How To: Make Some Friggin Nunchucks!

Why would we make something that will most likely break our own face? Why wouldn't we!

Disclaimer-Captain DIY and DIYtoFI.blog highly recommend exercising extreme caution when attempting DIY projects. Not everybody can do everything, and some things should only be done by professionals. Keep your digits attached, and keep the insurance company off of your back. Do it right or call the right people!

Alright kids, today we have a fun project with no real purpose other than to make something we can use to hurt ourselves. Yay!

Today we will learn how to make ourselves a pair of Friggin Nunchucks! Why? Because we can! I should mention at the start of this article that nunchucks may or may not be legal in your area, and you should check your local laws before creating this weapon. Also, when they are complete you are going to want to exercise Extreme Caution when playing with them, as they friggin hurt! I have had the knots on my forehead to prove it.

This project rates pretty low on the Skill Needed scale, and if you have a few simple tools you should have everything you need.

Now that we got past all of that, time to get into the fun part: Making the Friggin Nunchucks.

We will start with a nice dowel of around 1 1/2” diameter and at least 20” long. The one I happened to have was right at that length, but if you have one thats a little bit longer that’ll work even better. We will first cut the dowel into two equal lengths of at least 10”.

Once we have our two lengths, it’s time to get to drillin’. Drill a good sized hole, In this case it was 1/2”, down the center of the end on both of the dowels. You only need this hole to go down about 3/4”, so don’t get too crazy.

Now it’s time to drill across for our string. Roughly at the bottom of the hole on the end, drill all the way through with a smaller bit. I used a 1/4” bit for this hole. This hole should intersect with the bottom of the first hole.

We then move our drill down an inch or so (not a whole lot of measuring necessary, in case you hadn’t noticed) and drill another hole in the same orientation as the second.

Before I get too far, these steps are all repeated for the second dowel piece. They should look the same when it’s time for the string.

We are now going to carve out a notch between the two cross holes so the string can rest down inside it, thereby improving the overall look of your nunchucks. We do this by cutting a line from the edge of one hole to the same edge of the other, repeat for the other side, then chip away carefully with a flat head screwdriver and hammer. Or a chisel, if you want to get fancy.

A little bit of reaming on the edges of the holes, and we are ready for the string! I started by threading one end down the center hole and out one side, then down to the lower set of holes. I then passed it through to the other side of the dowel, back up, and into the top set where I then fished it out of the center hole. I kept winding the string around that way between the two dowels until I had a decent amount of string attaching them.

The string I used here is pull string for pulling wires through pipes. Not the best for this, but I was using what I had handy.

Once I had all of my string in place and my dowels were separated by about 4” of string, I tied the ends together tightly. I decided that it would be a good idea to wrap the string in electrical tape as well, so that the knot had a better chance of holding. This would lessen the chance of one end flying off and breaking my nose or a window.

And there you have it! One pair of bona fide ass-kicking Nunchucks! Remember kids, these things are ridiculously dangerous and should only be wielded by a masked vigilante protecting the city streets from evil doers. Actually, forget I said that. Seriously, Captain DIY does not dress up in spandex and careen around at night getting beaten up in alleys. I swear.