$60-$500 Katana Buying Ramble and Suggestions

hello there sword friends more specifically hello to all you new sword friends out there i was recently mentioned in a video by cerberus arms uh he did a video where he talked about a 200 sword versus a 2 000 sword and offered some tips and tricks to spotting fakes and so first thanks for mentioning me in that video service arms tip of my hat to you and also i well my subscriber account has jumped by about 30 in the last week and in that week i've been asked a number of questions that make me believe uh the vast majority of people joining the channel are not necessarily super sword aficionado enthusiast folks but maybe folks that just think katanas are cool and want to know more about them and maybe want to buy one and don't know what to spend their money on so i'm going to try and help out with that specific question so this video is not about antiques or high-end customs or anything like that it's really going to be about people that maybe just want a sword functional or not and want to spend you know i'm going to focus on less than 500 bucks and i'm going to talk about some of the options that are out there so i'll go to a manufacturer website that offers a mass customization sword say you know custom maybe in air quotes and that's because the swords you buy are necessarily bespoke to you they're maybe pre-made or made like many others and then they have already pre-made fittings that you can kind of pick and choose your colors and bits and bobs and assemble them in a way that at least feels unique or is more bespoke to you anyway i'm going to talk about that i'll go through one of those websites go through the options explain you know what the what they are what they do what the pros and cons are and and kind of give you some my take on my hands-on experience that i've had thus far with a bunch of swords so that's the plan anyway i hope that that is interesting if you're not a person that wants a sub 500 sword to whack [ __ ] in the backyard because you think they're cool um then you can certainly tune out or you can stay and drop some wisdom in the commentary down below if you think i missed anything or have anything to add or more importantly correct if i [ __ ] it up so that's the intent here hopefully it's interesting and i'll i'll get on with it the first question i would recommend you think when you're buying a sword is what do you actually want to do with it now uh at least for the folks that i'm talking to in this specific kind of niche that might sound like a simple question but it might not be necessarily one do you want it to be functional do you want to be able to cut things in the backyard do you want it to be a dangerous weapon or do you want something that's fantasy or do you want something that's functional fantasy or do you want something that's dull something that looks like a sword is balanced like a sword but isn't so i'll talk quickly if you're looking for a dull sword that might not be dangerous terribly because you have children there's a few examples of the ito that you can get there dull swords they sometimes are made out of zinc aluminum so if your kids get handsy with them they're not going to cut themselves i wouldn't necessarily recommend handing them to them depending on how you know how responsible they are with sword-like objects because it still hurts to get whacked with a metal stick but the point is that you can get things that aren't as dangerous and and in that case you can get something that is balanced like a sword that isn't necessarily something you have to worry as much about as you would a a you know a four foot razor blade uh the next bit is fantasy and this is going to be real quick because not a lot of the questions i've got have been around fantasy but there has been a slight influx of questions about what about the cloud buster sword or this anime sword or that some of the manufacturers if the anime sword is at least within you know human wieldable portions proportions you can have some of the custom manufacturers that i'm working with make a custom iteration like that sword and get a functional version but generally speaking if you're looking at under 100 on ebay the vast majority of swords for the cloud buster sword or the zelda sort are not functional replicas if you see anything made out of stainless steel it usually says 440 or 440c is the kind of nomenclature that often gets used with stainless steel um it's fine for wall art and if you like it buy it just don't buy it with the expectation that you can use it as a functional sword or an oh [ __ ] moment or in a zombie apocalypse it's not really going to do the job well and if it does you're just kind of tempting fate some of those swords will cut i've seen a number of youtube videos of people buying a cheap ass sword and whacking stuff with it and it's just fine but again the sword steel isn't really meant to do it it can be very soft or very brittle and in either case it's just not not an ideal uh material to to use for swords at least not the way it's it's often tempered and used in those relatively inexpensive things the other bit that you have to worry about isn't just the sword steel but how the handle is constructed very often they're not made with very robust reinforced tangs or full tangs and