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Over a couple of weeks at the end of January 2004, I
rewrapped a friend's sword hilt. This is some pictures of
the process. A set of before and after pictures, sorta.
While the project itself was sucessful, I was quite
dissapointed that it seems the ito is already loosening
after a week or two of use. (Admittedly, hard use.)
In case you can't tell, click on any of the images for
a higher-res version.
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Initial
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This is the best "before" picture I have. I didn't take one of the whole
sword, nor the whole hilt before starting on this... but this should give
a good impression of how messed up the wrapping was before I started work.
You may also notice how the ura knot was tied. I wanted a record of it, so I
could reproduce it. In this picture I had just untucked the end of the
cord from the ura knot.
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Second unwrapping
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Here, I pulled out the end of the cord entirely from the end knot. If
you look carefully at the end I am holding, you may notice some glue
holding the ito to the same.
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Third unwrapping
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This is the other side of the tsuka. The other end of the ito is
tucked under the omote knot. I don't have any pictures in between this
and the next picture... sorry.
You may also notice that the fuchi is broken. It certainly
made repairs easier. It provided more slack in the ito to play
with.
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Fourth unwrapping
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At this point I've untied both knots and am preparing to remove the
end cap. This is the point of no return for me, so even though the
picture doesn't really show much of interest, I was taking one final
"look over my shoulder" before pulling everything off.
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Fifth unwrapping
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It is clear the prior wrapping used a lot of glue. In my rewrap
I don't use nearly so much. Given how everything looked, once I
got it open, it looked like someone rewrapped it before, and did
a hackish job, slobbering lots of glue and breaking a few things
(like the fuchi, and perhaps the plastic hilt), although they made
it easier for me to repair...
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Initial wrapping
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At this point, I've finished the basic wrapping, but have the
difficult part to do yet. The brown spots on the same are from
glue, where there used to be ornaments under the ito. The owner
of the sword didn't have them any more, so I didn't include them.
Just this part took me close to an hour of constant work. It took
a lot of effort to hold the ito taught while properly twisting and
laying the wrap. I did not use any hishigami (paper wedges) since
the original didn't. (It also probably would have taken several
times longer to rewrap....)
Before begining wrapping, I had to flatten the ito, since it contained
a lot of creases from the prior wrap and from extended use. I
dampened the ito, and wrapped it gently around the scabbard. Once
it dried it was pretty flat, and usable. I should have made sure
to flatten everything out to the very end.
For those trying to do this themselves, I found it difficult to find
good information, without knowing the specific terms to search for.
The best sources of information were the original sword, some closeup
pictures of katana, and this
tsuka-maki link.
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Omote side
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Here is the finished tsuka, omote side. I don't have any
partial shots of the fuchi or knots being completed, since I
had to keep so much tension on the ito.
Tying the final knots was very difficult, since I had try to keep
tension on the wrap, while loosening up the top twist so that I could
thread the ito underneath the final crossing. It took a couple of
attempts and a lot of playing.
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Omote closeup
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This is also the omote side, but closer to allow a better view
of the knot, and the crossing pattern in the ito.
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Ura side
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This is the ura side. I had thought I had improvised on the knot,
since I didn't have quite as much ito left as I thought I needed.
In reviewing these pictures, I realized that I did it identical to
the original. Hurray! :)
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Ura closeup
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This again is a closeup of the ura side knot. For both knots, I
used quite a bit of superglue around the seams between layers, to
hold it in place. It isn't quite authentic, but will hopefully
hold as good or better than the authentic rice paste.
I also applied extra glue along the front and back edge of the
tsuka, to provide extra stability, and applied a generous amount
on a couple of lengths of the ito that were frayed.
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Followup
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A week after I returned the sword, it was already showing signs
of loosening... I'm disappointed. I fear that if it requires
another rewrap, I'll need to replace the cord. To be fair, the owner
does use the sword frequently, and tries to have good grip (i.e. he
twists his hands) which has a tendency to loosen the ito.
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