I Drove Up to Pick Them Up in Person

I drove up to collect them in person rather than have them shipped.

Partly because I wanted to see the shop. Mostly because a handmade pair built from reclaimed barn timber felt like something worth picking up rather than trusting to a cardboard box and a delivery driver.

Two pairs, two woods

What I picked up was two finished pairs, not one.

White oak with a black stain, and natural walnut. Different timber, different finish, same nine-step process — the same barn-to-lathe chain I’ve written about before. Neither was built to order. They’re just what was finished and ready when I got there, which happens to be the most honest possible demonstration of what “reclaimed” actually means: the wood available is whatever the barn gave up, not whatever a catalogue promises.

That’s the whole point sitting on a table, though — two pairs, two species, one process. If you’ve been picturing one fixed material, this is the correction: custom orders can be made from a number of different wood species, because the input isn’t a lumber yard with a standing order, it’s whatever reclaimed stock has cleared grading. Species, grain, and finish will vary from pair to pair by nature of the material, not by inconsistency in the work.

What’s actually in stock

As of right now: one pair of each. That’s the entire inventory.

Not a scarcity tactic — just the truth of hand-turned objects made from salvaged timber. There’s no back room of finished pairs waiting to ship. Every pair that exists, I can tell you about specifically, because I’ve either turned it or driven up and held it.

If you want one and both of these are gone by the time you’re reading this, that’s what a custom order is for — made against whatever reclaimed stock is on the rack next, in whatever species that stock turns out to be.

Seeing the shop changes the math

I’d written about the nine steps from a standing barn to a finished pair before I’d ever picked up a finished pair myself. Reading a list and watching two actual finished objects sit on a table in front of you are different kinds of understanding.

The stain on the oak pair isn’t hiding anything — you can still read the grain underneath it, which is the point of a stain versus a paint. The walnut needed none at all; it does its own work. Holding both at once made the “every pair is different because the barn was only built once” line from the product page stop being copy and start being obvious.

Back to the mat

The pairs are home now. One of them is getting broken in the way I described in the last post — slowly, outside, with a healthy respect for the return.

If you want a pair of your own, the product page has the two currently finished and the way to ask about a custom order: bjj.ac/gear/nunchucks.