#52: Repairing Kote

It is always important to look after your equipment because neglect leads to faster wear and tear, and may cost you more in the long run not only in terms of money, but also time waiting for repairs or shipping etc if you need new gear.

For me, I've had two holes appear, one in each kote of mine, on the thumb region. While I don't know the exact problem on why they appeared except perhaps for gripping wrongly during tenouchi, I wasn't too concerned because the speed of their enlargement wasn't great. I decided to finally patch them up today.

I didn't have any other leather around, but I did have the tsukagawa from an old shinai of mine, so I picked it apart and cut the leather for the patches. What I did was double patching, i.e. one inside the kote, and then one on the outside of the kote. Why? Well, if you only patch the outside, your thumb will wear the kote leather from the inside, and if you only patch the inside, the shinai will wear the kote leather from the outside. If you patch both sides, then you're wearing the patches only.

The leather is pretty hard and my fingers got pretty sore in the end, even ending up using pliers to push and pull the needle through the leather. Not to mention that I've also bent the needle and left all these plier marks on the needle. In any case, I used a quad-ply lot of thread for strength in navy blue to make the colour not stand out too much. The whiter leather of the patch will hopefully colour in and also not stand out so much.

This is what the final appearance is, with my right kote on the left, and left kote on the right of the image.