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Korean Academy of Taekwondo 2018 Year in Review

Our 38^th year, 2018, was another great one! In addition to these there were many demos, kicking pictures taken around the world, new students, setback and victories. See some of the highlights of the last 12 months, in no particular order.

RMMAF Banquet and Tenant Awards – The 1^st annual Rocky Mountain Martial Arts Foundation banquet was a huge success! We had a ton of fun and raised nearly $6,000 for our foundation’s endowment. Thanks to everyone who donated, especially to GM Ghassan for ‘generously’ donating back kicks. See all the winners and pictures at https://kattaekwondo.com/2018-rmmaf-banquet-and-tenant-awards/

Black Belts – KAT Awarded 30 new black belt ranks, including 14 1^st dans, 9 2^nd dans, 3 3^rd dans, and 4 4^th dans in the fall and spring tests.

KAT Head Master Sword – After many years we finally finished the KAT Head Master sword. It is likely the only sword in the world made from bulletproof glass, meteorite shards,  a GPS tracker, rayskin, etc. https://kattaekwondo.com/kat-head-master-sword/

Sport Poomsae Team – Instructor Cat Tong and Master Katie’s forms class is doing great, with many black belts coming back to train. Look for this team to have special results in the future!

KAT Starts BJJ Class – Although the grappling techniques we have been teaching since 2004 have helped many students defend themselves in real life, we wanted to kick things up another level with the addition of a full BJJ curriculum. We are thrilled to be working with Tom Lynn and Academy Martial Arts under Ghost Squad BJJ. This will have a big impact on the kind of training we can offer in the future.

White Tiger Championships – The 2018 White Tiger Championships was our biggest tournament ever, with 375+ competitors (except 2010 Collegiate Nationals). We even had a team from Iraq come to train with us and attend the event.

Tournament Results – KAT had another great year in the ring. We took 3^rd overall in state, making 7 of the last 8 years where we finished with a top 3 ranking. In the US Nationals, we earned the most sparring medals (11) that our school ever has.  https://kattaekwondo.com/2018-us-nationals-results/

New Handbooks – 2018 saw the publication of the 4^th edition of the KAT Handbook, which split the content into versions for color belts and black belts.

Scholarship – Josh K won the Michael Pottle memorial scholarship to attend college in Hawaii. Josh was the first person to go from little tigers to black belt at KAT, and the first American to win a gold medal in the 12-14 year old world championships.

License Plate – Former students Daisy and Gabriel stood next to Gov Hickenlooper as he officially created a childhood cancer license plate for CO.

Mike Duran – Mike passed away suddenly this year and was honored with KAT’s 2^nd ever posthumous black belt which was presented at his funeral.

SwordQuest Movie in Theater – Our summer camp completed a 5 yearproject to get the Lands of Daranortrilogy made into a feature length movie. The movie premiered in the MovieTavern in Aurora. It’s been amazing to literally watch these kids grow up during the production. See the Movie

I want to take a minute to say how proud I am of all the athletes, coaches, parents and staff who are part of KAT Network. Last week we were operating at a high level in 4 different states (CO, NV, UT and FL) at the same time. The crazy part was that Master Katie Pottle and I were even able to spend some important holiday time with her family in the midst of everything going on. .

Master Samuel Douglas, Master Bethany Brook Melnick, Master Jacob Gallegos and Instructors Tadan Fĺíghţ Rose and Mahayla took care of classes while Master Kamil, Master Matt and SirGregory Salonis were taking care of business at Nationals.

I only trained most of these competitors sporadically, all I did was put the right instructors in the right places and try to support them as best as I could.

I think Lotus School for Excellence has really set a new standard for academic schools funding their Taekwondo teams as they do with the rest of their sports, and the results speak for themselves.

I am super proud of STORM TAEKWONDO CO for getting to such a high level so soon after taking over a full time dojang.

Besides the medals, it’s important to me that everyone conducts themselves as a martial artist should. Grandmaster JK Chung used to say “If you have bad discipline, I don’t care if you win the Oympics – I won’t even give you a yellow belt.” I am happy to have this fine group of people representing what our dojang stands for. 

We have a lot of great things happening in the dojang!  You can also see the pdf version

The 2018 Spring Black Belt Test was a success!  We had a lot of students testing, including some more of our Silver Tigers.  Here are some highlights….

Ninja Mile (our pre-test warm up, if you will…).  It is a mile long run, with stops all throughout.  We began with meditation.

Did some forms….

And lots of other fun stuff.

Back at the dojang, we did lots of forms, including the ever popular multi-directional forms.

  

   

We also had egg sparring.  If you aren’t familiar with this, one person has a raw egg to defend, while their opponent tries to break it.

 

Som of our Silver Tigers opted to do a fight scene, which is one of the requirements they can choose from.

 

And, of course, here are some board breaking highlights:

 

Everyone did a great job and worked so well together!

There are 3 ceremonial items for the current head of KAT. We have a ring, a blue and silver belt, and the KAT Head Master’s sword. After 6 years under construction, the sword is finally finished.

