2023 | 10 hours | $0 | Bamboo, Woodworking, Carving

A failure. A fun failure. :)

I wanted a bamboo whisk to make proper Japanese matcha to apply the skills I had learned in my tea ceremony class at school.

The problem was, every matcha whisk I could find, online or at the store, was over $40.

I didn't want to spend $40 on a little whisk...

...so I went to the bamboo forest nearby...

...sawed off a piece of fallen bamboo...

...carved the hard outer layer off...

...and began splitting each tine of the whisk. This was as many as I could get...

...before it broke.

Over and over and over again.

I tried soaking it in boiling water to get the tines soft enough to bend, I tried carving it slowly, I tried everything. In the end, I understood the reason why professional Japanese whisk makers take over two decades before they can say they've mastered the craft.

And that maybe, just maybe, $40 isn't a bad price after all.