Kote fit

[e_kendo]

I just ordered bogu for the first time. My actual wrist is sitting under the buton and not the wrist area. Everything else seems to fit ok with it. Will this pose a problem? I was using club bogu before and it's been a little while since I had it (I moved and decided to buy bogu after I moved and found a new dojo), so I don't remember how the old one fit.

[Big One]

The joints is at the joints area. Your wrist, knuckle should be a bit itto the buton

[DCPan]

Have you broken it in yet?

http://www.chibabogu.com/catalog/information.php?info_id=14

Check the factory vs break-in photo in the link above...the length of the wrist section will change significantly once you break it in.

And really, a picture is worth a thousand words...it is much easier to tell you if the fit "looks" ok or not if you just show us a picture.

[e_kendo]

Ok, I have not broken it in. I will try to post a picture when I try it on again today.

[e_kendo]

I'm not sure how to post the pictures... the attachment manager says I can upload a max of 19.5kb (0 of 19.5kb used), but when I click on the (?) icon, it says the max file size for an individual image says 100kb. I tried to upload an 80kb image and it said it was over by almost 60kb. So I'm confused.

[FastKendo]

try to upload it to somewhere else such as imageshack.us and post the link here

[e_kendo]

http://img574.imageshack.us/img574/3599/koteleft.jpg
http://img688.imageshack.us/img688/1483/koteright.jpg

[tagonagy]

That looks okay to me

[e_kendo]

Ok. I'm gonna work on breaking it in. The kote I was using before were quite old.

[Big One]

Break it in, then it should be ok.

[e_kendo]

Ok I broke it in and it seems to fit better now. Thanks for the suggestion.

[tango]

It's fully broken-in in 2 days?
What'd you do to them?

[FastKendo]

@e_kendo, kote need a quiet sometimes to completely broken in, perhaps it needs a few training sessions. If you think it fits better now, perhaps you'll find it's more better later.

[DCPan]

It's fully broken-in in 2 days?
What'd you do to them?

I saw an interesting way to break in kote at a shop in Taiwan. It was a Musashi-Go distributor.

They asked me if I wanted my kote broken-in after I bought it...so I said sure.

They first inserted a shoe horn into the palm area, then beat the kote gashira with something like a knight stick (kodachi would do too).

After doing that for a little bit, they told me to put the kote on, then beat the kobushi around so it'd mold to my hand.

Lastly, you just hold the kote by the futon, and whip it to loosen the wrist area.

Ta da!

[e_kendo]

Ok well I did what that website said and it fits better now than it did before.

[tango]

yeah.. i'm not saying they couldn't be broken-in in 2 days... was just curious what you did..
thanks

[e_kendo]

I did about 30 mins of rotating on each, and then twisted and pulled on it like the website said for a while and then worked it w/ the shinai, but not for very long. I'm sure it's not 100% broken in but it's enough that it fit better. BTW I asked the sensei and he said it was ok.