I was impressed by the speed of the delivery. As soon as I got them out of the box, I set them up. Then I proceeded to dish out glorious pain by getting right into the thick of battle with them. The 43 inch is a superb training tool for distance control and also works well as an off hand weapon. The over all quality of the shinai is superb, and after quite the beating was doled out, the shipping strings finally began to unravel (which is normal). Buy this shinai and get ready to speedily whack your opponent a hundred times before he gets close to landing one on you!