My work is not exactly manual, so once in a while, I like to do things with my hands. I have a weapon bag of the brand Budo Nord for my Aikidō Jō and my Bōkken, whose bottom go pierced. This seems to be recurring problem with weapon bags, as the two wooden sticks eventually pierce the fabric. The fact that in my case, the bottom was just built from relatively soft fake leather did not help.

I had an old leather wallet that I had bought in Japan, the zipper was broken after five years of usage, but the leather was still relatively good, so I stripped away the fake leather from the bag, cut the wallet into a reasonably regular piece of leather and sewed that piece unto the bottom of the bag.

Now this sounds very professional, but my sewing sucks, in particular with leather. I had a strong needle, but I though I still had my sailmaker’s palm from my sailing days, but I seem to have lost it, so I ended up using a thimble. The result does not look really nice when you look closely, but it was sturdy enough to survive a hectic train trip.