The past couple weekends have been pretty special for me. See, I’ve been using a commercially-produced Bo staff for my weapons training for a while now. It was ok, but it had no character, no soul… and it was poorly finished in a way that made it just plain annoying to use. So I spent these past two weekends learning woodworking by making my own. It wasn’t the act of making the Bos by itself that was special, though; it was the fact that I got to learn how to use the tools to make them from my grandpa, who is himself a master woodworker (he probably won’t admit to that though – masters never do).
The Process of Creating the Bos
The whole process began with me choosing the type of wood I wanted to use to build the weapons. Traditional Bos are made out of oak, and are often commercially-available in ash as well. I didn’t want something that could be mistaken for a commercially-available Bo though; I wanted something with character. So I chose black walnut. It was still a hard, dense wood that would take the abuse well, but it also has a beautiful grain that I planned to bring out at the end of the process.
Once I selected my walnut plank, I brought it to my grandpa’s wood shed. The first step was to learn how to use his radial arm saw. It’s a flexible tool that can do a variety of jobs, but for this project we set it up in a stationary fashion, to be used more like a table saw. Once it was set up, we cut the plank into narrower strips that were roughly the width of finished Bos.
From there, the next step was to use the automatic planer to fine-tune the width and height of the strips. Bit by bit, the planer would strip off small layers of wood with each pass-through, until we had strips that were perfectly squared off and almost the exact width of a finished Bo.
Once that was done, we set up his router in a fixed under-table mount, and used a half-inch-wide, quarter-round bit to round off the corners of the block. A traditional Bo is 1.25 inches in diameter, so taking off half an inch from each corner meant that there was still work to be done. At this point, the Bos resembled rounded-off rectangles, more than cylinders.
From there, the real work began. We grabbed two hand-planers and started shaving off wood bit-by-bit, all by hand. Remember those rounded corners? Yeah, those had to be taken down so that they weren’t corners anymore, just round.
Turns out that step was a lot more work than I first expected. Because of the way a wood’s grain is structured, you need to shave in the direction that it flows; going against it is kind of like trying to push a rope… it doesn’t work well. Here’s the thing though: the grain changes direction throughout the length of the Bo. A movement that goes with the grain in one spot might go against it in another… and when you go against the grain, you can end up gouging out the wood and leaving a divot that’s tough to repair. It was a lesson I learned the hard way.
To complicate things further, where there were knots in the wood, the grain goes haywire; you can’t shave in any direction without gouging the wood. In those areas, my grandpa had me use an electric sander, which is gentler on the grain and will make sure you don’t damage it beyond repair.
So this process went – planing and sanding, planing and sanding – until the Bos were rounded off. All told, it took about 10 hours of work to get them to a place where they were ready to be stained. The last step before that was just use a mitre saw to cut them to exact length, and then file down the corners at the end so that they aren’t sharp.
From there, we applied three coats of a very light-coloured stain, which still darkened the wood dramatically. I had to return the original dark stain I bought, because I underestimated just how much staining wood darkens it, even when no pigment is used.
The finished products were a beautifully-coloured and patterned pair of Bos that had a character all their own, and neither looked nor felt anything like something you’d buy off a website. I couldn’t wait to get into the dojo and put them to use.
Wait, How Are Karate & Woodworking Related?
Listen, I’m getting there! It was important that I tell the story of how the Bos were made in order to make this point. I think the thing that I found most symbolic about creating the Bos is that the process for doing so requires the same patience and discipline that karate demands of its students.
In karate, we practice our stance and techniques over and over again, refining them as we go, and refining ourselves in the process. In woodworking – at least, in this project – we used planers to pass over the wood and shave thin strips off, over and over… refining the shape of the wood and, again, ourselves in the process. In both cases, the key is incremental progress through repetition. You can’t always see the impact each attempt makes, but over time they add up to something that is more refined and shaped the way you want it to be.
For this reason, working on this project didn’t even require patience on my part; because I understand the value of incremental refinements and repetition through my training, applying those principles to a block of wood was a joy, not a chore.
Wrapping it Up
It would be a crime to claim that I’m anything less than ecstatic with how the Bos turned out. They’re gorgeous, sturdy, and by virtue of the process used to create them, they each have a soul that infuses martial arts right into their very essence.
Beyond that, this was a fantastic first project for me to start learning woodworking from my grandpa. He has a ton of knowledge and all the tools you can possibly imagine (and then probably hundreds you can’t imagine), and yet it took five years of studying martial arts for me to begin to properly appreciate his art for what it is: a close cousin of my own art and all others. It was great to spend quality time learning from him and working on something together.
The more I study different art forms, the more I realize that their underlying principles are all the same. Art is one language, and once you speak it, you can apply it to any art form, whether it’s martial arts, woodworking, cooking, music, photography, or anything else. This was a great first project for me, and I can’t wait to get these Bos into the dojo and start using them to refine my weapons training, one wood shaving at a time.
