Taking good care of your Ultimate Weapon can improve its longevity and helps you get the most for your money. After all, your weapon is an investment. The more you practice the better you get.  Hopefully, you will be spending several hours every week practicing with your weapon, so weapon maintenance is equally important. In the same ways that you should perform routine car care such as oil changes and car washes, here are a few ways to care for your Bo Staff, Nunchakus, Kamas, and Sword.

1. Cleaning: Karate mats can get dirty, and sometimes so can your hands. Unfortunately, that can make your weapon dirty making it sticky. To clean it, just lightly spray a dry cloth with a glass cleaner to wipe down your weapons and blades. Never spray a cleaner directly on the weapon or run your weapon under water as too much moisture will hurt both the film and wood.  If you train outdoors in a grass area never leave your weapon on the ground as grass can hold lots of moisture so be sure to wipe it down with a cloth often.
2. Storage: It might not seem like a big deal, however where you keep your weapon and how you store it is super important. Extreme temperatures, both hot and cold, can affect the film that covers your weapon as well as the wood itself. Never leave your weapons in your car or outside. When storing your Bo try not to lay it flat (horizontally) on the floor because wood expands and contracts and sometimes this can cause it to warp. Instead, the best way is to leave it standing straight up (vertically).
3. Safety: This next tip may seem obvious, but our Ultimate Weapons should not be used for striking objects or people or as my grandson found out, digging in the ground. Our weapons are a high-end competition grade performance weapon made for speed and flash. They are designed to be light weight as to shorten the learning curve associated with difficult skills in the dojo and in sport competition.
4.  Replacement: There does come a time when you need to get a new weapon. One comparison I use is bicycles. If you just ride a bike in the neighborhood or around the block then the bike can last for years. However, an Olympic bicyclist would wear that same bike out in one day, so understand it’s the same for martial arts weapons.  If you are wearing the weapon out, that not a bad thing, it’s actually a good thing and it means that you are getting better because you use it a lot. The World Champions can put their weapons through a lot of abuse and always have several identical back up weapons with them at all times in case of breakage etc.