Throughout the many thousands of years of existing sentient life on this glorious planet, those with opposable thumbs and the ability of semi- cognizant thought have sought the use of tools to ease their lives in one way or another. These cherished artifacts of sapient history have been vast and broad, ranging from anything and everything including your grandfather's old yet still wonderfully usable carpentry tools, your grandmother's tea kettle or cookware, to your crazy uncle bob's favorite firearm or your father's antique muscle car. Some cultures such as the Taoists' believe that once an article or object has become a true antique (100 years or more) and that has been cherished and well taken care of gains a soul and a personality. Such artifacts are familiar to most cultures, but in Japanese lore are known as "tsukumogami". I digress however, in lue of a more pressing matter at hand. This matter of hand is on the topic of repurposed and refurbished articles one may cobble together in order to make useful tools for future generations down the line.

One might ask oneself, " what do I do with all these broken tools and spare miscilanious parts I have at the given moment in time? How can I remake them into something useful if they are broken or worn out?" the answer boils down to four things everyone can do and has the capability to do/ utilize. Research, development, necessity, and ingenuity. By researching how older tools and artifacts were made, one can use their ingenuity to develop customized items to aid them when necessity springs forth from your current resources. Prime examples can be found even today in media such as Wikipedia.com, various martial arts magazines, and here oddly enough on furaffinity ( see my gallery for "shambling mystery meat tenderizer" as an example.) in most cases, repurposed objects can be as simple as heading to the local thrift store and finding something useful out of the myriad of junk bits and ends. In others, you work with what you have; such as the example I will recount below on refurbishing cherished items. This example in question, a broken bokuto that had been sundered via a practice session.

It has been almost seven months since I have had one of my prized and cherished presents broken as a result of wear and tear then refurbished into a new form. Suffice it to say, without going into a plethora of seemingly non-sequiter details on the origen of my practice katana, the wooden blade shattered on the proverbial "sweet spot" all blades of such nature crack at- four to six inches from the tip of the blade itself. Not wanting a structurally weak and definitely dangerous practice weapon, I set to the task of re purposing the still salvageable portion with the hand tools I had at the ready at the given time. Using a coping saw, a wood rasp and a mill rasp as well as a coarse/ fine grit sanding block, I cut the broken section of the blade down slightly below the shatter point and shaped it properly. On e that was done, I sanded the rest of the blade and the newly "forged" tip smooth and applied multiple clear coats to achieve the proper level of protection for the wood grain. From there, it was just a matter of re fitting the tsuba and rubber gaskets into place and my cherished blade was reborn good as new. My now new bokuto is the length of a shinobigatana ( ninja sword) and functions as the second companion sword in the customary daisho set ( daisho: the pairing of a long and short sword worn by samurai during the feudal era of Japan).

Case in point, hold true to the old adage, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it. If it is broken, fix it the right way and do so in excellence." just because an item might be broken or missing parts doesn't mean you can't work with what you got and make it good as new.