@nathan shepherd, I'm happy to offer a suggestion. Couple of questions for you first. Will this have other uses? For example, are you looking at a possible walking stick, or is this strictly SD? Second, are you leaning -- intuitively or otherwise -- toward longer (for me, that's ~ 34" or longer, even up to 6') or shorter (for me, that's 26 - 28" or shorter)? I'll explain what I mean by that a bit later, and why it matters, hopefully also with a video or two to illustrate.
Not quite a bat in this photo -- more like a blackthorn knob stick -- but it captures the spirit of a British Isles gang in an artistic way. (This was Kubrick, right?)
Blackthorn was the traditional wood used in the Irish shillelagh. Not that they could not be all uniform and factory looking, bit all the ones I have seen and held are quite the opposite. They are twisted and gnarled. The "tree" is more like a dense wood bush. (The arent known for being straight in branch or trunk.)They used to slather the club in lard and stick it up the chimney to cure it. It is one nasty effective weapon that anyone can use. That movie is Kubric. It is Clockwork orange.
Yes, correct; def knew it was Clockwork Orange, but couldn't remember if it was Stanley. Fits his style. And yes, blackthorn. Never owned one, but have researched them for years. Someday. They're hard to come by -- at least good ones -- and sort of expensive. I was introduced to them by study of Glenn Doyle's work in Irish stick fighting. He's the (at least one the) masters of contemporary ISF. I'd played a bit with bo staff training -- keyword "bit" -- then found ISF, mainly Glenn's work. Even though I still mostly carry longer sticks (my fav is 53"), I still use a lot of the techniques that Doyle teaches for shorter "cane" sticks, knob heads, including blackthorn. I sometimes carry my knobstick (beautiful piece of English ash), especially in summer when going "downtown". But mostly, I prefer my staff. And yes, crazy English. I'm Scots, Irish, English and a bit of French (via the Irish, interestingly enough), but the Scots and Irish in me fights with the English. Usually, the Irish and Scot side of my genes and demeanor wins. We Irish can be pretty crazy, too, but in a different sort of way ... Here's a nice summary of Glenn's work. If one searches his name along with "Irish stick fighting", you'll find tons of instructional videos. He's up in Canada -- near Toronto, I think -- or is it Montreal? I hope to take one of his classes someday. I've communicated with him about it.
Another Doyle ISF video, kind of a trailer with fighting music. If I ever have to fight the big guy in a black t'shirt, I hope I have my 9.
I use 2 sticks, one is a 37" black walnut shepherd's crook top. You can walk right thru a store with it. The other is a 5' 8" pin oak, cut whole in winter. A staff the perfect height to break spider webs before I walk into them.
I'm thinking something on the smaller size (insert a, it's not size that matters but what you do with it, joke here) It will only be used for SD. I want something to tuck away by the front door of the house that I can use if needed, but most people won't have a clue what it is. I live in a heavily wooded area so I have a huge choice of types and sizes of wood to make it from. My first choice would be Hazel, there are lots of it growing and it's a damn hard wood.
Reminds me of the wager between Chuck Norris and Superman on who was the strongest. Loser had to wear his underwear outside his pants....
Common in the US is a coat rack or tree and a 8-10 inch around bucket of sorts used for umbrellas and such, usually found in the entryway or foyer of the home. A walking stick/cane sized section in the bucket probably wouldn't even be noticed.
Golf club is a good thought, another might be the collapsible baton (Asp) most often used by police. I'm not versed on the laws of the U.K. so it might not be an option. I've trained on them, you can seriously beat a fool down with one, easily kept laying on the facing above the door tho. Small and discreet....
@nathan shepherd, you're already getting some good suggestions here. Now that you've clarified your thoughts a bit -- which are quite reasonable -- I'll offer mine a bit later today. I want to think on it a bit while I get some work done. I'll share with you what I'd do in your situation, and why. Then you'll have lots of choices. Also, @ManOfSteel, I've been thinking a lot about your question re why TDI vs, say, Izula. I wanted to think about it over night, and take a pic or two of both together. I'll write it up later today also. I'm enjoying this thread.
OK, so there are two tasks for me here. First, address MoS's question about why the TDI and not an Izula -- which I clarified above, for me, it's Izula alone vs Izula + TDI (for town; TDI + RB3 for woods). Then, comes Nathan's interesting (and for me, fun) question about sticks for SD. I've been thinking about both today, on and off during work and a 1.5 hour walk in the woods -- including down a new stretch of the snowmobile trail that I haven't walked before, where I got about 5 min of video footage of two small deer walking slowly and cautiously across the trail. But that belongs to a different thread about deer dragging their toes. So, I have a pretty thorough response to MoS's question -- I could easily turn it into a pretty substantive essay. But I'm in the middle of dinner, and have a few other things I need/want to address tonight, so I'll do this for now. Here -- below -- are two photos I took shortly ago -- side by side, with and without sheath -- to illustrate what I want to write about them, about why both are going to be part of my kit, but for substantively different uses. (In ecology, we'd say they fill different niches while living in the same habitat.) I'll post these here, and let's see how many of my reasons you can guess. {Hint: there are at least four reasons, but each have at least a couple of factors involved.} Now, a caveat: I am NOT a knife expert in any stretch of the imagination. I'm neither designer, nor maker. All of my opinions are just that -- opinions -- and can be taken with how ever much salt is desired, or ignored. Said opinions are based on the fact that I've owned knives continuously for 60 years (since age 6, when my dad gave me my first), and have studied them, especially after joining this fine forum (but starting far before that). I'm not claiming any of my opinions about these two knives -- or any others -- are "right" in some kind of absolute or universal way. I'm just claiming that I hold a hypothesis -- a testable one -- that it's right for me, for my uses, in my set of circumstances, in the context of the rest of my kit. YMMV. OK, pics. Time for another bowl of egg drop green chile chicken stew. I think I'll try this bowl with some Parmesan. {Edit to add: I changed the 2nd pic. The original was the other side of both blades -- "Made in Taiwan" for the TDI, "Rowen" for the Iz. While I acknowledge that the Iz is produced in the US -- and that's a plus for me -- the fact that the TDI is not doesn't dissuade me; it has redeeming qualities, not the least of which is it's a Kabar. But I thought this angle shows their better faces, and -- in hindsight -- illustrates one of my reasons better than the original.}
OK, one more for the trifecta. This one better illustrates one of my reasons. Let's call them exhibits A, B and C, top to bottom.
