As long as everything goes to plan, I'll be at Sword Fest on May 18 in Alexandria, VA. Until about noon I'll be tied up with the responsibilities involved with taking part in my dojo's demonstration, but after then I'm free to chat weapons and koryu. And koryu weapons.
I've been working with the work queue effectively closed for over a month now and I figure I'm past due making a post about it. Early last fall I applied for admittance to finish my bachelor's degree -- something I've been kicking myself for over the last 25 years.
Projects completed over the intervening months since my last update: Takeuchi-ryu kogusoku reference model in jatoba, several of the heavier tessen in black locust and osage orange . . .
First lumber shopping trip in a few months -- it doesn't look like the price of jatoba is coming down. It's almost twice per board foot what it was when I started out just a few years ago, and the cuts are a little thinner so I have to turn to the 5/4 stock instead of the 4/4. Still, I managed to get some good selections suitable for a waiting order and a few likely projects.
The website migration is largely complete -- all the existing content is moved into the new content management system, and I'm exploring additional features like media management and presentation, tagging and indexing, and customized layout. This will be so much easier than the old system, plus the theme I'm using scales nicely for handheld devices.
I was asked recently if weapons with no sori were easier than ones with. "Depends," I said. When they're 136cm long, and you've got to maintain straightness and taper, it's not so easy. Then when you have a batch of them going to the same dojo . . .
I don't feel good about how long these took, but I am glad I didn't rush.
The domain name was about to expire, my legacy hosting with Apple is slated to end, so I’ve got a new host set up and will be transferring the domain registration to the new host. A brief outage is not out of the question.
In the meantime, a shot of my workbench today with half of the in-progress Shinkage-ryu odachi.