Page 1 of 1

Bo shuriken

Posted: Sun Sep 16, 2018 6:27 am
by Psychlonic
What it says on the tin, I want to discuss them.

Lately I've been on a spree making various things, amongst the weaponry has been bo shuriken from both round and square stock. As "entertainment" I've really taken to throwing them since, for whatever reason, I'm great with traditional Japanese shuriken whereas I completely suck with more western/Hollywood style knives, axes, etc. I'm trying to identify what exactly the spikes are I made the squared shuriken from but they're fantastic high carbon spikes that make bo shuriken on par with cold steel torpedos albeit not quite as big. Still, tons of fun to throw and hits like an aerial sledgehammer. Absolutely wrecks targets. The round bo shuriken were made from large round spike nails.

I'm sure there's a name for the style, but I throw by holding the back of the shuriken in the center of my palm with the point come up my middle finger and the fingers outside of that to pin the shuriken into place. The shuriken is then thrown from a downward motion simply relaxing the hand just after reaching the downward motion, no spin imparted. I find I can stick a target pretty handily out to about 10m currently.

Although I don't necessarily advocate their use during ops, I do find them pretty entertaining!

Re: Bo shuriken

Posted: Sun Sep 16, 2018 9:01 am
by Spooky Alien
Shurikens are definitely fun to play around with, although I’m not sure how much use they would be on ops. The only experience I’ve had with them is cutting some 4 and 6 pointed ones out of old sawblades and chucking them at an old door, with moderate success. Shurikens were mainly used as distractions and mild annoyances to enemies, but a rock would probably do about the same thing in the shadows (unless I’ve missed something from all of this).

Re: Bo shuriken

Posted: Sun Sep 16, 2018 10:22 am
by Xanatos
Rocks tend to bounce off their target, and unless you twat the sucker right in the face with it they'll just get pissed off rather than staggered. With a shuriken, if it sticks, they'll have a bit of a panic in trying to remove it and will think twice before resuming the chase.
Still wouldn't advise carrying them on ops though, given this is an extremely unlikely scenario and you don't want to escalate the situation to where blood is drawn.

Shuriken are by their nature made as 'disposable' weapons, something you use once and move on. You don't need to worry too much about what quality metal you use for them as they don't need to retain an edge (or even a sharp point, really) so you can use the cheapest iron you can find to quickly bang out several to practise with.

Re: Bo shuriken

Posted: Sun Sep 16, 2018 3:08 pm
by Psychlonic
There's a reason this is in spurious generalities and not in gear, gentlemen. :wink: You're looking too far into this. I'm bringing this up as an off-topic discussion for a skill in and of itself, not how it could be used during ops.

Going on about the metal quality, honestly mild steel works pretty good and I tend to find lots of 1/8" gauge plate laying around salvage areas here which works great for quick and dirty "stars" along with flatter no-spin designs I plan to play with soon. I also think it's why I find using larger spike nails enjoyable. They're cheap and produce a good shuriken. The points are somewhat soft but it's not a problem unless you completely miss your target or something and smash it into something hard (something I'm guilty of doing when I first started relearning the skill). I've also taken an interest in the swallow tail design as a novelty, may belt out a dozen of those or so sometime this week and take a crack at throwing those.

As for the idea of them being a distraction and "mild annoyance", I used to think that way myself but I'm pretty sure the idea was simply adapted from ancient armies at the time and beforehand who used compact throwing weapons of similar idea to increase unit capability. A good recorded example of this would be the Roman "plumbata". Several were stored in the shield to be thrown before entering melee with the enemy. This wasn't intended to kill your opponents (although with enough luck it was possible) but rather maim them and hurt their fighting capability.

In a time before more powerful compact ranged weaponry (pistols, namingly) the idea was sound. If you took a heavy 10-12" spike to the torso out of nowhere as you're closing to fight an enemy who just appeared in front of you, the shock of knowing you just got hit by a potentially fatal attack before instantly having to melee against your attacker with said dart still in your body would be a real shit show. That's a lot more than just a nuisance, that's a fight changer and it's a weapon that can hit extremely reliably within its range and penetrate far deeper than the plate-derived shuriken. It may not drop the guy but if he doesn't receive medical attention afterward - assuming he fends off his attacker - he can absolute die from the wound it creates.