The sword embodies our school motto, “A Mind in the Future and a Heart in the Past.” The sword was made with both very traditional techniques and materials as well as very new ones. The blade is a combination steel/lexan (bulletproof glass) and the blade also contains meteorite shards, a GPS tracker, school records, and security tools.

Part of the reason construction took so long was that it is believed to be the first sword of its kind ever made. Master Katie and I needed to reach out to experts in several domains including Steven Campbell (Blacksmith, Metalworker), Master Sam Douglas (Mechanical Engineer), and John Hoffman (Master Woodworker).

The sword took so long because it was usually on the back burner, it was our first time combining these various skills together, and it is believed that this is the first of this type of sword ever constructed. Here are the general instructions and some pictures we took along the way.

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Tsuba (handguard)

The tsuba is made in the shape of the KAT logo with a hole in the middle for the blade. It was made by casting mint proof coins that had never been touched by human hands from 1980, the year the school was founded.

Before casting, we hand carved a wax model and embedded meteorite fragments to form the mountains of the KAT logo. We made a plaster negative, burned out the wax, and then melted the coins and poured it into the mold.

We wanted a silver finish, so we first treated the tusba with a coke bath and then used a dremmel tool to get it to shine.

 

We tried several options to get a nice silver – first we thought about plating silver, rhodium, or another medal. However, commercial solutions were expensive or toxic. We tried zinc plating by setting up an apparatus at home. It worked somewhat, but the final result wasn’t great. Finally we bought some silver polish from amazon that worked decently.

 

 

 

 

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Blade

Ever since I was a kid and no one in our boy scout troop could break our lexan water bottles, I wanted a sword made from the lightweight and powerful material. Although lexan would be perfect for a bokken,  it can’t hold an edge. Since traditional katana used high and low carbon steel to give their swords both strength and the ability to be sharpened, we wanted to do the same thing. The blade itself is made from lexan, with a groove cut in the middle where we can fasten the thin steel cutting edge.

For step 1 we used a jig saw to cut the pattern into a 1/2 in lexan sheet. Step two was to use a router bit to angle the blade down to the point where it was a trapezoid. The router made

the blade no longer clear.

The next step was to use an 1/8 in bit to cut the groove for the sword. However we ran into problems – the plastic melted from the heat and then the ‘sawdust’ cooled back in the groove. In order to get around this, we needed to use 3 different passes at different depths, and also to blow air from a high powered compressor into the crack to eject the shavings before they could re-cool.

 

 

For the blade itself  we used a mid carbon weld steel. First Master Sam cut it out from the sheet.  Next he sharpened it on a grinder to build the edge geometry, then refined it on a sharpening stone going 200-300-400-600 grit. He tempered it with an oxy-propolyene torch and then heat treated in an oven at 350 Fahrenheit for 4 hours to strengthen it. Finally he  buffed the edge on a bench grinder buffing wheel with a course buff and fine polish compound.

Once the two parts of the blade were both complete we set the steel inside the lexan and fixed it there with four hex bolts.

 

 

 

 

 

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Menuki

For the menuki we used Prescious Medal Clay (PMC) to get 100% silver items. Master Katie shaped them with clay tools and then we fired them with a torch. On one side there is a tiger where we embedded blue jewels for eyes and on the other side there is a dragon with a red jewel for an eye.

 

 

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Handle

For the handle of the sword we used maple, routing the edges so that it was smooth and then routing a groove so that the lexan tang would fit snugly inside. We also used a screw to further fix it in place.

Unfortunately, we needed to make the maple handle thicker than we wanted due to the vibrations in the lexan that cracked our first try.

Once we had that, we also added the GPS tracker as well as computer security tools and special school records.

Before we wrapped the handle we welded a collar by folding steel around the edge of the blade and then welded it shut.

For the samegawa (handle wrapping) we used genuine stingray skin that we ordered from Japan. Due to the length of the handle we needed an extra large piece. The skin is pliable when wet yet holds its shape well when dry. It also helps to hold the wood of the handle together.

After we had this then we used blue silk cord to wrap the handle in the traditional manner. Unfortunately, due to the thickness of the wood we needed to use, the silk cord was too short.

We got around this by sewing two pieces together, and then continuing the wrapping. We were having trouble coming up with the piece to fit over the end as a pommel, but we were able to use a pluming end cap from home depot that we were able to paint silver.

 

 

 

 

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Saya (Scabbard)

This one was pretty much straightforward woodworking – we made it by routing out two sides of maple and then gluing them together. We smoothed the edges with a router and sandpaper, and then painted it white.

We added the kanji for Kaizen in black paint and also added on the names of the KAT Head Masters as well as the dates of their tenure.

We added laquer to get a nice shine.

 

 

 

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The last thing to do, of course, was some test cutting. We are happy to report that the sword does cut well.

In the end making the weapon was a very valuable experience because we all learned a lot. We can also see why Lexan swords aren’t in widespread use, but this one will be a valuable symbol to pass down through the ages.