I’ve started to build a wing chun dummy.
“The Wing Chun wooden dummy (aka Wing Chun dummy or Ip Man wooden dummy) is a solo training device used in Wing Chun Kung Fu and other Chinese martial arts. The Wing Chun dummy is designed for to teach a Wing Chun student things such as range (distance), proper positioning (hands, body and footwork), fluidity from move to move and to refine the precision of Wing Chun movements.“
It’s a 9″ diameter 5 foot tall round wooden base with 2 angled offset arms, a lower middle arm and a lower leg at specific lengths, spacing and angles. One would normally get an appropriate log and make angled square holes to accept the limbs. As a woodworker I’m not about to chisel out 1.5″ square holes in a 9″ thick ash wood blank, I wanted to find a better way.
I’ve decided to make a test version out of pine for now, the real ones will be with ash. I’m making it in two halves, cut square dado’s with the tablesaw and then glue the two halves together. The only issue was the arm holes, they needed to be not only angled but angled in a way so that the arm ends meet exactly at 8.5″ apart. After drawing it out and playing with templates I made this tablesaw ramp/sled that would cut the dado’s at 14 degree slopes. It’s more complicated than that but I’ll leave that there for now. Possibly a video to come later. With these jigs I hope to make more in a production like process.