and can kind of break off under the hilt somewhere and become a helicopter of death so fantasy stuff if you're interested in fantasy stuff think about it as wall art buy it if you like it but if you're buying it with the expectation of it being functional be very cautious and make sure that it's built with with that expectation in mind which very often the vast majority of them are big telltale sign 440 stainless steel anyway that's the last i'm going to talk about dulls and fantasy stuff because i think the vast majority of questions at least that i'm getting are about swords and their features and all that kind of stuff as it relates to a sharp sword that you can use um so that's what i'm talking about i'm talking about sharp katanas that you can use and to that end i will say kind of spoiler alert my recommendation for new people that want to whack [ __ ] in the backyard uh hopefully with with responsibility and and some degree of control uh is to get a through hardened blade there's there's different types of blades which i'll discuss but through harden basically means that there's no hormone on it necessarily at least not a real one and it's just going to be more forgiving so a 1060 to 1095 or 5160 through hardened blade i've had a lot of luck with the ronin dojo pro series the hunway raptor series there's a number of different swords out there that are made from that type of material i find them to be very resilient very well built and and will basically stand up to some shenanigans um so if you want a quick recommendation of what to get that'll work in a no [ __ ] moment and fun the backyard and this is not terribly expensive there's a couple um the other kind of quick advice i'd give you is buy a sword that you're comfortable using so again one of the common questions i get right away is i want a sword that looks cool on the wall but that i can use in an oh [ __ ] moment or the zombie apocalypse well if you mean that then train with it and i don't mean that you have to go to official instruction or or break the bank or your you know kill your time but move it around whack things with it uh practice with the weapon otherwise you're not gonna have any proficiency when you need it and to that end the first chart i'd recommend you get is one that you're comfortable with [ __ ] up that's the short answer if if that budget is none then wait until you have a budget there are 50 dollar swords out there i reviewed them musashi makes a through hardened 1045 katana that's fine to whack into stuff and get the the dumb uh stuff out some training stuff and if you buy a sword for 50 bucks learn what you can from it get the you know whacking logs and katanas are indestructible stupidity out of your system do that then don't feel bad because you spent 50 bucks i mean it's still 50 bucks and that's not nothing but you'll feel better than if you spent 500 bucks on a sword and did the same dumb [ __ ] and broke your sword so uh do that learn from the experience learn what is is you like and don't like and then spend more money get something that is better suited to the style or taste that you you know you now have in a sword i know katanas can all look the same at a distance there are some differences between them how they handle dynamically some of their intention what you prefer if you prefer something stout and very hardy and well built to whack into tree logs that'll sustain or something very very nimble that can kind of get in and out you know very agilely so to speak so the point is uh buy a store that you're not afraid to use and then use it learn about it and you know a 50 sword i've i showed what a 50 sword can do and it's it's quite a lot it's not the best sword but it is a sword and can do sword-like things which is pretty impressive so that would be my short answer for first time buying advice buy something you can use [ __ ] it up learn about it and then you know buy something again later uh so with that though um i'm actually going to transition now to a website i'm going to go over some of the manufacturers that have sent me review samples there's a lot more that i'm mentioning out here but i'm going to talk through the website of a manufacturer or a couple of them and go over the options what they mean it's a good chance to one you know explain all the various terms but you can go to a manufacturer like this and get a sword that is you know i already talked about a little bit more bespoke to you or you can buy one off the shelf either way is fine i think that what i'm going to talk about here is certainly applicable to off-the-shelf stuff and we'll at least give you an idea what all that what all that stuff means all right so switching over to the websites here what i'm showing you here are three different websites from three different manufacturers that offer mass customization stuff and again i'm i'm only referencing these because i've had samples from the vendors before i've perused the sites and i'm familiar with them and i would say the experience i've had with all of them has been overall good that said there are other people that make these swords if you've had a good experience with somebody else throw in the commentary down below i'm not basically these are the ones that i've used and that's why i'm going over it and each of these websites