Cane for self defense? Please explain......

[AOK]

AOK,

I've done drills with trained stick fighters and that is a whole other ball of wax. Not impossible but you ARE going to get some severe dings in the process.

I can certainly appreciate that regardless of the fact I have not trained against trained stick fighters. I think that is the same thing regarding any type of weapon. The better the assailant is at using the tool the harder and more dangerous your defense has become.

 

[Owen Sparks]

I am going to give away a secrets here. You don’t always have to “carry” a cane. That is just for the times you are on foot in a potentially dangerous environment. Most of us spend the majority of our time in only three or four places. We are at home, at work, in our vehicle and a few other places we frequent to do our recreation and socializing. If you ever are a victim of violence it is statistically likely to happen in one of these places simply because that is where you are most of the time. Rather than carrying your “walking cane” in and out at work every day you can prearrange to have some other suitable object close at hand that appears to serve some other function. For example, a school teacher I know has a pull down map on the wall right behind his desk that is seldom used. He replaced the pine dowel rod that was sewn into the bottom of the map with a length of steel pipe. Not only does the extra weight make the canvas map hang straight, it gives him the option to use it as a weapon. In an emergency he can get to it in just a few seconds. He also had enough sense not to tell anyone at school that he had replaced the light pine dowel.

Back when I worked at a bar I kept the but half of a two piece pool cue handy at all times. Being that there were several pool tables in the room, pool sticks were a common there and would not look suspicious. If something went wrong and I had to use it as a weapon it would appear that I spontaneously grabbed up something in the immediate environment and it was not premeditated. Again, I kept my mouth shut and did not tell anyone that I regularly practiced hitting the heavy bag and picking individual leaves off the bushes with it. BTW, there is no law against carrying a two piece pool cue in your car either, as long as you have both halves.

Is there some type of stick, tube, pipe, tool or handle that you can have close by at work that would appear inconspicuous? Use your imagination. No one has to know why it is there and unless there is an emergency they will never even find out.

 

[wheelgunslinger]

^ great post, Owen Sparks.

 

[Kingcreek]

Haven't done any in awhile (maybe this winter is a good time to restart) but my walking staffs were made for friends and family and were made to be functional and attractive. I hadn't thought about it until this thread but my daughter lives 2000 miles away and keeps hers by the front door and it always accompanies her and the dog when they walk. Her love-everybody lab was attacked by a loose pitbull and another mixed breed dog and she was able to fend them off as she made it back to the front door. My son-in-law heard the commotion and met her at the door, hustled her inside and grabbed the staff from her. He stopped all canine aggression and administered significant punishment without breaking the black locust staff.
I thin I need to spend some winter night shop time making some more. I've got Osage Orange that was planked 5 years ago and put up in the barn to cure.

 

[Owen Sparks]

Osage Orange is an excelent choice. You can't break it with normal use and it is dense and heavy enough for our purposes. Work it down into a rod about 1 1/4" with no taper and a the weight should be about right. It will start out a bright orange color but over time it will fade to a honey brown.

Good luck and try not to breath the sawdust. It makes some people sick.

 

[Deltaboy1984]

What do the experts think of something like this as a walking aid/weapon?

I have a cold steel version of this it is a walking stick and you will get on issues unless you acting out.

 

[bikerdoc]

try not to breath the sawdust. It makes some people sick.

True that, any kind of sanding should be done with at least a mask.

 

[hso]

You should set up a shop vac with another length of hose running out of your shop to remove the dust from the area instead of just trying to use a dust mask. The fine wood dust will be suspended in the air for quite a while and you're not likely to wait to remove your mask

 

[Owen Sparks]

I used a stationary belt sander out on my deck on a windy day, no problems. As I understand it from some of my archery buddies, some people have a real problem with Osage sawdust.

 

[wheelgunslinger]

Yeah, I'm one of those. It can be very nasty stuff.
I decided to stick with Yew.

 

[Kingcreek]

I should have mentioned that my 5' 0", 110# daughter had no training of any kind and was able to use the staff to keep the 2 dogs away from her and her pup long enough to make the threshold of the front door. The SIL is former Army Ranger and made good use of the stick with whatever training he had.
I'll use a draw knife and sander w dust vac.

 

[craftsman]

I'm getting up in years, and for long walks I need a walking stick. Bought a Harvy (yes, spelled correctly) carbon fiber 37 in. 8.6 oz. Supports up to 250 lb., and is one helluva Martial Arts weapon.

I also have a 42 in. Cold Steel Sjambok. Anyone use one of these?

 

[zxcvbob]

There are some nice bois d'arc and mulberry staves for sale by a bowmaker on eBay.

I wonder if a wooden field hockey stick would make a good blank for a cane? They are typically made of mulberry (which is light weight but tough) or hickory.

 

[Owen Sparks]

I also have a 42 in. Cold Steel Sjambok. Anyone use one of these?

I do. It hangs by the front door. I live with a pack of large dogs and every once and a while one needs a correction. The reason I use the sjambok is that it causes pain without the risk of serious injury (as long as you stay on the flanks and off the spine.) I took a stripe across the back with it once to make sure it was safe for the dogs. I was wearing a light jacket at the time and figured it would give about the same protection as a dogs coat. It hurt like damn it and left a pretty good welt that took a few days to fade but other than that I was unhurt. The light weight coupled with the whip like speed means that all the energy of the blow is expended on the surface and does not penetration to damage muscles, bones and organs.

