Building a Wing Chun Dummy

Here’s your chance to see how we build a Wing Chun Wooden Dummy. The first of these two videos provides an in depth behind the scenes look at how we build a Wing Chun Dummy from the ground up.  It’s a great video and once you’ve seen it you’ll never look at the competition again in the same way. Our dummies are built using a combination of old world wood working techniques combined with the latest lamination technologies to produce one of the finest wooden dummies available in the market place. The second video shows how we construct our Half Wooden Dummy Model. If you’ve ever wondered what goes into the construction of  a wooden dummy you’ll really appreciate these.  Please remember to give our videos the The Thumbs Up on youtube if you have a chance.

About our wooden dummies

Unlike most of our competitors Wooden Dummies, these dummies are not being bought from China and then being resold here in the USA. Each and every Wing Chun Wooden Dummy / JKD Wooden Dummy or Mook Yan Jong that we sell at  Shaolin House is carefully hand crafted right here in our 3,000 square foot workshop locate in beautiful Fort Myers Florida.

We take a great deal of pride in the building process and each of our “Wood Working Artisans” is not only skilled in the art of dummy construction, they are also very skilled martial artists.  Our customers really appreciate the fact that they are buying authentic quality martial arts training equipment from skilled craftsmen who actually use these very same tools on a daily basis. At Shaolin House “WE LIVE THE BUSINESS” and we love it!

Our Wooden Dummies are truly a work of art. And even though your new Wooden Dummy will look like it was made from a solid tree trunk the reality is that it is constructed using our proprietary lamination process. It’s like a gigantic Jigsaw puzzle. This design has been refined over and over again to ensure that our trunks live up to the Shaolin House reputation and to make sure that they’re better, and last longer than the competitors. This is one of the reasons why we offer a “Lifetime Guarantee” on all of our dummy bodies.

The core of our trunks are made with Southern Yellow Pine or Douglas Fir and measure 5′ long ” by 6″wide by 6″ deep. Once they receive their final layer of hardwood which is over 1.5″ thick on every side, they measure 5 feet long with a 9 inch diameter.

A lot of people ask us what the advantage is of having a laminate  made dummy over a solid tree trunk dummy and even though there are numerous answers to this question, the best one by far is that a laminated body will never be able to crack all the way through like a solid tree trunk body. To see what we’re talking about just take a look at the pictures below. These are pictures that were taken from one of our competitors wooden dummys. This competitor is a “Well known Manufacturer of High End Dummys”. And this dummy wasn’t cheap either, in fact it cost over $1,200 just for the trunk, leg, arms, and two slats. It didn’t even come with a frame for this price!  As you can see by the pictures the trunk has started to develop deep cracks at the bottom of the dummy as well as the areas where the dummy incurs stress like the arm channels, leg channel, and slat channels. Unfortunately, once the cracks begin to develop its very hard to stop them from going all of the way through.

This is why you want a laminate body vs. a solid trunk body

This will never happen with a Shaolin House Dummy. When we purchase our hardwoods we make sure that they have been thoroughly dried out to the correct moisture content.  This means that your new wooden dummy can quite possibly last a lifetime.  By having a body constructed in this fashion we are able to accomplish several things. First we can cover it in your choice of wood. Because of the unique way that we construct our dummies, you can choose to have them covered in virtually any type of wood that you desire. (Additional fees for various hardwoods may apply). And  the most important thing we accomplish by constructing them this way is that  we can save our planets precious natural resources.