actually has kind of pros and cons i'm actually i think swords of norshar is probably the easiest to use but i'm going to stick with the jaeku site mostly because they have more options listed for me to go through so that's why you're going to be seeing more of this page than the others it's not because the other websites are bad or anything like that but as i look at some of the options here they're a little more straightforward in terms of the choices and this will give me a chance to talk through more options on a sword so first size wakazashi tanto yaito iaito is generally a katana length blade though it doesn't always have to be and it is inherently dull so you'll see options here like a stainless blade tanto is a knife wakazashi is a short sword katana is a long sword without going too much into the semantics of length now we're going to go over some of the options here so 27 inch blade is what you're seeing here now bear in mind that the blade is supposed to be measured from the very tip the pointy pointy bit at the end all the way to where the base of the hibaki starts or where the blade meets the hibaki along the spine so that is supposed to be this measurement which means that that habaki that blade collar at the bottom that brass thing which would normally be where the ricasso is on a european sword isn't counted in this measurement typically you want to verify with the vendor to double check because some some included some don't but it may add an inch so this 27 inch sword is more like a 28 inch sword and the 30 inch sword is more like a 31 inch sword so keep keep those things in mind now blade length if you're taller you may want a longer one though i will note that it seems like the vast majority of swords are made in the 27 inch range and if you get something that they're making all day every day you tend to find better results so if you don't care about length you're probably going to be happy with the 27 inch sword if you do then i might recommend you go over to uh whatever well whatever size floats your boat i tend to 30 32 inches those can be helpful training tools for a taller guy anyway if you want something that's more proportional to you to what a katana would have been to a historic japanese person some years ago blade steel this is an important one and something i think is is often just over hyped um you see a bunch of different steel types 1045 1050 1055 1060 1075 1095 here we have t10 and 1095 stuck together when metallurgically i think they're actually different 92 60 50 160 60 250 61 50 i don't know there's a bunch of them um honestly i don't think it matters that much and i say that because if you've watched any of the content i've done you've seen me beat the pants out of a 1045 through hardened blade it took a lot of damage you've also seen me do you know fancy laminated steel swords where i broke those two and sure there's differences between them but not necessarily a huge amount in the sub 500 category my recommendation if you're looking for a good durable sword is to do a through hardened kind of in this case i'd go 1095 or t10 through harden blade that's probably going to yield the best results because they're used to it at least the manufacturers seem to be 92 60 50 160. those are great steals but i think the the forges in china tend to work with 1095 and 1060 a lot and i think they bring the best characteristics of that steel out or at least get closer to it than they do with other stuff so that's that's why i tend to have the best results with 1095 or 1016 a through hardened variety from chinese manufacturers not that they can't do better with other stuff i'm just saying that's it seems like a lot of the manufacturers seem to really know how to make a decent sword out of that out of that steel the point is that um you know there's a lot of different steels out there but most people have a 1095 or 1060 through hardened option and if you're looking for something durable to go whack stuff with in the backyard i think that is your best bet you'll also see here folded so you see folded steel or tama hagane steel now they're not telling you what folded steels are included it's usually two or more different steels and tama hagane may not be the most appropriate word some people get sensitive about that because it implies japanese made traditional jewel steel which this likely isn't but it does suggest that they're kind of making an in-house style steal which is much more laborious unless it's going to cost more here you can see folded tamagonne 3 500 bucks to get something like that because again it's a very laborious process do i think it's genuine japanese jewel steel made in a tatara furnace with all the the master smelter folk guys no i don't um but folded 1095 if i go over to the ryan sword folks over here you'll see folded steel folded steel plus iron that might mean it is an iron core anyway tough to say some uh what some of these options are but the folded stuff is basically an aesthetic thing honestly i don't find that it has helped in fact i would argue that it's often softer and tends to hinder in terms of performance but at a at best it can be on par with some of these uh homogenous steels that are out there um i think it's an aesthetic thing and if your idea is to get a sword that looks more like a traditional