Looking forward to my new light cutter

The sword I ordered a while back should be arriving sometime next week. It's scheduled for Tuesday but you know how it is, not everything goes according to plan. but hey, back to my point. I was wandering through my photos and realised that one of the things I miss about my last light cutter (since its unfortunate demise) was the grip.




The tsuka and the wrap around it is one of the most overlooked parts of a sword. I always say that when you buy a sword you should pay for the steel and accept the fittings, because you can always sort the fittings out afterwards. Having said that, it is without a doubt one of the things I'm the most fussy about.

And there it started.....

For example, here are some old photos of my old light cutter with the straight forward, stretchy ito, no hishigami wrap.

(This blade was fast)

(Although that tsuba did bite the hand if you choked up on the tsuka. spose that was a good thing really)

(It looked cheap but to be fair to it, that tsuka with the weight of the blade actually worked well)

(it was fast, but with this sugata, it could be faster if the weight were brought back some)

As you can see from the pictures of the tsuka, it was cheap and hastily wrapped. But for all that, it felt fast. It was skinny and tapered and it was zippy.

My first sword was a hanwei practical and the tsuka looked like this.

Which although useable is horrible once youve started to refine any technique.

So I rewrapped it...

(That was my first wrap and also the start of my handle wrapping and rebuilding fascination)

Nowadays I can do better. I mean if I could, I would have a very skinny tsuka, nicely tapered and full wrapped with carefully painted rayskin, black leather ito and silver menuki......

oh hold on..

The materials for this wrap were made possible thanks to Jeffrey Ching of The Samurai Workshop. He's a great person with a big heart. Thanks Jeffrey.

I screwed up with the omote and ura knots. the knots are fine, but they werent close enough to the kashira leaving a small gap. never mind. In the end I untied and filed down the tsuka core and retied the end knots.

So yes. This Tuesday I will be receiving another sword, but also, another project.