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Kyudo Blog - First bow

My bow arrived today. A 14kg Jikishin 2. Up 4kg from the bow I was using at the dojo. And I feel... humbled. Some of it was expected. Some was not. All of it is good though. Experiences.

Expected was the extra time to make my first nakajikake for the new bow. I haven't done one in over a year. I made a slight mistake in the direction I wrapped the top of the tsuru, but fixed it. Beyond that, I haven't had a chance to shoot with it yet, and while I did test out a similar bow at the dojo recently, I only fired two arrows with it. I expect to be humbled further the first time I need to make it through a full practice with it.

I also expected to hit issues with the nigirikawa. Never wrapped one before. It went a lot better than I expected. It isn't perfect, but it is actually a lot closer to perfect than I expected. Next time I need to go a bit slower in the wrapping and make sure the edges are flush. Perhaps even a bit more than flush. I don't remember seeing the tiny gaps I'm seeing now, so I think that there was some very minor shrinkage as the glue dried. 

On the unexpected side. Stringing the bow. I don't know if it is just a new bow thing, or this thing is just kicking my butt. Either way, string this thing is TOUGH compared to the 10kg. Now, I know you might be thinking "well, duh! it is a 40% heavier draw weight". The thing is, when I tested the other bow, it FELT about 40% harder to draw. THIS feel like it is 200% harder to string. 

I also apparently don't know all of the terminology for the accessories. At the dojo we just one bag we put the bows in. I assumed those bags WERE the yumibukuro. They are NOT in fact yumibukuro, but rather uchifukuro. I learned this because I ordered a yumibukuro as the listing lead me to believe that the bow didn't come with one. Then it arrived in a sleeve much like our dojo bows. 

So, I thought "hey, now I have two. What do I do with this?". Turns out, use both is the sort of the answer. The reason that we only use the uchifukuro at the dojo is because the ones we get with the bows are a bit bulky and make it very difficult to use them with a yumibukuro. And I am in kind of the same boat. A bit of a tight fit. I'll likely try to get by with both for a bit though. Especially during winter.

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