I posted this on another forum a while ago but I'm sure it's OK to post here. Apologies for those who have come across these things before. Or are offended by child labour.
Picture the scene: I'm a bit skint and need a present for a karateka friend's birthday. The answer is clearly to make something for him. I'm also very lazy, but luckily I have a small child handy to do all the hard work for me. Result!
First up is the chi shi. I'm using a length of old curtain pole. I had to wait a little while as my workforce had to scare off some monsters.
The pole wants to be long enough to come up to your knee, so this one's going to be chopped in half to make two chi shi. Chi shis?
The pole is going to be embedded in concrete and needs something to give it some purchase to hold it there against leverage in use. So I drilled a few pilot holes to avoid splitting the pole and knocked through 5 or so long nails. I think my workforce had brief dreams of seizing control once armed with this, but I got it back with the promise of a biscuit.
I now need a weight to go on the end of the pole. I'm going to use an old paint tin. I popped the pole in and kept it vertical whilst cracking the whip some more. My slave labour started filling the tin with fast setting concrete.
I bought some designed for setting posts in which is all ready mixed and super-fast drying, but you could use anything really. Half way there.
My workforce finished the first one and then repeated the process to complete the second.
Total costs:
Labour: Bribed with 1 Digestive biscuit
Poles, Paint Tins: Free
Nails: 99p
Concrete: £4.99
Now for the Makiage Kigu. This really is very easy, but I'll lay it out here anyway.
I'd run out of curtain pole at this point so had bought a length of pole. I cut it to about 24" and drilled a hole through the middle. I was going to get my workforce to do this but feared a rebellion if they were armed with power tools. Here he is marvelling at my drilling skills.
The pole will be turned in the hands when in use, so we decided to make sure it was nice and smooth with a sanding block.
I tied one end of some old washing line through the hole in the pole, and tied a small weight I am now far too buff to use around the other end. Ahem. I could of course have filled another tin with concrete, drilled a hole in a stone, or used any other kind of weight.
Here's the end result, ready to use.
Total costs:
Labour: Still running on the Digestive biscuit
Pole: £2.99
Rope: Free
Weight: Too puny for my Hulk-like build so free.
For an idea of how to use these two training tools, search for hojo undo (supplementary training) on google or youtube.
Here are a couple of examples from youtube.
Chi Shi
Assorted
There's nothing difficult about making these, especially with free labour, and though they may not do anything you cannot do with other training tools, they are so cheap to make it's almost daft not to, and they give you another couple of bits of fun equipment to play with
Mitch
Thanks for reminding me, MMX. I think I'm going to make myself a lighter one. My current bag tips the scale at 40 lbs. I want a lighter one for speed. I think 25-30 pounds would be good.
