Tein, marked out and ready to be shaped

Make Your Own Training Weapons

When Ivar started teaching Stav in the UK 25 years ago we used the Jo and Boken. These were the weapons Ivar was familiar with from Japan where he had trained for 14 years. It is perfectly possible to explore the principles of Stav using a Japanese method of teaching and training. However, I was curious about the weapons which had been used traditionally for training, and indeed using, Stav in Scandinavia.

Apparently there were eight or nine tradition weapons including: The staff (suitable for walking and skiing and a little longer than a Jo staff.) The axe, but not the Dane or Viking axe, rather a weapon which was used for defence much more recently. An axe type weapon could also be based on the whaling fliesh since the Hafskjold's were involved in whaling for many years. The spear, cudgel or walking stick, the sax, knife and tein. Other weapons were the bow and arrow and the throwing hammer.

I have always been fairly good at working with wood so I tried making my own training versions of these weapons. It wasn't quite as easy as I thought it would be and various prototypes were made, tested, sometimes broken, discarded, learned from and new designs tested.

After 25 years of training pretty much every day, teaching regularly and having made, (I guess because I have not been counting) a few dozen weapons for various people as well as for my own use, I think I have pretty much got the designs as they need to be.

Tein, ready for finishing
You don't actually need specialised weapons for training in Stav. A broom handle will do for a staff. A pick axe handle will do for an axe. A walking stick is a cudgel and wooden or rubber training knives are easy enough to pick up. Or I could make weapons for you, see the price list here.

However, if you have some basic woodworking skills and access to the tools you will need, you could make your own training weapons. You could probably work out the design for yourself if you really wanted to. It did take me well over a decade to get the axe design, for example, just right. So, if you do want to benefit from my experience then you could get my Stav Weapon Making Instruction Set.

The set includes instructions for:

  • Selecting tools, materials and an appropriate place to work.
  • Instructions on marking out so that you know what cut away and what to leave
  • Specific instructions for making the following seven training weapons:
  • Staff, spear, axe, cudgel/lang sax, knife, dagger /tein
    • The full set of weapon plans

    If you are not confident to do the work yourself then you can always ask a woodworker to work from the designs I have supplied you with. The Stav Weapon Instruction Set is supplied on over 20 A4 colour pages. Each sheet is laminated so that you can take the instructions into your workshop without fear of damaging the paper.

    Even if you are not specifically interested in making weapons for Stav training the techniques and designs can be adapted to weapons for other systems. You could certainly have the pleasure of making and using your own staff and training knife.

    The cost is £30 with £3 post and packing for the UK and £6 overseas. If I add any future designs I will send them to you to complete the collection free of charge.

    These plans are also available to Ice and Fire members as pdf downloads from the members only website, along with 50 or so training videos, see the Join page here.

    Please use the Paypal form below or email me for bank account details so that you can make a direct BACS payment. If you are attending a course then we can add the £30 to your course fee and save the post and packing charge.

    Select with or without postage