As I live within driving distance of
http://www.iconmartialarts.co.uk/ I have been buying a few of these:
They are cheap : Retail Price £9.95, Web Price £4.95
At that web price we can't expect too much.
HOWEVER ... and this may apply to MANY sets of chucks :
Of the numerous broken nunchaku I now possess, one of the nunchaku was a
set as described above, purchased from iconwithin the past 3 months. The
other broken nunchaku was maybe 10 years old and had been given to me by
a Hong Kongese pal. Unlike the icon pair, which failed after mostly wrist
spinning, it had broken after months of strike practice.
Recently, to save on journeys, I decided to make one usable pair out of these
broken sets, taking the un-popped bearings from each set.
One month on and I find this combo nunchaku to be failing again ... but here is
the shocking part (
) ... it is the < 3 month old bearing that has
failed, NOT the 10 year old, strike-punished bearing.
Seeing as both bearings have been on the same nunchaku, I can only conclude that
the old bearings are VASTLY superior to those being fitted to the laquered black nunchaku
being sold by icon recently.
I should point out that the design of the bearings
seems similar, so maybe it is
down to inferior materials (base metal prices have been shooting up recently due to
shortages of supply / massive demand ... maybe manufacturers have been forced to
use poor grade metals to maintain profits - especially when things retail this cheap).
....
.... further thoughts .... it seems to me we need better bearings ...
Anybody out there into skateboarding? Ever considered using skateboard bearings
in nunchaku?
That way we could go the full geek chic mile:
chucker 1 :
"I'm using ABEC 7s. I find they last 6 months."chucker 2 :
"For my kind of extreme dude you'd be thru those in 3. It's 9 or nothing for me."chucker 3 :
"With my style the first to go is the Delrin. 7s, 8s, 9s, makes no odds."
