Approximating handling of real sword in wooden bokken -- myArmoury.com

Walter S

I wanted to know how does handling a real sword feel like. Being a creative person I got myself 18x80mm wood plank, 5mm plywood and some 40g fishing lead weights. Total expense equal to about $15.

I made core of the sword from the wood plank. Then I added plywood to both sides of blade to make up for lightness of wood in comparison to steel. I also made crossguard out of plywood. I put 4x40=160g of weights into crossguard and 12x40=480g of weights on the end of grip as pommel.

The result is 100cm (39") long one-handed sword weighing 1200g (2 pounds, 8 ounces) with 85cm (34") blade and center of balance 10cm (4") from guard.

I was surprised how much lighter does the finished sword feel in comparison to just gripping its bare blade, even though the blade is only half the weight.

I thought someone might find this project interesting. If you think wooden sword has no place in historical talk section, just move it to off topic, I won't mind.

Attachments won't show previews, so I link the pictures here (the scheme pic seems to get sometimes shrunk by forum):