I also made throwing sticks, fist packs, slap jacks and stingers out of barb wire and probably more I forgot.

Ive always liked weapons. I collect axes, hatchets, adzes, cleavers, hammers, swords, knives and Native American artifacts now.

I used to train with knives for hours. I loved mock knife fighting. I was really good at tripping and grappling, while doing it. It made it hard to learn fencing, which is very stylized and proper. I had the bad tendency to grapple and trip, which was frowned upon.

Rapier was really cool to learn.

Keith

I used to make a lot of weapons and train the other kids in how to use them. I would dig clay from the yard and make softball sized mud balls, that I would roll in pea gravel to make them harder and then bake them in the sun. I would make smaller clay mud balls, put them on the end of a stick, so they could be flung and fill them full of honey locust thorns. I made smaller, sun baked, perfectly round clay balls that could be thrown with a sling.

I made sling shots with braided rubber bands that could shoot rocks and sticks with a little branch on them.

I took a thatch rake apart, sharpened up the tines and mounted them in split sticks, so they could be used as a heavy edged weapon.

I drilled an old, broken wheel barrow handle and filled it full of 16 penny, double headed nails to make a heavy mace and did the same with a broken rake handle.

I invented a weapon I called a thriff bar, that was a stick with two fire hardened spikes on the end to thrust with and a 16 penny nail in the middle of the end, that was sharpened. You could fling the nail into something and then thrust with the spikes.

I made wood knives with fire hardened edges and bone knives.

I took a swing set chain and cut it into lengths to fight with.

I took cattails, cut of the heads and dried them flat, to make arrow shafts. I attached sharpened 16 penny nails, with the heads cut off, to the shafts with duct tape. I made broad heads, out of soup can lids. I folded and beat them flat with a hammer and then sharpened them with a file. I made bows out of honeysuckle with nylon rope as bow strings.

I made lots of spears and staffs out of ash.

I split sticks and mounted rocks in them, that I tied or duct taped into place to make mauls.

I built rock forts that were impossible to knock down, with triple, rubble filled walls. I dug out groundhog holes to make fox holes we could hide in.

I dug pits, filled them with punji sticks and honey locust thorns, covered them with thin sticks and then blended them into the forest floor. I also.strung trip wires and snares between the trees. I made the other boys practice running through the pits, snares and trip.wires and called it stagger step running.

I ran drills where my troops fired volleys of arrows, followed by mud balls, then ran through the booby traps and then used the spears, mauls, chains, knives and thriff bars to finish off our enemies at close quarters, once they were crippled by the booby traps. Our pretend enemies were usually Russians.

One day, Frank and Jim, the two brothers down the hill from us decided they wanted to have a gladiator fight against each other, with all the weapons I had made. It went very bad, fast. They got very mad at each other and very bloody. We had to hold them down for a long time until they calmed down. They were covered in blood from head to toe.

It was years later before I realized that every single kid I trained, besides my brother, joined the US military. Most became Marines. Jim ended up on a nuclear submarine in the navy.

As an adult, I taught unarmed self defense, asp baton, pepper spray, straight stick fighting, knife fighting, heavy weapons fighting and fencing.

Catching stuff and fighting have always been two of my favorite things to do.

Keith

Usually 2 or 3 A.M. before I go to bed. And I do check in here several times before I go to bed.
Tom

It is 2:30 a.m.--I am here. Where are you?

Tom

This year along with others … why ?