This is exactly why whips and other instruments of corporal punishment make poor weapons. They are designed NOT to cause deep tissue trauma and that is what is required to stop a determined advisery who may be so hoped up on dope or adrenalin that he is temporarily immune to surface pain. Only muscle trauma or structural damage will stop people in that state of mind. You can only accomplish this with a stick or cane that has enough mass to penetrate below the skin.

 

[hso]

Craftsman,

Why do you thing the Harvy carbon fiber can makes a suitable martial arts weapon? The objective of assistive canes is to be light and stiff with good compressive strength in the shaft. Carbon fiber does a great job of this, but defensive canes need to have great shear and side loading strength across the axis and carbon fiber doesn't handle this very well. Carbon fiber's light weight can make the cane fast, but it can also can make it less desirable in a defensive role since it can make for too light a cane to impart enough force to the blow. If the Harvy is as heavy as a hickory cane it won't be too light to strike with effectively, but if much lighter I'd focus on the thrusting/locking aspects in training with it.

 

[Owen Sparks]

You just can't get a really light weight cane going fast enough to make up for the lack of mass.

 

[Boomer...]

You just can't get a really light weight cane going fast enough to make up for the lack of mass.

It seems to me (fortunately, without regular need to rely on such) an interesting corollary that a heavy cane or walking stick works best defensively for those who don't tend to walk far using them, whereas a lighter cane works best for those who cover more distance. As such, I chose a lightweight C-F stick (as described previously), modified to suit my preferences for longer distances where a heavy weight cane/stick/staff would be tiring to carry.

If that is true, those whom have physical limitations requiring ever-present support (plus those that don't), can choose a more ideal defense device than those who "weigh" (so to speak) all options and choose a lighter alternative? BTW, I know need more training on how to properly "stick it" to potential perps...

 

[JShirley]

When I was hiking regularly, we usually did 7 miles. That's not far, true, but maybe farther than you're suggesting.

I prefer canvas micarta, which is heavier than any wood.

John

 

[Mikhail Weiss]

...I would think an important attribute of a defensive cane would be a fair bit of heft (maybe up to 3-4 pounds?). Would I be wrong in that assumption?

My stick-swinging days consisted of kali/eskrima/arnis, from which I learned that the stick which is slightly light to your hand is much easier to wield than the one that is slightly heavy. You can intercept incoming attacks much faster, counter much faster, and strike much faster. And in sticks of this relative weight, there's little enough difference in the end effect of the strike to matter, so the edge in speed, and your ability to wield the instrument, seems, well, instrumental.

 

[JShirley]

I wouldn't disagree that light, to a certain point, swings faster/easier than heavy. But after doing a lot of striking- dead trees are a favorite target- I came to really appreciate sturdy. I can always build speed.

 

[hso]

There's a balance that has to be met with stick weight. Heavy enough to deliver impact forces and light enough to have speed. Speed is critical in sticks, but you should practice with sticks heavy enough to let you build speed with progressively heavier sticks. Note the important word "practice".

 

[JShirley]

Yep.

I don't know if I still can, but I practiced daily for months with a staff that one of the best staff instructors in the country said was too heavy. After the first couple of months...it wasn't too heavy.

It might be too heavy at the moment, if I had it again. I really regret selling it.

 

[hso]

One of the problems with starting out with too heavy a practice stick/cane/sword/staff/... is the potential for injury. I've seen folks injure themselves due to the repetitive nature of practicing forms using practice pieces that were too heavy for them. I "borrowed" a Jian in class the other day after having left mine at home and the thing was a horribly unbalanced "chunk" compared to my Adam Hsu. For a novice it would have been too heavy and would have risked injury repeating the motions over and over.

Like anything, you have to fit the tool to the individual and the individual has to practice to build skill and speed and strength. You start out at one point and end up at another.

 

[Owen Sparks]

hso said:

One of the problems with starting out with too heavy a practice stick/cane/sword/staff/... is the potential for injury. I've seen folks injure themselves due to the repetitive nature of practicing forms using practice pieces that were too heavy for them.

Absolutly!

I recommend that my students start with something really light like a piece of PVC pipe and get the form down then gradually build up. It is just like Olympic style weight lifting. Many coaches start people out working with just the 45 pound bar and don't let them add weight at all until their form is correct in order to avoid injury. Stick swinging is like Olympic lifting in that it is dynamic in nature and once a heavy barbell or stick gets in motion it becomes much heavier. You can really mess up your wrist or rotator cuff if you get out of form or try to stop the momentum of a heavy stick and snap it back.
Throw every swing as if you knew that you would miss then let the inertia cycle the stick back through one of the basic cocked positions seamlessly and flow into the next technique.

I really should make a tape of my stick fighting seminar.

 

[12gaugeTim]

Whoever said knives are bad for self defense should reconsider.. There have been many cases of people taking multiple stab wounds before they keeled but that doesn't necessarily make them bad for self defense. Nobody wants to get cut and brandishing one can truly make a guy rethink whether or not he wants to be in arms length of you. And they Can kill. I knew a guy (henceforth "bad guy") that was at the beach once, drunk, and beating up on some girl when good guy steps in and tells him to cut it out. A drink gets spilt on bad guy and bad guy stabs good guy (once) in the gut and good guy walks outside and dies in the road.