sword than tom hagane might be a good option folded steel might be a good option because it's aesthetically going to be closer to some of those historic japanese style blades or at least have more in common with them than the homogeneous steel but it's not a performance thing so if you see it cost more money and that doesn't mean it's going to cut better or be more durable it's an aesthetic thing i think your durability option is is best in this 1060 or 1095 option that's my personal suggestion the other thing that we often tend to conflate is here blade construction so we have sanmai mano hansen mai kobuse or sochu kite kaite i don't know how to say it but mono usually means one homogeneous steel san mai is like a sandwich of three layers of steel and the lamination is different than the folding you can have two different steels one on the outside edges of the blade and one on the inside that are both different folded steels right theoretically though you could also have homogeneous you know not folded steels stuck this way the idea of a sand my blade is is that you're using two different steels with different properties to ideally get a better balance of a sword doing sword-like things and honestly i have not found that to be the case with any of these i don't think that laminated blades at least the way they come out of the the forges here tend to make any difference from a performance perspective in theory certainly they could but i have not found practically that to be true i have broken some sand my blades have used some of them and i don't think that inherently they are less prone to taking a bend or chip or that they are um better aesthetically they're beautiful and if that's what you're after then these are wonderful options to do and certainly um closer to the historic way swords were created however if your goal is performance again i would i would stick with this like 1095 or mono and mono steel over here i would go 1060 carbon steel those would be those would be my choices in this case we've got 10.95 that would be the the choice that i would make for for performance uh specific stuff and if you want aesthetics then you know certainly choose different things i'm just trying to give you perspective on the performance side of things blade shape so this is interesting there's a lot of you know people say katanas are all the same there's a lot of differences here we have shinogi zakori shobu zakuri uh here is a query that means like you can see this bevel here it shows a cross section but you can kind of notice this flat section around here is is missing it's one big bevel um historically these are more wakazashitanto things but you could find some some katanas here and there that we're also here as a curry they cut really well so no nothing bad there this is not common i'm going to see this more in like chinese style swords but not not necessarily katana so much kobe zakuri uh this has some different geometry there's a bohe down in this lower third then the spine tapers kind of this diamond section slightly that you can see here and then the tip swells out like is showing up here it's a very interesting geometry i really like the aesthetics i don't have anyone to show you but there's there's one then you have some other other iterations down here this has the less reinforced tip um the the moro ha this is an old tachy style where the top third of the blade roughly is is sharpened with a double edge and comes to a you know a double-edged point alternatively this is also sharpened on the spine but has a more shobuza curry style style well iris leaf type tip with a reinforced point um so a few different geometries that you can pick in a blade shinogi zakori tends to be the most most common blade geometry that people choose each one might have pros and cons by the way a show buzzer career blade a little better at piercing particularly if that that tip is done right uh una kobe is a courier i think is is elegant but it doesn't necessarily inherently offer any structural benefits uh in fact it historically may have had less structural benefits but due to modern steels a lot of those worries are kind of gone um i think you know it's elegant looking and then you have uh shinogi's korea which is certainly an easy blade to train with polishing so if you choose something fancy by way of you know folded tamahagane laminated doing a cosmetic or hyusa polish i don't know if i'm saying that correctly either of those may offer some aesthetic benefit where you're going to see more clearly what you've paid paid for in the sword so those polishes can make a difference and certainly cost more money and certainly are worth it if you're if you're uh buying features in a sword that that can that are there but if you're not and it's just a through-hardened mono steel blade then mirror polishes is generally sufficient now in this you haven't seen through hardened or not that's another thing so we it's talked about differential it's talked about steel types but it hasn't said clay tempered or through hardened there are some bohe notes down here but that isn't something that's necessarily noted here i think on the rhine sword site it might note clay temperate says yes or no so bear in mind that jamon is going to be real or fake if if it's been clay tempered right so