple in my class, but these won't qualify since they were made during a test.  These are blades only for the purpose of passing the ABS Journeyman performance test:  They have to be no longer than 15" with a 10" blade, the blade can't be any wider than 2", and they have to pass the performance test:  Slice through a 1" rope in one swing, Cut a wooden 2x4 in half, twice, Shave hair off your arm (to show it's still sharp), and then put it in a vise and bend it to 90 degrees without breaking.  It's okay if it doesn't straighten back to true.

- We have a few kids in my son's Scout troop who will be completing their requirements for Eagle Scout in the next few months.  I plan on making them custom knives to commemorate the event.  I've found a really cool idea for a pommel that I should be able to cast out of bronze, and we'll see about other things as well.

And I'm going to start making the commitment to work as much on fit and finish as I do forging.  For the longest time I'd forge something out and never finish it.  From here on out I'm going to finish them.

 

 

[bushido_man96]

It's good to hear things are going well on the health front.  Keep it up!

Very cool on the weapons forging and finishing.  Sounds like a lot of fun!