Couple questions. What tricks are bamboo kens best known for? also.. What are some classic bamboo setups? Thanks
Get the new Sol Liam Rauter Bamboo complete. It’s worth it if you haven’t played bamboo yet. Good for all sorts of tricks, but I wouldn’t say Bamboo is particularly better or worse for specific tricks. It’s fairly durable, doesn’t seem to chip or dent easily, but it plays like a softer wood IMO.
The Josh Flow Grove mod from Sweets is full bamboo I’m pretty sure and had the cups split/crack in middle from an easy drop on the ground. Bamboo can be iffy sometimes
I’ve had that happen. I think the bamboo is more like MDF (particle board/compressed sawdust) and it’s glued in strips like plywood.
I think the striped one is chunks of wood but there's definitely a MDF version and they usually weigh a ton. I've got one of the original Sol kendama like this and it's comfortably over 200g. I've got an old Bahama Kendama Bamboo however that is striped that's really been tough. It's the one that had me singing the praises of Bamboo before it was hot with other makers. That kind of bamboo seems more like Spectraply where they laminate sheets of wood together to make a block that is then turned. (click on the thumbnail below) Any way you slice it, like all wood, it will depend on the wood itself and the manufacture. Seen splits at the glue joints and splits in the wood on different "composited" wood kendama. It can and does seem to happen to most makers at some point (some more than others unfortunately) Update: Here's a video about cutting boards but the process is likely the same for making the raw blocks for kendama (for the striped version)