Tameshigiri

So last Saturday I finally had a chance to do tameshigiri and let me tell you those mats had it coming!

Seriously though... I'm part of a small iaido club of about 4 to 5 members total. We do musoshinden ryu iaido, a fairly common style.

Couple times of year, when it's warm enough we go out to Wisconsin where one of the fellow members lives and practice test cutting in his yard. Makes clean up nice and easy.

This was my first time so wasn't sure how well I would do... in my opinion my cuts suck. But hey that is why we practice. on the 3 matt rolls I did o.k. My kesagiri was so/so (some good some bad). My ichimonji with two hands worked well once I forgot about the target being in the way. Same cut from nuki tsuke not so hot. I did put a nasty gash in the mat, but didn't cut through it.

On the rolls we did that were 7 to 8 mats thick my cut really fell apart. Again that's why we do this it's a good feedback mechanism so we know we are cutting correctly. Sadly it's at that point I bent my sword too, normal hazard of tameshigiri. Luckily the guys who's house we were at had a piece of wood with a notch in it so he was able to straighten it out pretty well. Still needs some fine tweaking but it goes into its scabbard.

Overall a good experience, finally have some idea of how things should feel with feedback as it were... and tempted to try in my back yard in the future... but first need to get a back up practice blade. :-)