Uchiwa daiko!

That's just fun to say, isn't it?  Remember when I said "maybe a future project"? Well the future is now!

I've been thinking about uchiwa daiko for a while now, so I saved up my lunch money and had some rings made, but unlike shime rings, I had them put a six inch handle on these. I got five of them. One 8 in, one 10, a 12, 14 and a 16 in.  I figured that would give me a good place to start. I wrapped them in thread tape like I had the rings for the shime to help prevent rust

I had purchased some goat skin splits a while back. They turned out to be too thin for what I had purchased them for, but I tucked them away thinking I would find some use for them eventually. This seemed like a good occasion.

I stretched the hide on the ring in much the same way I did the shime. Once I was happy with how tight it was, I stitched the head to the ring. Uchiwa only have the one line of stitching and since I was using fairly thin hide, I used small stitches. Because of the thinness of the hide I went with a wax covered thread instead of using artificial sinew.

I was trying to be diligent about keeping the stitches tight so that the hide would wrap around the ring fully, making contact with the other side of the head along the stitch line. Unfortunately at one point I was a bit over zealous, pulled the thread too hard with the intention of tightening a stitch and tore through the head. Much swearing ensued.

I spent an hour or so trying to figure out how to patch this, sew around it, or any other method that would prevent me from throwing away all the work done up to this point, but I decided that in the long run it would just be best to take this torn head off and replace with it a new, undamaged one. I carefully removed the stitches and the stretching thread and prepared another hide.