It’s ok if you think I’m wrong, the community of martial artist that I hung around with considered them as junk too, it’s to bad I can’t call them up and prove it lol, that was a long time ago. I just hate to see someone hail these as great chucks, which in fact they wasn’t from my point of view.
That was the vibe 30 years ago…
Well I'm not going by the opinion of a community X number of years ago.
I'm going by 30+ years of experience. And that is time spent doing weapon on weapon exercises and a lot of hard use that was more the result of youthful exuberance than traditional instruction or usage.
I laid my hands on nearly every pair of nunchaku that looked sturdy back then.
The only survivors are a couple pairs of speedchucks, a pair of shureidos and the ones I got from Dolan's. I also have some Kemcos but I got them 10 years ago and never really beat them up, they are quality but haven't been through it.
The Dolan's $5 Rock Maples held up as well as any other pair. In most cases I gave them away to students as I owned Rosewood and Cocobolos which I preferred. Had I known the day would come when Dolan's would be no more, I'd have bought more and kept them. Since they were $5 and could take it, Dolan's were the ones we used to attempt (and on occasion succeed) to break cinder blocks with. We didn't have the heart (or the money) to try these breaks with the $10 Rosewoods. I'm sure they'd have held up just as well or better.
Speedchucks usually didn't survive as the BB caps usually broke away from the stick before the cinder blocks broke. In fairness speedchucks were about $12 so we didn't try this very often with them. That is probably the big reason I still have surviving speedchucks.
I had a pair of Shureidos that I totally trashed as they were my favorite for breaks. I had more confidence in the triple cord connection than the double cord Dolan's connection. I could have restrug the Dolans but we never bothered. The Shureidos also seemed to have a slightly different taper that fit me better. The ragged out pair never broke, but they began to splinter so badly (any stick would on cinder blocks after several days) that I eventually tossed them. I have a pair I bought at the same time which I didn't use for breaks.
I've literally destroyed dozens of imports (mostly those from AWMA) that didn't last a single day.
Now eventually we did kills some Dolan's but they literally lasted 20 times longer than most other nunchaku. The only time a swivel chain went was if we split a stick so badly the retaining screw gave.
I'd sure be interested to hear what nunchaku you guys used 30 years ago which were superior? Almost without exception I found the Dolans to be the best on the market and that was the general consensus of everyone I knew who used them as a weapon. And even today they are sorta considered the grail, one of the reasons Woodalls is so popular is they seem to be following the Dolan's tradition, albeit at a slightly higher price.
I plan to get some Woodalls, and I'm sure they will be excellent, just wish I could reasonably afford to get several dozen.
