Different woods for weapons

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[John Boswell]

Orange Osage has been mentioned as a good wood for weapons, but I've never seen anyone actually build weapons out of it.

Anyone have such weapons? How do they hold up? Good points or Bad?

Also: Walnut. I've never heard anyone ever say,"I have a walnut bokken/jo and ..." Has anyone ever looked into using Walnut? Anyone know about the quality of such a wood?

I'm very interested in hearing from people with actual experience with both Osage and Walnut. They seems like good woods, but I have NO information on people who actually use them or have them. Any info you have would be great!

[Eric Webber]

I worked out with a walnut jo years ago, my impression of it was that it was very hard and had little life when swinging it. I prefer woods that exhibit some life and response, such as the usual hickery and white oak; however, I have enjoyed using an ash jo, which had a tremendous amount of liveliness to it, though it dented and dimpled very easily.

[TheWonderKid]

What about Maple? It's about as hard as oak, think that would be much good?

[akiy]

Here's an article called "Woods for Training Weapons" which provides information relevant to this thread. It's written by the owner of Kingfisher Woodworks.

http://www.aikiweb.com/weapons/goedkoop1.html

-- Jun

[kaihei]

Here's another good site from the US Department of Agriculture, Forest Service

http://www2.fpl.fs.fed.us/TechSheets/techmenu.html