Recommendation? Practice Jian? Practice Wakizashi(w/ katana length hilt/tsuka)?

Joined
Sep 6, 2017
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Hi,

Would anyone here be able to point me at a properly balanced and durable training Jian(wooden/polypropylene) by any chance? I would prefer one emulating a more combat weighted and balanced(although still single handed) than one geared to emulate the super flexible light style wushu jian.

Also a recommendation for a Wakizashi(poly/wood) 20-24"blade with a full sized hilt/tsuka would be great. For an actual Wakizashi I would just switch out the tsuka to a longer one and that would be it, but finding a good Wakizashi with a two handed grip length has been difficult since they are mostly used one handed as a sidearm to the Katana and not as a primary.

I am trying to get into practicing a certain type of usage that just isnt feasible with a short one handed variant.
 
It's been a long time since I was involved in anything relating to this, but I'll try and help.

First, Cold Steel offers a wide variety of poly trainers, although nothing relating to the jian. The cult site of Athena has one, E472PP, but I have no idea about its quality, or if it's what you're looking for.

As to the wakizashi, yeah that's a bit challenging. You might need to get a standard sized boken, again, Cold Steel, and chop the blade portion down to what you want, and reprofile the tip to your liking.
 
The Cold Steel polypro series is a little wobbly but probably the easiest road. I picked up a CS bokken at the parking lot sale, and it was so whippy I put it right back down again. You want to make a 2 hand wakizashi, so the simple solution is to get a bokken and cut the tip to the length you want instead of messing with the tsuka. That might take enough of the floppy out of the CS bokken to make it viable, but really any red oak bokken would do. If you want more heft, cut down a suburito--the handle is longer and it is more massive in every dimension. This is the budget option; if money is no object, order a bokken in ko katana length from one of the Japanese websites.

Jian wasters are much more difficult to come by. I got mine through one of Adam Hsu's students who was teaching San Tsai Jian seminars, but I haven't seen them in a long time. If I had to replace it I might try picking up a CS Medieval (or Arming) polypro sword as a cheap replacement. For twice the money though, you could do a search on Rawlings synthetic sparring wasters, and pick up one of their Arming Swords. The HEMA guys apparently like the Rawlings for sparring, so they would have to have the mass to take hits. I don't want to link to sites that don't support Bladeforums, but you should be able to find them fairly easily.
 
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