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Why
Rattan?
Anybody who practices Filipino Martial Arts
quickly comes to love the burning smell that rattan gives off during
training, but there’s a much larger rationale to using rattan than
just a smoky aroma.
To the uninitiated, the choice seems to be a
needless expenditure. Why
not just go down to the hardware store and pick up some hardwood
doweling or PVC piping? A stick is just a stick right?
Actually, there are several reasons to choose
rattan, and the overriding concern is safety.
Most hardwoods are, in fact, hazardous as a material for
training batons. When
cut from a larger piece of timber, the wood fibres are severed.
The grain patterns that shows up on the wood marks the ends
of the fibres, and are essentially fault lines.
After repeated impact, the fibres will part suddenly, sending
shards everywhere.
Rattan, however, is a vine, composed of
numerous fibres running the whole length of the stick.
After many repeated impacts the rattan fibres will start to
shred. There is never
an immediate failure of the material, only a gradual breakdown.
Compare this with hardwood or PVC piping, where the material
might appear undamaged, but at any moment could shatter. Unlike rattan where the ends will be harmless, frizzy lumps,
wood creates knife-like pieces. And
since these shards appear at impact, they will also be traveling at
ballistic speeds.
There is no way to tell when a piece of
hardwood is thinking about fracturing.
A personal experience with this happened when doing some hard
contact work with red oak bokken. In the middle of sparring, my bokken suddenly felt much
lighter, and when I held up the tip, about half of the weapon was
missing. My sparring
partner and I dove for cover, not knowing when or where the other
end would come down.
For FMA training, rattan is the ideal material.
In addition to being less risky than hardwood, its mild
flexibility absorbs the shock of impact that would otherwise be
transferred to the wielder’s hand.
Prolonged stick-to-stick training with hardwood will
eventually lead to tendonitis and other joint problems.
This shock-absorption goes for being struck
with a stick too. Rattan
was never used for real fights, duels or warfare since it has much
less killing or wounding potential.
Instead, blades or hardwood sticks would be the norm.
Rattan is for training, weapons are for fighting.
This doesn’t mean that rattan can’t hurt you – the
Dog
Brothers have demonstrated that often enough by knocking
their opponents cold.
A new field for sticks is the use of modern
synthetic materials. These
are essentially indestructible, eliminating the need to replace
rattan. Although
much heavier than normal rattan, the synthetic sticks are very good
approximations of rattan, and well worth the money.
Now, if you've managed to get a hold on some
raw rattan, and want to get it ready for hitting, here's the
procedure we recommend:
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