I have a couple of ebony kendamas, they're pretty epic! It isn't widely used, but thats largely due to the price of the raw material. The cheapest I've seen a legit ebony ken sell for is ~$250 USD. Expensive stuff! Beautiful though, and the density / hardness is unlike just about anything else
Ditto on that. I own an ebony fighting stick from my other passion (Filipino Martial Arts) and it is an amazing wood. Gives a classy look to your kendama, plus it adds heft to it as well.
One of my first maple stripe tamas had an ebony stripe. Was super good, but the tama was really egged (bought it off of aliexpress)
True!!! I'm an Escrima/ Kali/ Arnis practitioner, but I haven't had the time to train in recent years because of College. Still, I'm an enthusiast and advocate of the art.
I found out about Escrima when i was watching the behind-the-scenes for the Bourne Identity. Really awesome CQC martial arts (i'm a big fan of CQC styles, but was never a practitioner).
I've owned both keyaki and enjyu and they were two of my favorite, longest lasting kendamas ever. I jammed them into the ground haha. I haven't played maple yet, but I'm sure it's awesome!
Keyaki! Such a good dama! Mine had a pretty strong smell when I first got it but it has mellowed out over time. I didn't think it smelled like cat piss though. kinda miss the smell...
ahhh, oh well. You should check if that is what was supposed to come, maybe it was a mistake. On the website it looks quite different, I do not know what happened to your order
More likely they'll send a replacement if available. If they break a set they'll just have a tama laying around that serves no use. If they send a full kendama it won't cost them much more and they'll make a customer happy.
Is that tama enjyu? Looks like it might just be the usual beech ken / cherry tama ozora setup. Shoot an email to KUSA they'll get ya set straight
@Cheech_Sander @goenKendama I wonder if this is from the deepest recesses of the KUSA warehouse. That’s a Recomemded Ozora sticker and I vaguely remember that the original Natty Ozz came with the recomended sticker and in a plastic box too, before they were fully approved.