Balance of a shinai?

[John R. Schmidt]

I was just curious what is the relative balance of a shinai compaired to the weight and balance of a longsword? I would suspect the would be slightly diffrent considering the diffrent styles. Thanks

[Stacy Clifford]

Standard shinai are virtually weightless because they're made of rattan or bamboo, while European-style wooden wasters generally weigh around 2-3 pounds and steel blunts 3-4 pounds. A few people like Schola Gladiatoria make their own weighted shinai, but I don't know anything about their specifications. As far as balance goes, a good longsword (wooden or steel) usually balances somewhere within a hand's length above the cross, give or take depending on the style of the blade. For a hollow shinai I don't know, but the overwhelming power-to-weight ratio would seem to render balance more or less irrelevant.

[Vincent Le Chevalier]

Paul Bennett did two videos to explain how to weight the shinai to turn it into something more longsword-y:

Part 1
Part 2

Hope this helps!

[Cooper Braun]

I found these a while back, they look pretty cool.
http://www.ardenwoodforge.com/html/hilts.html