The Kingfisher Hiking stick was first developed in 2004 but our expertise in wooden staffs comes from our 21 year history in the making of wooden weapons specific to the Japanese sword related martial arts. The company's primary focus is serving individual orders for both its hiking stick products and martial art products. In June of 2002, Kingfisher produced 30 wooden swords used on the set of Edward Zwick's "The Last Samurai". An article about this project and the evolution into the re-development of archaic techniques in weapons production is published in Vol 12 #2 2003 of the Journal of Asian Martial Arts.