/r/Katanas
A place for people to discuss their love of the Japanese sword and its arts. All are welcome
(Sometimes we even discuss swords that are not from Hanbon.)
A place discuss, examine, and appreciate Japanese swords and swordsmanship.
For identification of Nihonto (antique Japanese swords), post to /r/SWORDS here on reddit, or on the Nihonto Message Board online. Both places are filled with experts who are more than happy to help.
Please be kind and courteous.
WHERE TO BUY ONLINE:
http://www.aoijapan.com/ - Sells antique Japanese swords, for very serious collectors and formally trained experts.
http://kultofathena.com/ - Sells a wide variety of quality Japanese swords across several price ranges.
http://www.handmadesword.com/ - Fair swords at fair prices.
http://www.trueswords.com/ - Home to Musashi Swords, very good for those completely new to katana.
http://www.swordnarmory.com - Sells Munetoshi swords, great for mid-grade swords.
http://stores.ebay.com/huaweiswords - Great swords for both cheap swords to learn on and high quality swords for martial arts. They also accept commissions for swords at decent prices.
/r/Katanas
I recently ordered a katana from Hanbon Forged. After countless nights researching I came to the conclusion they were the most suggested for new/entry level sword consumers. Now here’s my dilemma… I placed an order with them on 10/21 I received the email stating they received my “request” and my order will be processed once payment is. Well payment has been out of my account since the 21st. I’ve sent 2 emails just wanting to confirm my order is being processed. I’ve not heard a word or received any reply or even a standard order processing email. It’s been 10 days. Has anyone else ever experienced this with them before? I’m not in a certain rush to get the sword but I sure am to be given peace of mind I didn’t just get ripped off or duped and now I’m out hundreds. Any suggestions? Or similar situations? Thanks friends.
Recently sword friend MessengerOfDarkness posted some nice pictures of the nakago and engraving on his z-sey sword...
https://www.reddit.com/r/Katanas/s/Yg4RlRMPdd
So I thought I would pass along how you could get something similar on your HBF sword if you wanted it. First a little history.
Unless they've changed recently (maybe somebody with a recent order can tell me), generally speaking the tangs of HBF swords are not fine finished. With my earlier swords I had to take some sandpaper and WD-40 to clean them up.
Now don't anybody freak out. They're recently made production swords so they really should not have any rust on them to begin with. And as such you're not doing anything to value by cleaning them up.
As with all budget production companies, if you're not ordering something like a special length sword, the common generalized blanks of the various steel types sit around in the warehouse/shop waiting to be processed in their final form for somebody's order. During that time, as they sit on a rack or in a barrel, the tangs are most exposed to the elements and they develop some topical rust. The blades may as well but it's usually a lot less and is taken care of in the finishing process for the order. The degree to which attention is paid to the tangs and how they look can vary widely. Anyway...
About 2 years ago, with sword #7, I started asking HBF to clean up the tang and put their name and date on it in Chinese/Mandarin and this is what I got...
https://www.reddit.com/r/Katanas/s/G5xFrqzwyw
Not too bad, but through three independent sources I learned that the translation came out a little more clumsy than I would have liked.
So then I swapped to English. At first I just had them put their initials with the certificate serial number and the date (Mo./Yr.) it was made. Picture #3 here...
https://www.reddit.com/r/Katanas/s/dmqxwL7Okb
but then, starting with sword 12, I had them add the type of steel it was. Pictures 9 and 10 here...
https://www.reddit.com/r/Katanas/s/d0X968VCBa
Here, if you pause the video, you can also catch it at the tail end on swords 14 and 15...
https://youtu.be/WV-5S0Z7J9E?si=3CbdrcSDUwjdwayJ
As I say, I went with the English because I really couldn't count on the Chinese translation to be a "smooth" as I wanted. Also I thought; Well, I'm having a Japanese style sword made by the Chinese for an American, so why not?
I didn't go with the/a smith's signature because I was kind of wondering what the point would be. I mean, not only do production swords pass through various hands, but even if it was one guy finishing it off, who the heck is he? Any one of 6 or 7 (or who knows how many exactly) possible finishing smiths that no one has ever heard of or probably ever will? I mean no intended insult for hard-working, skilled laborers, but I didn't see that there would be any added value to it.
So, if you want a tang similar to mine from HBF, you have to be sure to ask them to clean it up, and maybe send a still picture of mine from the start of the video below in an email along with your order. It also doesn't hurt to print and sketch out what you want and how you want it on the Tang. You don't have to be Leonardo da Vinci, but a picture is often worth a thousand words. Just draw a rudimentary looking tang and write on it what you would like.
Depending on how large your order is overall and what, if any, other engravings you want there may or may not be some small charge for that.