you can get a through hardened sword which means basically it's it's a uniform hardness or at least supposed to be across the the length of the sword and a a clay temper is where you kind of get the traditional hormone i won't really go into it a lot but basically it means that wavy line along the edge is real and there's some differences the blade on the on the spine is going to be softer and on the edge it's going to be harder and the pro to that is that the edge it holds an edge longer so you hopefully the edge will stay sharp for a longer period of time and uh and it well it's really cool looking uh and it's also the way they were historically made so that's that's good or at least closer to the way they were historically made however uh through hardened blade while it doesn't it loses some edge retention it also has a springy quality to it and so they'll snap back to shape and if you have a bad cut you're a lot less likely to chip your blade it might roll the edge but that's easier to sharpen out and you're a lot less likely to bend the blade and while they can be bent back they kind of you know fatigue over time so the springiness of a through hardened blade and not doing a clay temper i think you'd certainly get a lot out of that cutting edge blunt razor sharp or sharp with niku so bear in mind that there are some trade-offs here a razor sharp edge is going to give you something that is also fragile so if you're bad at cutting and you're going to cut harder targets wood if you're going to chop the top of plastic bottles then a razor sharp sword may diminish it may roll it may chip sharp with niku is going to be more forgiving of bad strikes on even on water bottles the hard plastic neck of a water bottle or on wood or something like that so sharp with niku a little more forgiving razor sharp though you're a lot more likely to get those bottle cuts where the bases is standing so if your edge alignment is good and your edge is sharp then you can kind of get the the bottle that's sitting on your stand undisturbed while the top falls off or you can cut through pool noodles relatively easily if your edge alignment is on sometimes it's tougher with nikku not to say either can't be razor sharp but this generally means a more fragile edge less reinforced bohe types so you can see there's a lot of different bohe types here and i have some examples that i will show you let's talk a little bit about bohe this blood groove the fuller thing here so there's a couple differences i don't have every example to show you but you can see that's this groove that's set in here and there's a lot of different ways that they can be a lot of different thicknesses and depths and all sorts of all sorts of things but in effect it's a groove and they come in various styles and how they terminate and start is also important so this one just kind of peters off into nothing and it also starts slightly above the hibaki area rather than running into the habakki if you move over here you can see the bow he runs into the hibaki and up here it makes an attempt at terminating but it also just looks like it got sanded over not the best example on this example we have bohe that terminate reasonably crisply and this is an example of a double bohe you can see they run into the hibaki the bohe on this folded blade kind of run all the way up to the tip they terminate relatively crisply but there's not a whole lot of room left just a slight difference it's also very very wide and very deep in this example you can see that it runs under the hibaki here alternatively this bohe example leaves a little bit of meat left on the tip but you can still see it terminates reasonably well unfortunately the rest of the sword isn't here so i can't show you how it runs into the handle however you can see how the bohe runs in this case unfortunately i don't have an example of every kind of bohe but hopefully this gives you some idea of the options and what they look like in person now what i didn't have examples to show you this for example is in kobi zakuri where you have a naginata style bohe down at the the bottom third and then it kind of transfers to somewhere else uh i didn't have an example that showed the the this kind of crisp start above a habaki but this is also an example of a bohe that you might see also this is a sohi so notice that these double bow here kind of on that where that flat spot on the sword would be as for this little uh bohe right here called the sohi i believe is on the cutting plane on the beveled area so it's not on the flat section the hamon type so notice that you can pick a lot of different styles of hormone and there are some really cool metallurgical effects again earlier i noted the difference between a real hormone and you know not getting one on a through hardened blade and i do have some examples of hemon to show you i don't have a ton of examples to share with you however i do have the basic gist so if i start with the cheapest imitation hormone you'll see this is an example of an iaito and we have a wire brushed hormone here seeing that on a steel example we can see here this is what that wire brush hormone will look like with steel you can kind of feel it with your finger a little bit but you can kind of see how it hits the light and you can almost make out the