Leather Tsuba Dome

[Raígma]

Please tell me how exactly to attach and tie the Tsuba with this Leather Tsuba Dome.
Pictures would be helpful.
Thank you.

[Hyaku]

Please tell me how exactly to attach and tie the Tsuba with this Leather Tsuba Dome.
Pictures would be helpful.
Thank you.

I use a stiffened hide tsuba with a couple of holes drilled in it near the inside edge. The leather thongs pass through the holes and ties on the tsuru (cord).

Saw a "Silver Tsuba" in the shop yesterday. Looked like something from Starwars.

[JSchmidt]

I just pull the strings through the tsuba and tie them around the shinai on the other side. Some people drill holes in their tsuba, but I haven't found that necessary.

Jakob

[Raígma]

I guess I have to rasp it then. It is anyway a bit too big for my oval grip shinai.
Thanks for the explanation.

[Raígma]

I use that thing with a leather Tsuba Dome.
First, that thing looks more like plastic. Why?
Rasping does hardly work on it? It doesn't slide totally
up to the end of the Tsukagawa so I would have to
broaden the whole at all sides. Shall I just rasp and
be patient? I would have to rasp gaps for the strings
as well.
Help?

[Neil Gendzwill]

The best way is to drill a hole through the tsuba (see attached drawing). If you're going to use a traditional tsuba-dome like that, you should use a stiffened leather tsuba. The only point of that tsuba-dome is just to look nice, they don't work nearly as well as modern ones.

[Raígma]

What do you mean by saying "modern ones"? The usual rubber domes or those special "wear never out" domes?
I am certainly not convinced by the usual rubber ones. This one at least seems to be more fix than a usual rubber. I didn't train with it yet though.

By the way, I got my Tsuba hole fixed that it suits for the Tsuka and the
Leather Dome now. No problem about that anymore.

But why is this thing so stiff? Isn't leather supposed to be flexible.
This Tsuba feels like hard plastic.

[Neil Gendzwill]

By modern I mean anything with rubber. The el-cheapo normal ones don't work that well it's true. The best ones I've found are this style.

The leather ones with the ties are OK, but the tie pulls unevenly on the tsuba and also can come undone. They look very nice but are kind of a pain for everyday use.

As far as why the leather is stiff - because a floppy tsuba isn't very good. I'm not sure how they treat it to make it so stiff. Personally, I like this style. Looks very nice, especially after it's been beaten on for a few years.

[Steffen]

By modern I mean anything with rubber. The el-cheapo normal ones don't work that well it's true. The best ones I've found are this style.

The leather ones with the ties are OK, but the tie pulls unevenly on the tsuba and also can come undone. They look very nice but are kind of a pain for everyday use.

As far as why the leather is stiff - because a floppy tsuba isn't very good. I'm not sure how they treat it to make it so stiff. Personally, I like this style. Looks very nice, especially after it's been beaten on for a few years.

Hi Neil and Raigma.

I use the same tsuba as Neil, it really looks beautiful
As tsubadome I have one similar to the white one from Raigma, but green and with white cherries printed on it.
As for the question of assembling the tsubadome and tsuba to the shinai, I found that when putting the tsuba onto the grip (tsuka ?) and sliding it forward, there is still some space between the tsuba and the bamboo at the end of the grip, where those two leather wings of the grip are connected with that leather cord. So I simply slid the ties from the tsubadome between the tsuba and the bamboo to the shinai cord and fix it there with a knot.
See this picture for the space I mean at the end of the grip.

... and yes, it really takes some time to tie and un-tie it every training, but it's worth the nice look.

For the stiffness: I think they do not treat the leather at all. I do have a deer-skin at home that is not treated, and it is really stiff too. To get leather soft and smooth, you have to work on it and use some liquids and other techniques on the original skin of the animal. (I'm no expert on this, just saw some documentations and gave my personal opinion).

Enjoy life,
Steffen