A long time ago, seems like an entire life ago, I made several bokkens of
white oak when I studied Aikido.
I made a detailed tracing of a friend's, transferred it to an oak 2x4, cut
out the profiles with a bandsaw, then went at them with block plane, similar
to this:
http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.a...28&cat=1,41182
Took about a half hour for each to shape them, smoothed the curves by hand
and by feel. The curves are gentle and it wasn't hard to follow them with a
short plane. The cross section is a lot more complicated than an oval with
three flats, and it changes as you move along the blade section. A block
plane was all I had to do such shaping, so I didn't even think it wasn't
possible... so I just did it. No sanding. I still have my first and always
will, and I drag it out now and then to impress the kids.
If I was to do it now, I'd start the same way, trace and cut out on a
bandsaw and then use a drawknife instead of the plane
http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.a...at=1,130,43332
and finish with a spokeshave
http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.a...t=1,50230&ap=1
I know you asked about power tools, but using hand tools for this project is
a whole lot more appropriate.
Michael Latcha - at home in Redford, MI
"quixote" wrote in message
oups.com...
I want to make a bunch of bokken for some local univserity martial arts
clubs.
(A bokken is a wooden sword based on a japanese katana, for those who
don't know the term).
If you look at a picture of one, you see that the sword itself has
basically an oval cross-section with a few flattened sides.
Anyway, I think I can deal with most of the aspects of this, but I
can't think of an easy way to make something with an oval crossection
short of sanding it to death on a belt sander and jointer.
Even doing it on a sander, I would like a way that I can precisely get
something perfectly symmetrical.
If anyone can think of an easy way to do it or give me pointers on
where to look, here are the tools I have:
table saw
jointer
belt sander
bandsaw
drill press
various hand tools