Hello. Bonkanon here. It's time for more adventures in experimental weapons design and exotic woodworking. Today we'll be building a massive, over-engineered, fancy spiked club.Materials are :-several pieces of thin stock (1/8in) Bolivian rosewood, Canarywood, and Black Limba.-two pieces of Wenge, 3" wide by 1.5" thick-a piece of aircraft grade balsa-block of cocobolo-kevlar braided sleeve
This is basically going to be an oversize baseball bat with a few big spikes on it. Since it's going to be so big, we need to think about the weight otherwise it would be too heavy to swing effectively. To fix that we're going to make the thick part of the bat hollow.Router is set up to begin roughing out the material
Setup for cutting.
First pass cut.Wenge is pretty hard and I am cutting large grooves here so I'm going slow, making multiple passes before stepping up to bigger bits.
Once I cut out most of the material with a straight bit I switched to a big core-box bit. Here is most of the material removed.
Final cut made with a 1-3/4 diameter bit, then sanded with coarse paper to give a good texture for adhesive to bond too.
Next step, to make the plug that will go inside the bat. This will be made from balsa. I used a router to bevel the corners 45 degrees, a knife to start rounding over the end, and I hot-glued on a temporary support for a center so I could turn it round in my lathe.
Turned & sanded smooth. The hot-glued piece on the end is easily twisted off without harming anything.
Drilling holes in the wenge for excess epoxy to escape
Ready to clampThe paper cups are there to catch epoxy escaping from the holes.
And here's the first secret. This kevlar braided sleeve fits over the balsa core. The balsa is slightly oversize so when the assembly is clamped together it will deform a little forcing out any extra epoxy and making sure it will get a good bond.
Test fit before applying epoxy
Un-thickened marine epoxy was painted all over the Wenge pieces as well as the kevlar-covered balsa core separately. Then the pieces were placed together.
Then it was clamped together. As the clamps were gradually tightened the excess epoxy was forced out of the holes. The stuff on the bottom drained into the cups. The leakage on top was wiped up with paper towels bit by bit as the clamps were fully tightened.
Lots of clamps.
Once the epoxy sets up it's time to prep the blank to be turned in the lathe. Both ends were cut clean and square and I hot glued on a piece of scrap for the lathe centers to fit near the striking end of the bat.
Corners beveled; first with a router and then with a plane.
Next step was to install the pommel so that all the finish turning can be done with the pommel in place. The handle end of the bat was turned down to this round tenon. The pommel body is a piece of cocobolo. I don't want to make the pommel too fancy because I don't want it to distract from the main part of the bat. But I also need it quite big and heavy for balance.The temporary piece of wood for the lathe center is twisted off before assembly.
Pommel was glued on with slightly thickened, dyed, epoxy.
Clamped.
First step is to turn the outside diameter to the finished dimension,.2-7/8" diameter. Overall length is about 48"
>>64943405Then I started working on the handle starting near the big and and working back towards the pommel.
Rough turning completed.
Monitoring this thread
Now to weight the pommel. This will be the final piece of it. I'm not 100% sure what it is, I think it's Ziricote.
I'm going to try and squeeze as much weight into the pommel as I can, so even this part is drilled hollow.
Drilling into the handle for additional weight
Determining how much lead shot I can fit inside
more
Shot was mixed with epoxy and kevlar pulp, then poured back in and clamped together.
Back in the lathe again to complete the pommel.
Excess cut off, now the main part of the bat is 99% finished. The only thing left is to remove the scrap piece for the lathe center on the other end. I deliberately left that in place for support during later work and it will only be removed right before final finishing.
I've got a brief errand to run, I will be back soon. Then we'll talk about making spikes from this fancy wood.
OK, time to make spikes. The spikes will be laminated--basically fancy plywood. Normally plywood has the grain of the different layers crossing at 90 degrees. However we can do better. The spikes will be approximately 45 degrees, so the plywood will be customized to match, with a 45 degree angle instead.These first strips are 4" wide. I cut them into 4 inch squares.Again, the species are Bolivian Rosewood, Canarywood, and Black Limba.
The rest of the strips are 6 inches wide, and these are cut into 4" squares also, but on a 45 degree bias.
>>64943512Forgot pic like a tard
Cutting in progress
45 degree squares ready to go.
Useful offcuts. In fact at first I was only planning on making angled spikes but when I saw those big triangle pieces here I decided to make some straight ones too. More on that shortly.
Pieces ready for lamination in both straight and 45-degree grain.
The idea is to glue them up like this, alternating straight and 45 degree pieces.
That thin wood came sanded to quite a high finish. That's not so good for gluing so I made a simple fixture to hold the pieces and then I quickly hit each glue surface with a random-orbit sander with a 50 grit disc
Gluing up blocks. The goal is to make a total of 8 blocks, each one is 12 layers (1.5" thick). Then these will be cut in half diagonally to yield a total of 16 spikes.
Clamp and repeat.
8 blocks done.It was around this time I realized that I could use the big offcuts from >>64943529 to make 6 more big straight spikes so I prepared to make those too.
The straight spikes can also be made with alternating grain direction for optimum strength.
