Kendo project: shinai carrier (2)

2011-06-25 13:24:00

For the past three nights, Martijn and myself have been working on making our shinai carriers. On Wednesday we went to get the materials for the sturdy and waterproof interior. We even got the basic tube finished by then.

Thursday and Friday night were spent on making a cloth exterior, which includes a side pocket for bits and pieces (mostly tsuba and tsubadome). By Thursday at midnight my bag was covered in cloth and only required a bottom piece to finish it off. Yesterday was spent on dressings Martijn's tube and in painting kanji on his bag. 

The designs:

• Mine is dark blue denim with some abstract floral embroidery at the top (see photo). The bottom 20cm is covered in black denim and the bag has a double thickness, black denim bottom. The fasteners for the strap are fancy copper ones taken from a courier bag.
• Martijn's bag is covered in black denim (the same I used at the bottom of mine). His strap is actually a strap used to secure heavy loads during transport and it's fastened to the tube using two harp fasteners on each end. Because the strap has a red line along its length we used red fabric dye to paint the kendo term 気剣体一 on the side. It spells "Ki Ken Tai Ichi", meaning "Spirit Sword and Body as One", which is the requirement for a good strike in kendo.

Both bags still "require" a covering for the top, but for now I'm happy with the result: two sharp looking and perfectly safe carrying bags for three shinai and a bokken each. 

kilala.nl tags: kendo, creative,

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