bokken and saya

[Rularn]

Anyone have any experience with using a bokken and saya? I know of three types in existence but am unfamiliar with quality/handling and such.

regular bokken and plastic saya (seen at ebogu)

regular bokken and wooden saya (seen on ebay and places)

fancy bokken with wrapped handle and wooden saya (seen on ebay and places).

Save me the flames and ask your sensei replies, please. Just let me know if you've seen one of the above or know of one and has used/handled it, and tell me what you think. Whether it be total crap or something decent to play with. Cheers.

[rottunpunk]

back when i first started iai, the only bokuto saya available was a cut down golf tube
i use a plastic saya with a junior bokuto (ninecircles)
with the end near the kurigata cut down. this helps as uncut it is too long for the style i do
one of the senio instructors has a very posh bokuto and saya (i.e wooden sword replica) whic is uber pretty and i am soo jealous of him

not sure how useful the saya would be in kendo kata though

[John Seavitt]

regular bokken and plastic saya (seen at ebogu)

The plastic saya flexes in a way wood does not; in that regard it's not helpful for learning sayabiki. Probably okay as a temporary learning tool while saving up for iaito/shinken. Don't spend a lot of money on it.

regular bokken and wooden saya (seen on ebay and places)

Better than plastic, but unlikely to be worth the increased cost, as you should be saving for iaito/shinken anyway.

fancy bokken with wrapped handle and wooden saya (seen on ebay and places).

Pish. Save for an iaito/shinken already.

John "save for an iaito/shinken"

[tango]

I have actually seen and handled the wooden bokken/wooden saya combo I think you're referring to..

the bokken was NOT a normal sized bokken... it was trimmed down in order to fit into what would be a normal sized saya... as a result, the weight of the bokken was significantly less and, quite frankly, looked and felt more like a toothpick than anything else...

that said, I thought it was pretty good for practicing no-tohs... I personally don't think it would help at all to learn to swing properly, but that's just my opinion...

If you use ONLY bokken to start iaido, then you really tend to cheat yourself on the no-toh... and I think you'll discover this if you go immediately to an iaito or if you go with the wooden bokken/saya combo...

FYI... I do not do iaido, so my opinion is worth what you paid for it.

[Aden]

regular bokken and plastic saya (seen at ebogu) - we use these for our iaido beginners and have been doing so for @ 2 years now - very handy. Due to the greater thickness of a bokken over an iaito the koiguchi (mouth) of the saya is very large compared to a real saya but still they are sufficiently helpful that we maintain the number of them we hold (for some reason they sometimes go walkabout) - a full set of bokken, saya, kaku obi, cheapie cotton sageo costs us @ $100 - $120 so is way more cost effective than loaner iaito and can be used usefully much longer than bokken alone, and by adjusting the location of the tsuba dome we can play around with blade length.

Different suppliers seem to make them of different rigidity and the location of the kurikata (the eyelet for the sageo / rope to go through) varies, of the 3 sources we have used one set we bought were way too bendy, and the kurikata was so far down the side of the saya it interfered with the placement in the obi. I have never seen the ebogu one since when I checked with them they said they would not fit our jodo bokken. Which is another upside of saya bokken - kendo no kata, kenjutsu, jodo, paired work in many iaido koryu require bokken so you may be able to get use out of it well after moving on to an iaito or shinken minimising the waste of money. Handling wise, it depends on the quality of the bokken - a good bokken feels and handles very differently to a poor one.





regular bokken and wooden saya (seen on ebay and places) - never seen a workable wooden saya for a full size bokken so I assume it is a skinny bokken in wooden saya just like the ones with wrapped handle - see comment below.





fancy bokken with wrapped handle and wooden saya (seen on ebay and places) - one of our beginners last year bought one instead of using a club saya bokken set, the bokken is flat sided and very light, much thinner than a standard bokken and the wood of this particular one was definitely not genuine white oak but a lighet weight wood - so the setup was only of use for iaido practice - for my mind the lack of weight is a problem but it is better at teaching noto than the saya bokken.


