How do you make your tama sticky?
Put honey on it.
But seriously, you don’t. You buy it that way.
You can cut the lip off a balloon and stretch it over the tama.
With time just playing with it will make it more tacky.
I have heard of several other ways as well but don’t know the details on it.
From what I understand, you can buy it that way, or the oils from your hands after a while will seep into the paint to make it sticky.
It can also vary with the weather. A humid, sunny day can make the tama incredibly sticky.
Try a Sweets aTack! God Bless - Moefv
Challenge accepted
This is what i do:
Cover it with honey
Light it on fire
Shoot at it with a 22
Shout, “KENDAMA, WHY ARE YOU TAKING OVER YYE?!?!”
What kendama do you have that you wish was sticky? Not all of them get tacky with play unless you beat them like whoa.
What you want to do is get some elmers school glue. Take the lid off completely and pour it into a bowl. Next you will need to get the string off the ball and put a q-tip in the hole. The q-tip is optional, you can use anything that fills the hole and protects it.
Put the ball in the bowl full of school glue and spin it until it is covered, as even as you can. You will have to wait until it dries and scrape off any little chunks or lumps of glue where it was uneven, but you can try this while still wet. Just make sure the entire ball is covered aside from the shaft that goes down the middle.
Now that all the glue is dried, and an even layer with no lumps, get a lighter. Put the flame under the ball and very quickly move it around being cautious to not burn the actual ball, you are just "treating" the ball.
The last step is very easy. Cover the ball in water and this will allow the glue to get stickier, and kind of soak in the water. It does not get sticky like when it is in the bottle, just from soaking in the water, plus you only need to cover it with water a few times a year. The outer paint previously on the ball will protect the wood from soaking in the water and becoming rotted.
Please do not try this, I made it all up for fun, but I will actually try this if I ever get into kendma.
I tried using spray glue.
Are you serious?
You do not make a tama sticky. It’s either sticky or it’s not.
Yeah. I don’t think tack was a good word choice on my part. As you wear a dama in, it’s more capable of friction due to being roughed up.
I repainted it. Put clear coat spray glue and then clear coat. It works pretty good.
Sounds horrid tbh. Either a) practice, ya know like people playing Kendama have done for decades, or b) take the easy route and buy a tacky kendama(and feel guilty every time you land a trick). Your method was the worst of both worlds.
Bit harsh on the old judgment there. He’s not hurting anyone by trying to flatten out his learning curve.
If you learn something pretty hard, like lunar on a sticky one you’ll pretty much have to use a sticky. if you then change to something a bit more sticky it will almost be like learning the trick over again.
I probably shouldn’t stick my nose in, but I can’t imagine that the skills learned with a sticky are completely non-transferable to JKA-standard kendama… you will have to learn and adjust, for sure, but it’s not like you learned “nothing” while practicing sticky.
Of course not! It mostly affects the trick where the surface of the tama is used. But go ahead, learn lunar on a really sticky one and then try something like a regular ozora (painted, not natural)
I’m going to go out on a limb and imagine that you will probably fail for a while. 
But then you’d make adjustments to the elements that need adjusting (more micro adjustments needed after contact, for example; cushioning the landing even more…) and the others would still transfer (getting the ken up and around in alignment).