Making a shinai from scratch:
From growing bamboo

by Robert
(Australia)

Has anyone tried to grow bamboo to harvest their own Shinai? If they have, can they give complete details?

There is a video in Japanese "The complete Shinai" by Wallis Wall Multimedia, I have not seen it myself as I only understand English.

Answer: I cannot help you with that but I found a video (sorry, in Japanese). You can watch how they make a shinai.

Update: Dec. 10, 2015: Now you can skip the following steps. Here is the video.



1. Go to this website

2. Scroll down until you get to 237. That is a shinai making video. Your Internet browser should be able to display Japanese character. If not, please refer to this website.


* You cannot use the “Find” function such as “Ctrl+F” unless you can type numbers in Japanese encode system (two-byte character).


3. The “play” button on the far left is for windows media player. The middle one is for RealPlayer at the streaming speed (?) of 512kbps. The far right is also for RealPlayer at the steaming speed of 56kbps.


UPDATE: It looks like the website made some changes. Now you can go to "shinai making" from here.