1. Bamboo and Leather:  The Iron Fist and The Velvet Glove Okay, first you need one piece of quality bamboo,  a little bit longer than th...

2. 1. Cut your bamboo to the length you desire with a saw, being sure to leave a knuckle (the raised divide between smooth lengths of bamboo) at th...

3. 1. Cut a small piece of cheesecloth and roll it up loosely to about 1 inch diameter. This will act as a spacer at the tip of the sword to keep t...

4. 1. Wrap your leather around the blade portion of your fukuro-shinai to get a rough estimate of how much leather you will need to cut to cover th...

5. Traditional Fukuro-Shinai are obviously made of leather, which can't be sewn with most machines. Actually many traditional ones are held togethe...

6. 1. Use your knife or rotary cutter to trim off all but about 1/2 in inch of the material to the right of the stitched seam. Cut the seam at the...

7. This step is pretty self explanatory, but I will say this: it helps if you twist the cloth padding a little bit to keep it tight to the bamboo....

8. Once the sleeve is all the way down over the blade, you can simply wrap some electrical tape around the handle (tsuba, actually) to hold it in p...