Frankenshinai

[Mudansha]

Hello,

A few months ago I went down to ebogu and bought 2 of the 20 dollar practice shinais. Being the moron that I was, I was too busy matching the staves up to actually try them for balance. Luckily one of the shinais had excellent balance. So excellent, that the other one feels like a dead piece of wood in my hands and feels so awkward that I've been training exclusively with the nicer feeling one. So anyway, bamboo is bamboo and is showing its wear, even with oiling and sanding and rotating, and I'm thinking of making a shinai with 2 of the staves from one shinai and 2 of the staves from another.

Would the balance...balance out that way? Anyone with experience mixing staves help me out?

Thanks a lot!

[Halcyon]

one of the most important things you want to keep in mind when creating a frankenshinai is to have the "knuckles" in the bamboo staves match up nicely. if the knuckles don't match up, the staves are more likely to get stuck (that is, the shinai sometimes gets flattened, and you have to tap it to get the staves back in line). this also makes the shinai more prone to damage.

you may have to accumulate a fairly large collection of staves before you can find the perfect match, so don't worry about creating a frankenshinai just yet if you've only gone through just a few shinai.

[Mudansha]

Hi,

The staves do match up, I made sure of that when I bought them (instead of spending more time checking them for balance). I'm wondering if I do mix them up how drastically would the balance change?

[Catherine]

Hi,

If the other shinai is really nice, I would be tempted to keep using that shinai as is until one of the slats can't be used any more rather than mixing the 2 sets of slats now.

A nicely balanced shinai is a beautiful thing and once you mix the slats, the balance is likely to change.

Mind you, I have used quite a few shinai made up from different slats and they can be quite OK.

Catherine

[GBN]

If it doesn't involve sawing the butt end to make the metal piece fit, just give it a go and see how the balance feels. If you try a dry-run and it seems good then go for it. Also if you are in Torrence, just go the the e-bogu warehouse and try and find another one for $20 with similar nodes and better balence.

Good luck
Brian