sanding strokes in the in the middle here now some hormones can be etched on i happen to have the remnants of a sword here now this is a heavy etch so it's not sanded on it's done with a heavy some sort of acid solution to put the hormone on this is not a natural hormone and thus far all the blades have showed have been through hardened blades or or not differentially tempered anyway these are all fake hormones and this is no exception it's just under a heavy edge the next example is one without a hormone at all and so what we see is basically no hormone sometimes you can make out almost some ghostly images that look like it might be a hormone but from what i can see here this is uh not differentially hardened blade and this is through hardened there's no hormone or metallurgical effects and that's fine very often if you have a through-hardened sword this is ideal here's another example of a through-hardened blade this one's a little more prolific this is the cold steel warrior katana you can see i've sharpened the edge here but you can make out that there's really no metallurgical effects it's just a plain sheet of steel it's not polished to a high mirror polish it's kind of a satin polish and it's a through-hardened blade again there's no hormone the steel is tempered to the same type of hardness and it's going to give you some shock resistance and you sacrifice a little bit of of edge retention but not what i found to be an enormous amount getting into more genuine hormone this is an example from s tini hunto uh not a folded blade or or anything particularly special but i believe a t10 or 1095 blade that's been differentially hardened you can make out they do a really good job with the hormone here it's got a lot of effects and that's kind of what you can see you can see it disappears in some light and shows up really well in others this is one of the easier to see hormones but it's an example of well at least aesthetically a very pleasing differentially heat treated blade not all differentially hardened blades are as easy to see so this is a phelong hugo katana right at the 500 mark and what you can see is that it has a differential heat treatment this one is a much shallower hormone it's a little closer to the edge a little smaller and it's harder to see i kind of got to flick it around in the light now the difference is likely just the polish so as we talk about polish on blades know that you know the the the more you polish it uh the easier it is to see some of these effects so again not a folded blade or anything and the etch that they use whatever it happens to be doesn't really bring out the hamon as easily as the the previous blade we looked at the last example i have is from ryan sword and this one happens to be a differentially heat treated folded and laminated blade so this is an example of some of the metallurgical effects you can see if you choose an option like that now tamahagane might might look quite a bit different and these folding patterns and lamination patterns can look different depending on the vendor however this gives you some idea of of what those uh what that might look like if you were to choose an option like that now obviously jayco is capable of a lot of different jamon types and some of these are very elegant again do just keep in mind that you can get them etched on as well they won't look the same they won't have the same kind of zazz to them certainly but you can even if you get a through hardened blade get something that at least imitates the hamon from it from a distance the kasaki so kokosaki usually just means shorter chukasaki somewhere in the middle and okasaki towards the top i have some examples to show let's talk about kasaki i don't have an enormous amount of kasaki to show you this might be an example of a chukasaki i don't know that i have anything that's a kokasaki exactly but you can see a kind of medium length and ideally the hamon kind of does this it wraps around just a little bit now this is an example again of the same kind of chukasaki and this has a much more pronounced bevel or at least grind on the yokota area here so this would be a geometric yokote where you can kind of see how the light hits it the angle changes very steeply at the yakote it's pleasing to some folks but i don't really harp on this very much this blade seems to feature it though this is a dynasty forge mucha shobu series katana this is one of the few examples of shobu that i happen to have and i don't think it's exactly 100 correct in terms of shogu but you can see that there's a much more gradual taper to the blade if i just put a yokota here it wouldn't quite look just right that said i think the spine is supposed to kind of extend all the way to the tip that said this shibu doesn't have a yokote and the the the tip kind of comes down at a little little different angle lastly you can see here this is an okazaki so you can make out some of the differences basically if the yokote were about here this would probably be a chukasaki and that just has moved down slightly it's pretty much cosmetic there's no real difference here but effectively it creates the appearance of an okazaki now the jayco site says yokote and basically that's just this line i mentioned kind of where it is some people get really sensitive about the the