Synthetic Sticks

Joined
Mar 28, 2002
Messages
317
Hey all you guys,

Forgive me for not givin y'all an update on my recovery after all your prayers/support!

It'd been a hellish May 2005, with a major assignment (worth 50% of subject grade) having to be done. On top of that, I *STILL* had to attend outpatient treatment at the private physical rehab hospital twice a week! :eek:

God knows how I managed. I barely did. But through all that, I had an outpatient appointment at RMH (Royal Melbourne Hospital) to decide whether my shattered femur (which didn't seem to be healing up quick enough) needed further surgery with a bone graft, which would involve 2 weeks waiting for theatre time, a puncture at the hip to saw the top of the Iliac Crest (top of the pelvis, a popular bone graft source site) and another hole in the thigh to patch up the femur, all in all requiring at least 6 weeks recovery on crutches. Not encouraging since I'd been in a world of pain hobbling around Uni (College) on a walking stick. On top of that, my back was just screwed up (not related to injury from the accident, but side effects of medication (intense muscle tension in the muscles under my left shoulder blade) and the annoyingly "erganomic" (not!) chairs in Uni...

Buuuuuut, PTL, when the Head Orthopedic looked at my X-Ray (which was by then around 3 weeks old), he said I was recovering just fine. I'd recovered back 70-75% of the bone strength, which is well sufficient to get off the walking stick. He also said the gap in the recovering bone was way too small to bother opening up with two more holes in my leg to patch it up, and it'd recover just fine! So there! No more surgery for me! Yaaaaaay! Sooo, I've now been continuing my treatment at my local gym (I now attend 3 times a week) I've gained back about half the lean muscle lost (almost 7 kg!) when I was flat-out inactive for the first 2 weeks. I finally have a flat stomach again!

Whew! it's been one major year for me! It was 1 year ago last fortnight that I hit that tree and changed my life... Thank you *ALL* for your prayers and support! I don't think I would've made it without!

Anyhoo,

Having incited/accelerated that kerfuffle with Sirupate aka Simon:barf: on the FMA Forum, I should've given you guys a heads up on my recovery... LOL!

Okie, so now onto my first post here in a while:

My apologies if this has already been addressed, but I'm really keen on making a set of synthetic sticks. Having been fed up with the woods available here (ie non-existant without paying an arm and a leg for POS peeled rattan or exotic aussie hardwoods that may or may not work). Any idea where to start? I was fiddling with 550 Paracord and braded up a nice length of whip-like rope with 5 strands (4 strand round-braid, 1 for a centre core). A bit thin/narrow and a little floppy. I know G10 is Kelvar/Nylon suspended in Epoxy Resin, or something like that. Any idea if I soaked a similar, or thicker braided whip/rope (more strands maybe?) in epoxy resin would yield a functional fighting stick? Any different resins available? Here in Australia?

Any and all helpful comments would be much appreciated!

Much Thanks!
 
I have no idea on the sticks, but i'm glad to know you're healing up, Hibuke:)

Take care
Jake
 
Yikes. Congrats on the strength your showing in the rehab process... maybe a khuk could be incorporated into the knee brace. :)

I've some synthetic wood scraps left over from a deck building project- called Choice Deck. It's like half plastic, half wood pulp. It's so soft & easy to work it might make grips for one of my projects... fuggly, tho. How it will look finished remains to be seen but it's 3x the cost of wood so I saved the leftovers for something.

I made a taka-takano- dangit, a stand for my katana out of it with a lil' gold Buddha on top, and I'm happy with that.


Ad Astra
 
Cheers, Hibuke.

Glad to hear you're healing. Broken femur is a major hurt.

G-10 is phenolic impregnated fiberglass.

My son is seriously involved in MA and has tried various materials for fighting staffs. He always comes back to rattan as the best combination of weight and strength.

Tom
 
There are two main problems with synthetics. One if your partner is using rattan, your synthetic sticks are going to tear up his sticks like pacman eats dots. Two, while they are very durable, when they fail, they do so dramatically eg. sharp fractured pieces flying.

Are there any rattan furniture or caning shops in your area? You could either buy direct from them, or find out who their dealer is. I figure if there are rattan furniture shops here in Minneapolis deep in the midwest miles from any natural rattan, then there has to be some in Australia that are relatively close by. Or if there isnt one close by, you can email others. At our dojo we normally buy bulk lots of Rattan from either Franks or a local rattan furniture supplier. Raw rattan works great, but you can always burn and treat em yourself.
 