Oh, and to be clear, the "engraving" is going to be LASER ETCHING . Although, if you do want a signature, maybe guy will chisle it. But I'm kind of thinking not. Even if you don't want any engraving and you would just like the tang cleaned up be sure to ask for that.
Cheers y'all ✌️
Of all the packages that have went through God knows what, through SF Express or EMS across the world, I’ve never had anything like this and its journey was from Amazon in CA to UPS to me in AZ. That’s some forklift action right there…
Heya All Swordfriends! Welcome to another long and fairly boring musings of your old buddy Zvir.
After years and years of collecting well over 20 swords (not counting daggers and multiple tanto), and getting myself educated on the subject matter better, I got to were I am absolutely in love with Dokkodo, Book of Five Rings, and developing a strong interest in the life of the famous Miyamoto Musashi. Which, probably, a logical way of things for anyone interested in Japanese swordsmanship and swords.
I wanted to get something like a replica of a sword that Musashi would have taken with him into battles at the end of the Sengoku Jidai. (Though it’s still a bit of a moot if he fought on the loosing side mostly or not, due to his clan allegiance and other matters.)
After reviewing the swords in the collection of the museum named after him, I realized that besides the fact that the most famous one on the display was made by his favorite school (or a particular smith he liked, or was friends with), with red river sand Tamahagane, it’s not that different than a lot of the pre-Edo swords.
Shinogi-Zukuri (“ha-zukuri” due to its popularity), longer than your average 26-27” blade, single bo-hi on each side, terminating at kissaki. Not a long kissaki (likely to assist with thrusting through armor of higher ranking samurai). Not geometric but regular round ends of the bo-hi, forgive my lack of Japanese. It seems he wanted a good and reliable sword and aesthetics were secondary.
I looked at all sorts of “Musashi swords’” replicas, including the one by Hanwei (which, I think, is probably the best production swords’ attempt). I was surprised by the “cheap” Dojo Pro Ronin O-Katana named after Musashi, because it had some of the features of the museum sword, minus hamon, of course.
It is likely that Musashi used sturdy iron fittings, and decked out his battle-field swords humbly, going for the performance over the bling.
Every day for Musashi was a day on a battlefield, so I don’t think he would redress his swords in gold and silver, but keep them practical and humble. He also mentioned not to get attached to your weapons (and friends). In that sense Ronin “O-Musashi” is, actually not bad. Except they do use geometric bo-hi termination ends for aesthetics.
So, the idea was brewing in my head for a while and I decided to commission a Custom Sword from the people that I know and can trust. That made a multitude of swords of various geometries and fittings for me over the years — the HanBon Forge.
I wanted to keep the apparent tastes of Musashi in mind, as well as what I’ve seen and learned, and imagined close at hand, too. I did make some compromises to make the sword stand out a bit more, for aesthetics. Not sure if my choices would have been approved by the Master Swordsman or not, but here’s what I came up with.
Chu-kissaki or regular kissaki but certainly not O-Kissaki.
Longer blade and handle, somewhere around 30-31” + 11.5-12”. To me it seems like a long enough sword to accommodate his height and life-long practice wielding dual swords, and sometimes/often longer swords, at least when he was at his prime. He was well developed physically then.
I asked for a reinforced tip, so the taper stops before the tip, and the the back of the tip is slightly more like elongated oval.
I took some liberty and asked for the hi to terminate an inch or so before the kissaki, again, making the edge slightly stronger, and giving it some additional weight that is very mild, but noticeable in the hand of a practiced swordsman.
I asked to ditch the pseudo-midare wavy hamon and make it more like straight lines along the edge, which is what I’ve seen in the museum. (And, honestly, it’s such a moot in terms of what kind of swords exactly he used, so the single museum long sword may not even be “it”).
Thus, I felt that the blade geometry as a result, and the overall design, would be a fairly “battlefield-friendly,” and be in lines with what we can imagine Musashi may have used (with some liberties, such as “over-beefing” the tip). For all we know, he could have used the proven Shobu design, if he really wanted a strong sword, but, alas, we don’t know.
Now, the fittings part. I didn’t want to stick to all-iron, mostly not to make it like every other “Musashi” sword out there. But I was careful still.
I used the pure brass-type (not what advertised as “high grade alloy,” but an actual “brass”) double-gourd simple tsuba. We know that he drew / developed it, but we don’t know if he actually used it, or used it a little or a lot. But nothing screams “Musashi” more than this tsuba design. It’s very light yet very strong. That “infinity”-like shape, or the Greek numeral 8 — is capable of absorbing, redistributing a lot of kinetic force without snapping. Plus, tsuba was not really meant to take hits on anyway. I went with brass due to the potential patina over-time, and not having to worry about iron rust, especially since cast iron is not something they are made of at HBF (cast iron has a lot of carbon and resistant to rust much more so than iron with low carbon content, though they do lacker the iron well).
