What the...? D'oh! Problems with lame size...

[Arima Jinsuke]

Hey there.

Was putting together the boards for my sode, out of the Noble kozane.

Laced one board together...28 rows of holes for lacing, 28 scales total (27 full and 1 cut in half for the end pieces).

Turned out great. Looks very nice, seems strong, on the whole I was very pleased.

So I made another identical one. Then, as a test, I lined them up and threw some suspensory laces in them. This is when I encountered the problem.

The last sode I made was an o-sode. Flat. So all of the boards were the same size, and lined up perfectly. These boards, being for tosei sode, are curved. When the bottom one is laid over the top one, the holes no longer line up, and the upper board appears larger than the lower board. By about one kozane width.

Yes, I counted them correctly. 5 times, to make sure I wasn't insane (yet). My wife counted them too. I held them up next to each other end-to-end, curvature is the same, width of the boards are the same, everything is the same.

I understand WHY they don't line up...the double thickness of the plastic kozane causes the upper lame to ride a fair distance back from the bottom lame, unlike if they were made of 18 gauge steel (which is MUCH thinner than 1/8", the thickness of the overlapping Noble kozane).

The question is, HOW do I FIX this? Should I simply ignore it, write it off to an optical illusion, and keep going? The outer suspensory laces end up slanted inward, but plenty of the pictures I have seen have odoshi that slants in various ways as well.

Or, should I drop a kozane from each board as I go upwards? This is more complicated, because the lacing pattern requires me to go through one hole twice with the lacing in order to increase the hole count as I go down...and it is damn near impossible to get a shoelace through one of those holes twice (so, I'd have to drill a hole or two larger, which I'll end up doing in order to run the mimi ito on the edges anyway, since that also requires two laces through the same hole in certain areas).

Anyone else run into similar problems? Any ideas on the best way to fix it (or ignore it)? Any help would be appreciated.

[Kitadatedenka]

I haven't run into the same problems, but in an attempt to save Effingham's typing fingers (which ought to be working on his book) my advice would be to find a picture of that style of curved sode on an actual armour, and see if you can figure out what they really did. Try counting laces, seeing if they're using any of the various lacing styles that make lames wider or narrower.

Then write back here what you found.

(Personally, I just let the laces fall where they may. Never had a problem with looks or functionality).

[AJBryant]

There's a reason that o-sode -- made with kozane -- are flat, and tosei sode (modern sode) are generally made of solid plate, or kiritsuke zane.


Effingham

[Arima Jinsuke]

ajbryant said:

There's a reason that o-sode -- made with kozane -- are flat, and tosei sode (modern sode) are generally made of solid plate, or kiritsuke zane.


Effingham

Yes....yes. I was looking through some of the books/pictures I have access to, and I noticed that too. There are SOME tosei sode that appear to be made from kozane (although they could easily be kiritsuke zane), but the vast majority of them are simple, curved metal plates with holes drilled in them.

Oh well. I'll continue on as I am, and see how it ends up looking. The worst that happens is I cut them apart and use the scales elsewhere, such as in the dou or kusazuri.

And it'll probably come out looking fine anyway.