@shalafi YES
oh i love getting a new kendama. that moment when you open the post, un-veil the dama box, and stare at it for a minute...
"ooh, i wonder if its perfectly weighted? should i sell this, or keep it? what if the grain is completely unique?"
now, i am super picky about my kendamas, so weighing them is literally the FIRST thing i do. the whole thing comes apart and i weigh each piece. from experience, grain theory has the best weights on any kendama ive ever seen. no, i dont work for them, its just something ive noticed. my scale that i use to weigh kendamas goes down to the hundreth of a gram (0.01) so i can be sure that the reading is decent/accurate.
for a stock/standard kendama, ozoras have always been ~2g difference between each piece, with quite a few "dead-ons".
GTs are hands down the best weighted kendamas and thats speaking from experience with -
kaleb
ozora
shenzu
zen
homegrown (maple stripes are better balanced but the paduak and purple heart are heavier than maple)
aTack
sourmash
super sticky
kaizen
play
musou
so, with all of those i hand weighed each and either cringed at the read-out or jumped for joy at the perfect match.
all that said, the tama weighting compared to the ken isnt nearly as important as the sarado weighting compared to the sword.
if the sarado weighting is 5g or more than the swords weight, it WILL make lunars extremely difficult. not so much light houses, but lunars on a ken with a lighter sarado than the sword will be painstaking. trying to "correct" the imbalance is an extra step that makes many variations far more difficult.
companies like ozora, and grain theory, would not be weighing each piece if it wasnt important. it seems like some kendama companies who put them together just grabbed a random sword, a random sarado, dug around for a tama and just slapped a string on and called it 'done'. which is ridiculous when comparing this to another skill-toy (YoYo) that has an even higher demand for weights.
but, yeah. for the money, i feel like grain theory provides the best bang for your buck. those dudes are not just slapping parts together and selling janky KDs.
i would group musous in the perfect weighting category, but from this forum ive heard people complaining about the weights.
mine weighs (72.7g tama 77.4g ken) BUT, the sarado weighting is 37g, so it jams lunars just fine
i apologize for putting this archival post where no one will see it. but hopefully someone will gleem some information from this. and no offense to any KD companies that dont weigh their products. its just something ive noticed