Aden

[Newbie]

I have a bokken in a wooden saya that I used to use for iai but it's pretty useless. The only thing it's good for was building my strength back when I had been out for months on a shoulder injury. Then it came in really, really useful. However, with no sageo, it's more likely to fall out of the obi (or at least mine did - I know some koryu don't use sageo at all so I'm not sure if that was a problem with the saya on this thing or if it was a problem with how I was tying my obi). Other problems I ran into was that it was really hard to draw and do noto - wood against wood, not so happy and prone to sticking which really, really interrupts the flow of your kata! And yeah, light as a toothpick.

Plastic saya work fine from my experience. We use them too when we have a large group or there's not enough loaner iaito for guys that don't have their own sword.

[ScottUK]

Whether it be total crap or something decent to play with. Cheers.

First of all , what do you intend to practice with it? Iai? Kenjutsu? Kendo Kata, even?

I use a sayatsuki bokuto for the kenjutsu elements of MJER and I recommend our guys who have just started iai to use one too. Cheaper than an iaito...!

[ReKru]

regular bokken and plastic saya (seen at ebogu)

I bought a plastic saya for the regular bokken I used for Kendo kata, when I was attending some Iaido classes (unfortunately, I don't have the spare time to practice kendo and iaido, so I dropped iai after 3 or 4 lessons).

I think most of the seitei kata can even be performed without an actual saya -just 'simulating' the appropriate hand movement- and getting a plastic one is just an inexpensive tool to get you used to some aspects of drawing from a saya.

p.s. I think quite a few beginners in our Iaido classes use regular bokken and plastic saya for their first steps in iai, until they know iaido is for them and get an iaito.

[Newbie]

I think most of the seitei kata can even be performed without an actual saya -just 'simulating' the appropriate hand movement- and getting a plastic one is just an inexpensive tool to get you used to some aspects of drawing from a saya.

Err.... actually that doesn't work well. You want a saya, even a plastic one of a bokken. There's no way you can practise nukitsuke and noto properly otherwise and they're so important and hard to get right (for me, anyway).

[Nichiren]

i have a bokken with plastic saya witch my brother in-law gave me as a gift a couple of years back when he came over from korea. i found it useful for practicing Iai (its no replacement for a Iaito tho :P...).

escpecially when we do some Iai at the end of our course. we have a small tatami space (85 tatami) for the amount people that practice(30-40 people), when it comes to Iai it can get tight so noone can practice with Iaito when we have a full group.

I found that i got a better feeling for the kata when using my bokken /w saya, (compared to the others that only have bokken) but at the end of each class i take out my Iaito and practice some more so i dont get too sloppy. :P

anyway jsut my oppinion i like mine ... but i love my Iaito more

[ScottUK]

we have a small tatami space (85 tatami) for the amount people that practice(30-40 people)

Woof! That's a big class...

[Nichiren]

Woof! That's a big class...

we mostly do Aikido so ... lets just say it keeps things interesting
it brings awareness of your suroundings to a whole new level

[ScottUK]

I thought that was TSKSR - bigger than hombu!

[Nichiren]

hehe we study both 2/3's aiki 1/3 TSKSR

somtimes i wish it was the other way around ... but you cant have everything

[fe-taru tora]

Anyone have any experience with using a bokken and saya? I know of three types in existence but am unfamiliar with quality/handling and such.

regular bokken and plastic saya (seen at ebogu)

regular bokken and wooden saya (seen on ebay and places)

fancy bokken with wrapped handle and wooden saya (seen on ebay and places).

Save me the flames and ask your sensei replies, please. Just let me know if you've seen one of the above or know of one and has used/handled it, and tell me what you think. Whether it be total crap or something decent to play with. Cheers.

The bokken and plastic saya are for training how to properly draw your sword, this is good for a beginner in iaido.