What wood do we use?

An ideal wooden sword should have a slight amount of flex, great shock absorption, and incredible toughness and impact resistance. Hickory grown in the Eastern American Midwest is perfectly ideal for this. As we are located in eastern Indiana, we use Hickory from the Indiana and Ohio area wherever possible for our swords. The finished product is a weapon that’s incredibly tough, durable, and pleasant to handle. 

While Hickory is the ideal species for wooden weapons, we do sometimes we get requests to use other species, such as Purpleheart, Bubinga, or Garapa. These species all have fantastic coloring and make fine practice swords, however the exotic, tropical wood species are so incredibly hard that they can break other wooden blades fairly easily over time. These woods are also harder to work with and are sometimes over-harvested. To that end, we do fulfill special requests to use these species if the lumber is available legally and locally, however blades cut from exotic species do command a higher price. 

Why our swords stand out

We’ve already established that Hickory is a superior species for use where it will see repeated impact. Nearly all mass produced swords are made with some variety of White Oak. A fine species in its own right, however it isn’t nearly as hard or impact resistant as Hickory. You can see in-depth information on each species here and here. 

After cutting the sword shape out of a wood plank, the wood is then shaped and formed, edges are rounded, and the piece is sanded up to 320 grit. Sanding further burnishes the surface of the wood, preventing oil from penetrating the wood fibers as effectively. 

After sanding, the sword blank is then repeatedly pushed through a press designed to compress the wood fibers on the striking edge of the blade. This makes the blade more durable and resistant to denting from intense practice. After fiber compression, the blade is soaked in 100% Tung Oil for at least 24 hours, allowing for deep oil penetration into the wood. Tung oil is a polymerizing oil, meaning it hardens completely, rather than staying in a liquid state. Once it dries, it bonds with the wood, creating an even harder, smoother surface that feels great in the hand. 

weapons that we make

Currently we produce a child length, hybrid, and full length Korean/Japanese style mid-length swords- the typical boken or jung gum sword. We have plans to be producing staves in Q4 2022 and expanding into some western weapons in 2023 and 2024. View our Etsy store TheHickoryForgeLLC – Etsy or inquire about a special request on our Contact page.