Welcome to our workshop. We recently moved into our new 3,000 Square foot production facility as of May 2012. Our new facility gives us the ability to manufacture a greater numbers of Wing Chun / JKD / and other martial arts training dummies. This space is a lot larger than our original 1,100 square foot space. Frankly speaking, I’m truly amazed that we were able to keep up with the demand in such a small wood shop. Now that we’re in our new space we finally have a little room to move around without bumping into each other.  We put together a few pics of our shop as well as the tools that we use on a daily basis to give you a better understanding of where and how your new dummy will be made. Enjoy!

 

 

 

This is the administrative area of our shop. Once you place your order online or over the phone, this is where it gets processed. The furniture here is actually for you. We’re not allowed to sit on it because we’re usually covered in sawdust. LOL. If you’re ever in the area you can stop by and we’d be happy to spend a little time talking about martial arts, dummy making, or anything else for that matter. We like meeting our customers and we look forward to meeting you if you’re ever in town.

 

 

 

 

 

Martial Arts Training

In addition to building Wing Chun Dummys we also teach Authentic Ving Tsun Kung Fu. We are a Ving Tsun Academy appointed through the World Ving Tsun Athletic Association as a Certified Charter School. (wvtaa.org).  Eric Hall is the Head Instructor at the academy and he’s been studying Wing Chun for the last seven years. Eric originally started training at the Gung Fu Institue under Sifu David Gallaher in the arts of Jeet Kune Do, Kali, and Ip Man Style Wing Chun. After his first year of training he decided to focus 100% of his energy on Wing Chun which became his primary art. Wanting to gain a deeper understanding of the Wing Chun / Ving Tsun system  Eric decided to switch  lineages and began training with Sifu Darrell Jordan of the Moy Yat Ving Tsun Lineage.  Sifu Darrell is an 8th degree black sash with over 30 years of Experience teaching Ving Tsun and serves as the President of the World Ving Tsun Athletic Association.

 

 

This is one of our training areas here at the facility that we use for practicing form work as well as wooden dummy training. If you’re interested in learning  Authentic Ving Tsun / Wing Chun  Kung Fu you can contact us by e mail or by telephone. The school is a private academy and is only open to active club members. To learn more about how to become a club member you can Click Here. All inquiries will be held in the strictest of confidence.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Wood Shop

Here’s one view of our shop. Due to the irregular layout it is virtually impossible to get a good photo with the correct angle to show the entire area at once. After viewing several of the pics you should be able to get an idea for the general layout etc. If we ever get a break which is highly unlikely, we may even get around to painting our walls. In this photo you can see several of our most popular Wing Chun Wooden Dummy Models. There are also several Jeet Kune Do (JKD) dummies shown.

 

 

 

 The Wood Rack

No wood shop would be complete  without a wood rack. This is where we store all of the precious lumber, various hardwoods, and cabinet ply’s required to construct the dummies. As you can see we’ve got a pretty big rack because at any given time we may have as much as 15,000 pounds of wood sitting on our cantilever shelves. This thing is so tall that we have to use a large ladder just to reach things on it.

 

 

 

 

The Tools

Have you ever wondered what types of tools go into the making and construction of a Wing Chun Dummy? Back in the old days they would just chisel out holes in a log that they cut down. Insert some arms that were shaped with a draw knife, find a suitable sized branch to use as a leg, and plant the post in the ground. Obviously a lot has changed over the years. Here we show some of the most common larger tools that we use here at the shop on a daily basis to build the dummies with.

 

 

 

 

The miter saw probably gets used more than just about any other tool in the shop. It’s the perfect tool for cutting boards to length. We have ours mounted to a custom made 12′ miter saw stand. This makes it a lot easier to handle the large lengths of the hardwood boards as we’re cutting them down to size.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The wood turning lathe is used to turn square stock into round shapes. We use this to shape our full sized Wing Chun & JKD Dummies as well as our arms. This machine  is an absolute must have for carving the neckline into the JKD Dummy Models. Even though we use a lathe to shape the body of the dummy, we do not use a duplicator. This ensures that each hand made piece is unique and one of a kind.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When building a dummy several different thicknesses of wood are used which is why we use a planer. Just about every piece of wood that comes into the shop passes through this machine at some point during its journey. This tool is invaluable during the lamination process as well because it guarantees that all of the wood will be level and smooth to guarantee the best bond possible.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ahhhhhh. The beloved Table Saw. Known as the swiss army knife of wood working tools. You can do so many things with this saw that entire books are written on the subject. We primarily use ours to rip lumber into the necessary widths used for our various dummies, etc. This tool is great for just about everything.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The band saw isn’t quite as common as the other saws however it certainly gets used a lot in our shop. You can literally cut a dummy in half (length wise) with a tool like this. It’s also great for creating veneers and doing re-saw work. I even use this to cut the tops and bottoms of our PVC Dummy Models.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Have you ever wondered how they make square holes for mortise and tendons. This is the machine that does it. It actually drills and chisels at the same time which results in making a square hole.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Although we do the majority of our sanding while the dummy and arms are turning on the lathe, we use these sanding machines to sand down the bases and frames for our dummies. They also come in really handy for sanding signs and flat pieces of wood.  Obviously for the smaller things we still prefer to use smaller hand held sanders.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is one of the best tools in the shop. It’s a vacuum press table. Basically what it does is it removes all of the air from the table and membrane which creates an enormous amount of clamping pressure. If you’ve seen one of our dummies up close then you already know that our glue lines and seams are virtually invisible. This machine is the reason our lamination process is superior to the competition. This machine applies 1,700 pounds of pressure per square foot of surface area and all of the pressure is evenly distributed. Try to do that with a basic hand or bar clamp!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is our CNC machine. We use it to produce school plaques, signs, engravings, etc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And Finally…….This big thing is our cyclone dust collector. It has the sole responsibility of removing all of the wood chips and saw dust from the various different wood working tools in the shop. As you can imagine, we make an awful lot of saw dust around here. Not only is saw dust messy, it’s also a health risk and a fire hazard. This tool is responsible for keeping our shop clean and safe.