BruiseLeee said:
How does one heat treat the sticks? :confused:
Very carefully :p :D

Ok, by treat I meant finish/fill with either oil or lacquer or whatever. The burn part is just decoration, and to straighten rattan. Though some say it strengthens the rattan if done right, I remain skeptical. We ran through some tests in the dojo between burned rattan, burned and treated rattan, and plain raw rattan. So far it seems that treatment did nothing to make them last longer, and if anything burning makes them more brittle. It does make em less springy and harder, but if we are looking for hard by a hardwood stick. Filling with something like linseed oil does seem to help them last, but the results havent been all that great compared to the amount of work it takes to fill and then more importantly dry the rattan.
 
In one of Tom Brown's field guides to being a hippie... he mentions fire hardening green wood by sticking it under the dirt where some hot coals from a fire are. The heat is supposed to so something to the sap to make the wood harder. I've never tried it though.


(I like the old smilies) :(
 
BruiseLeee said:
In one of Tom Brown's field guides to being a hippie... he mentions fire hardening green wood by sticking it under the dirt where some hot coals from a fire are. The heat is supposed to so something to the sap to make the wood harder. I've never tried it though.


(I like the old smilies) :(
I can see drying green lumber out, same idea as kiln drying wood, but in FMA circles burned rattan has taken mythic legends as to what it does for the lumber. :)
 
Federico said:
I can see drying green lumber out, same idea as kiln drying wood, but in FMA circles burned rattan has taken mythic legends as to what it does for the lumber. :)

I've fire hardened some Ash that was fairly freshly cut as well as some that had dried for a few months but wasn't seasoned.
The fresher it is the more likely you are to crack it from drying it to fast and you need to rub oil into the wood to keep it from drying to fast as well, tricky but well worth the effort.:thumbup:
Ash gets pretty hard when properly fire hardened.:eek: :D
 
You're a good man, Hibuke, and I'm proud to hear how you're fighting back from this injury.



munk
 
Hibuke,

I'd try Nylatron. I "made" a 48"x1" walking stick from it and it's tough as hell. It fell damn near 100' when I was hiking in the mountians. When I finally got down to it it only had some scratches, after falling on rock no less. I also whack things with it all the time and it's held up. I'll try to find an internet supplier for you, but I would just look in the phone book for a plastics supplier, that's how it found mine.


- D
 
Being in OZ you might try eucalyptus. I cut and dried a sapling about 1.5 inches in diameter and then tried to break it by using it like a baseball bat and slaming it into another tree I succeded in breaking off the sapwood but all the heart would do is bend. Nice wood.
 
Eucalyptus is tough stuff. There's many varieties. In So Calif, they brought it in for wind and cold protection for orange groves. They thought it would make a superb construction material but it was not suited for that job. I think it was too hard and cracked.

munk
 
Fire-hardening really does work.
Can't recall details at the moment
but, as noted, the result is harder/brittler.

At a certain temp,
the connective compounds 'melt'
then reharden.

Can't recall where moisture/oil fits into the equation,
but if nothing else
it likely helps the heat transfer.
Like making popcorn on the stove.

End of stick in fire
scrape off char
What doesn't scrape off easily is the hardened wood.

Seems like the critical temp is ................,
{............see followup post below...................}
but don't quote me on it
(hmmmm similarly, leather hardens at what,
about 180'F ????)

-----------------------------------
I'll try to get some details together/corrected soon.
-----------------------------------


How many knew rattan is a vine ?

Raise your hands.

I discovered this fact just a couple of weeks ago.



~
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'Dean' :)-FYI-FWIW-IIRC-JMO-M2C-YMMV-TIA-YW-GL-HH-HBD-IBSCUTWS-tWotBGUaDUaDUaD
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End of stick in fire
scrape off char
What doesn't scrape off easily is the hardened wood
by ddean



prehistoric spears were made this way. Then the hippie/high-tech flint knappers came in and the world went to hell.
 
ddean said:
How many knew rattan is a vine ?

Raise your hands.

I discovered this fact just a couple of weeks ago.
They also make great simple hand-cuffs, or so Ive been told. Green they are good as chord.
 
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