How To Hand Roll Kendama

In this post we’re going to be learning the kendama trick known as Hand Roll. In order to do this trick you want to make sure you know how to do Space Walk. If you don’t know that trick make sure you check out our post on how to do that.

To start this trick off you’re going to hold the tama. What we’re going to be doing is swinging the ken clockwise over our hand.

String Length for Handroll

To make this trick possible you really want to make sure you have the proper string length. You want to make sure that your string is about two fingers width once you have the tama on the spike and you pull down.

You can see the string is two fingers below the base cup. That makes it easier for the wrap to happen because you want to make sure that the ken lands right here.

If you have your string a little bit longer, this trick is still possible but it’s a little more difficult because you have to adjust where on your hand you have to wrap and it just gets really complicated, so make sure your string is the right length.

Doing Handroll Kendama

To start, you want to hold the tama and your going to swing the ken clockwise over your hand. Once you wrap your going to let go of the tama and the ken is going to continue to rotate. And both the string and the tama and the ken are all going to wrap around until the ken you’ll see will land on the back of your hand.

Once rolling you really want to bend your knees cause the tama is going to pull up and the motion of the tama is going to pull the ken up for you since you’re not holding on to anything. When that happens you’re going to grab the ken like this. The tama is going to rotate one more time. Once it rotates down here is when you really drastically bend your knees like we learned in Space Walk because then it turns it into a simple Swing Spike.

If you are having trouble at the end of the trick a little tip is you can set the ken on the back of your hand and this puts are the end of the trick. You can bend your knee to pop the tama up and you can do the end transition where you bend your knees and do the Swing Spike.

A common transition into Hand Roll is a Space Walk then start the Hand Roll. You can see that these two tricks really transition well together so once you do have the Hand Roll mastered it’s kind of fun to transition from the Space Walk. That is how you do the kendama trick known as Hand Roll.

Read More: Pull Spike Kendama Trick