I was inspired to make a wooden katana using left-over hardwood flooring!

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I have always been intrigued by martial arts and after watching Iron Fist on Netflix I had the idea of making my own practice katana. I had a lot of scrap hardwood flooring from our home renovations, so I found some really beautiful pieces and got to work.
Most of the sword is made from left over cumaru teak flooring that I recently used in our house. It has a really beautiful grain pattern and some elegant figuring, plus it's extremely dense and hard. I had just finished watching Alec Steele's series on making a Damascus steel katana, so I had a rough idea on how the whole thing went together.

First, I drew out the rough shape of the blade based on some online dimensions. I cut out this shape on the bandsaw making sure to leave a tang on the bottom that would fit inside the hilt. I rough sanded the blade to give the sword some definition and moved on to the tsuba, or hand guard.

I found another smaller piece of teak flooring for the tsuba. I used some calipers to measure the tang dimensions and transferred those lines to the blank tsuba. I drilled out this space and had to chisel and file the pocket very carefully so that the blade tang would sit snuggly into it. After I had a good fit,  I cut the tsuba into an oval using a paper template.

After researching how katana hilts are wrapped in cotton or silk strips, I decided to recreate that look with an inlayed contrasting wood. I had a piece of scrap oak flooring from my boys' room which would look awesome against the teak hilt. While I worked on other projects, I had my friend Josh CNC out the hilt design and the resulting diamond pattern looked just like a traditional fabric wrap. I hogged out the inside of the hilt to receive the tang and once I got a snug fit, it was time to assemble the major components.

The tsuba fit onto the tang and the tang fit into the hilt. I added a kashira or pommel to the end of the hilt and it was all done. I finished the katana with some linseed oil and beeswax polish and it looks gorgeous! I am so happy to have my own sword and I feel like a true samurai!

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About I Like To Make Stuff:

We have lots of projects including woodworking, metalworking, electronics, 3D printing, prop making and more!

These videos are our attempt inspire and empower others to make the stuff that they want to have. Hopefully you'll see something here that will inspire you to make something that you're passionate about!

How to make a Wooden Katana from hardwood flooring // Woodworking | I Like To Make Stuff
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