Fuchi ring is darkened brass with three round Yin and Yang patterns. I know that Musashi respected religion (Buddhism and Shinto), but didn’t trust his life to it. Still, this pattern seems mild and I think something that Musashi himself wouldn’t mind, reinforcing the ideas of the circle of life, life and death, and how the sword may have played a part in both.
Kashira is rounded shape, seemed thick and beefy enough, and also features the Yin and Yang motif.
Menuki — that was a hard one. Because Habaki and Seppa will be Copper (and HBF does have nice copper Habaki), the reddish bronze menuki featuring three flowers seemed appropriate. Musashi loved nature, and three Yin Yang symbols nicely harmonize with the three flowers. The color of flowers also nicely harmonizes with the Copper Habaki and Seppa.
Tsuka is to be hour-glass shaped. Hishigami and full samegawa wrap of natural color. I can brown it with semi-auto gun oil or black tea, if I feel like it. I asked not to make an axe-handle. I found such design comfortable with longer katana, and it also looks very elegant. Black Japanese ito. Make it Emperor’s Court friendly as well.
Saya had to be somber and the Emperor’s Court friendly, too, but I also felt that it should also hold up with the rigors of battlefield and incessant fighting he engaged in around that time. (Though most duels he won using a wooden sword against live-swords…) It will feature a samegawa wrap by the koguchi (top of saya), and I took liberty and asked for a simple shorter Kojiri, to keep scratches away a bit more. I felt that such saya could still split in half from a strong strike and release the sword (as it was meant to happen). And yet it’s a bit sturdier. I asked for additional layer of poly or deeper lacker, as my +$40 saya selections tended to chip and dent too easily. Not sure if that’s how it’s going to be in the end, but Yao seemed to understand and promised more attention to the saya. Black Japanese silk sageo.
Oh, and I asked for a non-folded T10, with Hazuya polish and the back that is not quite like a mirror. With slightly “rougher” polish, as was the normal back then, and mirror polish didn’t exist, as we see it these days. I didn’t ask for folded T10 just to avoid any issues with structural integrity. It was one of those compromises to make the end-result a bit more practical than purely a display piece.
For best results I asked to take all the time in the world. Yao reached out to me with questions to clarify a few things, which was awesome, as they didn’t just assume and moved on with it.
I feel like with HBF I can throw at them any project, and I did already in the past with my other creations, with various lengths, sori, geometries, etc., and expect a Decent result. Now they work with T10, I know that they mastered it as well as 1095 by now, and I can’t ask for a better steel for a DH’ed sword. It’s not as great as some other more expensive steels. But in my experience, T10 performs as well as many other European tungsten-alloy steels, holds hard edge well, and has innate rust resistance, good carbon distribution. It’s not the best, but it’s very good for things that a DH’ed katana is meant to do.
So, that is my story with the latest custom sword from them, and also you can tell how high is my excitement about eventually holding the end-result of my version of a “Musashi-type” sword, that I think I would enjoy even more than nearly a twice more expensive Hanwei creation, with copper, bronze and brass moderate bling to boot, and yet a strong “battlefield-friendly” sword, most importantly. I hope it comes out as I imagine it. Strong, harmonious and something that Musashi would have approved with a quick nod.
Edit: Grammar.
I'm trying to quickly determine if this is a real or fake issued certificate from 1969. The sword looks good, I am just hoping there are no red flags with the certificate. I'm not very familiar with what to look for or what to avoid with pre-1982 NBTHK papers. Any help is appreciated!
Bought for 20 bucks for grins and giggles. The spacer says “ryujin” but I’ve been informed that a lot of their parts are used with other sellers.
It’s a little to hard to read but I want to try to identify the brand that sold it and this model if possible. Just curious.
Hey, I'm a big fan of Japan and the Japanese culture, I've been wanting to put a katana in my house for years but I really don't know anything about blades or katanas I just really like the way they look. If anyone has any idea where I can buy a cheap Katana, I don't mind if it's a bit low quality for any sword experts but I would like it to look nice and authentic for decoration, thank you for the help!
Has anyone ever ordered from Makotoswords.com??? They look really good, but I do not know.
Hi all! My friend’s birthday is coming up and her fav Demon Slayer character is Rengoku, so I’m looking for a full tang replica! After reading reviews I see that mini katana is just a reseller, and hanbon forge and ryansword can have quality issues and it seems hit or miss on that. Is there another Rengoku replica anyone would recommend? Or should I just bite the bullet and get one from one of those sites?