This isn't to say the "star" style doesn't carry its own merits either when a proper heavy enough design is employed but I'm trying to stay on topic. :)

Re: Bo shuriken

Posted: Sun Sep 16, 2018 3:19 pm
by Xanatos
Making bo-shuriken out of steel plate could certainly work, sort of like a double-ended knife. You can carry more at once due to their flatter profile and maybe even throw multiple at a time, although they may be harder to stabilise due to their asymmetric profile as opposed to cylindrical nails, so you may need to adjust your throwing technique.

Re: Bo shuriken

Posted: Wed Nov 27, 2019 12:24 am
by Psychlonic
So I never did get around to plate steel shuriken or swallow tails admittedly, however I never updated this in regard to my originals. I've been using boat nails to make mine and they have pretty hardcore bone-cracking impact on target. I wouldn't want to carry very many, but then again I really wouldn't opt to carry any at all for anything serious. With winter rolling around and plenty of wooden round targets now available again it looks like I'll be passing some time practicing when nothing else sounds interesting.

Re: Bo shuriken

Posted: Wed Nov 27, 2019 2:17 pm
by Xanatos
I find them useful for defending against wild game or perhaps incapacitating/stunning an assailant while you run in the other direction, but these are rare situations that's probably not worth carrying an otherwise impractical tool (unless you're super accurate and can take out cameras from 25m with one). Still, I think it's an interesting skill to explore - bo shuriken can be literally anything: nails, railway spikes, weighted pens, wooden stakes, knives, etc. Might not be totally applicable to opping, but any skill is a skill worth learning.

Re: Bo shuriken

Posted: Tue Dec 31, 2019 2:23 am
by Psychlonic
Fun fact of today, a Farallon Shark Dart is the first legitimate, lethal, potentially instant-fight-stopping shuriken I've ever used/seen. Ok it's not meant to be a shuriken of any sort but the weight is in the back and you can no-spin throw it for quite some distance. The impact is much like you've seen with WASP knives but even worse as it dumps out the CO2 faster and through twin outlets. Oof. Had some fun today practicing on some jugs filled with water. Needless to say the impact destroyed whatever jug it stuck into as the CO2 expanded inside and blew out the jug completely.

FWIW, the Shark Dart is basically an impact-activated WASP knife of sorts. It's a much narrower, sharp needle. Not really night ops suitable either, I mean at that point you might as well just carry a firearm.

Re: Bo shuriken

Posted: Tue Dec 31, 2019 5:30 am
by Xanatos
Seems kinda pointless as a shuriken too as they're made to be cheap throwables, and I bet those WASP darts cost a pretty penny.

Still, you'd get points for style. I mean, would you wanna take on a ninja that just exploded one of your friends?

Re: Bo shuriken

Posted: Tue Dec 31, 2019 11:43 am
by Psychlonic
Oh for sure, a "cheap" dart is still well out of budget for any reasonable gear so as you can imagine I set up my targets so misses wouldn't damage the dart. Mostly I hadn't seen it done and the way they're balanced I knew I could throw them easily so I was curious if impact force would be enough to sink in and press the air plunger. Sure enough!

I'm sure anyone with a marginally active imagination could see the value of a device for other things that don't involve throwing it, but that falls outside of the scope of this site.

Re: Bo shuriken

Posted: Wed Jan 01, 2020 6:17 am
by Xanatos
They'd make excellent arrow or spear tips.

Re: Bo shuriken

Posted: Tue Jan 28, 2020 2:24 am
by Psychlonic
Again outside of the scope of things here, but I've been putting thought into creating a custom "instant Legolas" or similar that can fire them some distance. It would make for a weapon platform that could actually be viable defense for those without the means to have firearms - the one problem with [cross]bows has always been stopping power. Sure they'll kill something just fine... eventually. Probably not before it has an opportunity to kill you as well. These would fix that completely.

Only problem is that they would need to be lightweight and presumably custom made - there's no point in having the entire dart assembly plus they're too expensive. A simple lightweight cartridge with custom tips and modified fletching of similar diameter to support it in the magazine would be required. On the upside, you could use a much smaller, quicker bow since the stopping power wouldn't be dependent on the kinetic impact. As long as it could penetrate enough to depress the plunger then it would be consistently effective with every hit on target.

Admittedly, I have no plans to actually get started on this but hey, maybe one day I'll go seek out the appropriate materials and put my tools to work!