Clamping together laminations like this is a bit of a hassle because the pieces like to move around. that was OK on the square pieces because they are significantly oversize but I didn't want to deal with it as much with these straight ones, so I made this fixture to hold the pieces in alignment while I tightened the clamps.
Gluing is the same as the squares. Paint marine epoxy on every surface, stack it up, clamp.
Lots of waiting around for epoxy to cure in this project.....
And here are the straight spike blanks once the epoxy set.
Edges cleaned up on a belt sander
Gluing jig used to hold the parts for trimming
this isnt your first woodworking rodeo, by a long shot. that bat on its own is lovely. I kind of don't want to see where its going from there because I dont think the end result will be as good as that stage.I like simple, unadorned, clean lines. However, also, kudos for posting all this here. Wish more people did.
I used a router table and a big cove bit to radius the parts of the spikes that will join to the bat. That gluing jig also ended up being handy for safely feeding the triangular blanks through the router. I did the same with the square blocks, cutting that groove in two sides.
Once those radius notches were cut on the router table I cut the square blocks in half diagonally. They are not cut at the same angle so there is natural variation. The idea is to mimic the natural look of thorns on a vine.
I divided the angled thorns into two groups, and notched them with hole saws. I picked two different diameters, again to give some 'natural' variation. I also drilled a hole into the base of each thorn. These will be dual-purpose, both for securing the thorns to the bat, and also so I can more easily shape them.
Thorn blanks at a rough stage
After some basic trimming on a belt sander
I made this tonfa-looking tool for holding the blanks while I shaped them on the belt sander. The handle at the left is where I grip it. The short peg fits up inside the base of the thorn.
Another tool made from scrap to hold the thorns while shaping them.
Initial shaping, just beveling the sides.
Shaping in progress. You can't see it in this pic but I accidentally scrapped one of the straight spikes by sanding too deep and hitting the center hole.
More shaping in progress. I did most of the work with a stationary belt sander, but I used the sanding drum attachment in this pic to fine-tune the inside curve.
Drum sander mounted in my lathe for shaping the inside.
Test layout in progress...looking real good.
Now to make darn sure the thorns can't come off. This is pure overkill since they have a lot of surface area for a really good glue joint already, but hey, why not. I drilled a hole in the end of a poplar dowel, glued a piece of scrap inside so I can spin it in my drill, and then sanded it down.
Braided kevlar sleeve again
>>64943651That is soaked with epoxy, then tightly wrapped with several layers of release film.
Once set the stretch tape is removed and we now have a super-lightweight, super strong dowel.
Unfortunately, I didn't sand the dowel enough and it came out a few thousandths too big. And that meant I had to make another one. Fortunately I had extra material.
I sanded the outside for the best possible adhesion and then cut it up into the pieces I needed with a Japanese saw folded 10,000 times.
Final stretch now. I finish sanded the thorns....
Sprayed with lacquer. I had zero rejects out of the angled thorns, and just one of the straight ones.
Fiddling around with positions. Here I'm using little bits of blue-tak to hold the thorns temporarily.
Each hole location was marked with a transfer punch & then drilled.
Gluing in progress with thickened epoxy.
More gluing in progress, working on a few at a time. Everything is numbered for fitting.
The straight spikes have longer dowels than the angled ones.
Final spikes glued in place. As you can see I "clamped" these with stretch wrap and used pieces of dense foam to help the wrap not get punctured by the tips.I should have taken a lot more time to mask this properly. The holes I cut in the masking on the bat were quite a bit oversize, and I didn't bother to mask the thorns at all. That was a mistake since the gluing was messier than anticipated and I had to spend several hours cleaning up excess cured epoxy.
Remember those vent holes from way back in >>64943325 ?Two of them ended up having an air bubble trapped at just the right spot to make them visible, so we need to fill those.
Hole packed with sanding dust
Soaked with CA glue
Excess, and the hole, is now gone.
>>64943731Fuck.
Time for finishing
It came out real nice
>>64943747does it wield any different from a sledgehammer? Looks insanely top-heavy, even considering the weight-reduction measures.
>>64943772It weighs a little over 7 lbs, so it's certainly heavier than a bat, but it is a lot better balanced than it looks and nowhere near as bad as a sledgehammer. It's actually surprising when you pick it up. the point of balance is actually quite close to the center. about in line with the spikes closest to the handle.
>>64943804indarasding, great work as always anon
>>64943747ruined it
>>64943815Nah, the thorns were the entire point. I got the inspiration from picrel.
that's a lot more woodworking skills than I expected to see here, also good job making it as solid as possible with all the joints.
what a monumental waste
This is real cool OP thanks for sharing
I always enjoy these threads. OP making some cool shit. I really want a giant wood mace.
Cool thread OP
>>64943747Damn, OP. That came out looking beautiful. Good job.
A lazy fella could go with a nice spruce tree.
You think this thing would hold up if you actually bashed someone with it?
>>64950788
>>64950788beautiful work bonk anon, the lamination spikes remind be of recurve bow handles
>>64943576Bonkanon has posted a few threads about his creations before.
>>64943292Thanks for posting again, bonkanon. Beautiful work, as always. About how many work hours went into the project?
Are you going to try bonking anything with this or are you treating it as more of a display piece? It’s very nice and unique looking.
>>64944015Goddamn, bugs are cool
hit something with itfor durability purposes
