Survival Arts

A great time had by all at last weekend's "Guns 'N Blades" Dale Seago seminar

I'd meant to post this a week ago, but I just now recovered the digital camera I left at the Bujinkan Stockton dojo in my post-training fatigue.

Those of you who didn't make Dale Seago's Guns 'N Blades seminar at the Bujinkan Stockton dojo last weekend missed a training event worth travelling for.

As had been advertised in the original announcement, and at the request of the Stockton dojo, Dale spent some time talking about the care and maintenance of Western-style blades. Pictured above, Dale speaks about the differences in sharpening techniques between blades with conventional bevelled edges, e.g. most pocket knives, regardless of expense, and the relatively less common convex edge on a blade such as the custom Bowie pictured with Dale here.

I had known about sharpening and honing techniques particular to bevelled edges; I'll remember what Dale had to add with respect to convex blades whenever I own such a specimen. What really surprised me was, when in the discussion of the use of steel rods and leather strops for finalizing an edge to remove the "wire edge" burr created by sharpening, Dale recommended plain cardboard as an alternative strop! I'd not known this before, but cardboard is typically impregnated with silicates (the stuff sand is made of, folks)... which explains why blades dull so easily when cutting it! Finding out these little gems about the "commonplace" of everyday life helps keep one young.

The seminar was held in Stockton, a bit less than 2 hours from Dale's home dojo in San Francisco, relatively close but apparently far enough that the only attendees were regular Bujinkan practicioners. Good for us, but those of you who've not trained with Dale really should take the opportunity to train with him.

I should mention that the very reason I took up the Bujinkan martial arts was that a good friend, Kennita Watson, a bit less than 6 years ago forwarded an annoucement from Jeff Chan's ba-firearms mailing list (since migrated to Yahoo! Groups) to a local extropian mailing list advertising a firearms retention & disarming seminar. I'd been studying a number of other systems in the previous years, and at the time had been studying northern-style long fist kung fu, but had never felt "at home", especially as a gun owner: my training had always felt disjoint in that regard.

Well, the intervening years are history, some of which found me training and living in Japan: I'd been convinced. Last weekend was incredibly interesting for me in light of the fact that I've been through quite of few iterations of Dale's handgun retention & disarming seminars, but this was the first I'd attended which was (by default only) attended only by current practicioners. As Dale noted in a a followup mail to our dojo mailing list, he was able to cover material to which he normally devotes 8 hours... in about 1.5 hours. This is nearly Hatsumi-style pacing.

So, we had time for the pistol-oriented training track, the knife-oriented training track, and the detailed sit-down lecture on Western-style knife maintenance. As was usual at these events, and typical of non-sports oriented old-style Japanese warrior arts systems such as the Bujinkan and a few other surviving systems, training was conducted in a warm, friendly, and incredibly helpful and supportive manner. The people of the Stockton dojo were great hosts, and made everyone feel at home.

Posted by Russell Whitaker at February 17, 2003 10:36 AM | TrackBack