geometric yokote i haven't really i used to be more of a fan because it for some reason i don't know where it came from the idea that it has to be but i find that most historic blades are are not don't have such an acute angle right off the yokote into into the the rest of the kasaki so i tend to prefer this more ornamental one versus this kind of stark transition may so i don't know that jayco has an example to show but the may is just the signature on the blade so has has may or doesn't i don't know if this is necessarily worth paying for though for the vast majority of you you're never going to take the handle off and if you're not going to do that then you're never going to see the signature so knowing that it's there maybe that's of some benefit but that's basically what that means do you want the person who made it to sign their name let's move on to the handle so the length of the handle uh generally speaking i'd recommend going with like a 11 or 12 inch handle sometimes people want more i think 15 inches or 13 inches even starts to get a little bit a little bit big but it depends on your preferences it depends on your martial arts style i tend to prefer like a 10 inch handle myself now it's it's easier to move your hands up though it's not easy to add more handle so you you may want to practice with a stick or something like that and see where you you like to rest your hands generally speaking though i prefer something something on the shorter side as hot as that seems suka shape so this isn't something i have the best examples for but there is this hourglass shape though do note that as you request it sometimes it can be hard to execute on the blade and it makes the sword look a little weird so sticking with this style shape as odd as it sounds there's a tang that fits in there and it's it's pretty tight getting this hourglass shape sometimes can be a challenge for these manufacturers to get off well and i find that i have better luck going with the standard shape i do prefer the look and the feel and the execution of this hourglass shape myself however i tend to find better results with this kind of hindashi style tsukamaki so i don't think they show it here but i have some examples to share the next thing to talk about is the style of wrap so you can see that i have a synthetic silk wrap here maybe you can tell it's synthetic silk because you're not here and it's not the greatest camera angle but you can see that we have the kind of standard diamond pattern shape here this is not the worst example the diamonds ideally are relatively uniform that's not something you can generally expect in a sword in the under five hundred dollar price you can't hardly expect it in swords over that amount however you can see that this is the kind of standard i believe it's called hanarimaki style this is an alternative option or we call it the battle rap ketate machiam again probably saying or massacring these names but you can see that we have kind of the standard diamonds and then it wraps in a little bit in the middle and then it produces then we get the same diamonds towards the bottom the manuki this one doesn't happen to have any in the middle but they're often mounted in the middle the manuki in this case are still placed in the kind of standard spots but very often you'll see battle wraps with the manuki placed in the center now apart from that they're talking about the ito that's the various uh material and color so you know pick your poison in terms of color it's it's up to you but cotton uh it takes lacquer really well but it frays and stuff like that if you don't do it it's soft and comfortable on the hands but wears pretty easily silk artificial silk in this case it holds up pretty well it feels cheap in the hand but you can put lacquer in it to tighten it down it holds up pretty well though leather this artificial leather noted i don't find that this holds up very well i don't think it ages well and i don't think it feels particularly good in most cases so if you can get genuine leather wrapped by like a competent person on the high and custom side leather can be great in most of these mass production swords i don't find it to be a very suitable option it doesn't stretch really well it doesn't maintain that tension particularly well either so i don't i don't find it to be a particularly good material for the long term it looks cool but i don't think it works particularly well somewhat color again it's up to you i will say that this black one though a lot of times the skin colors or the skins on these less expensive swords is not particularly high end and the black will obscure some of the small nodules and blend things in so i think black might be a wise choice a lot of times the other colors to me though cheapen the look sometimes it can be done classy but i find that white or black tend to give the best results to me personally one other option here as you can see full summary wrap versus oh and they do have a picture of a battle wrap down here notice how the manuki are are placed in the center here um but here we see full semicolo wrap this one presumably has a panel you can kind of make out this this panel on the side where the the lights hits it there's this flat section here and then it kind of curves off to the side a full wrap of semagawa is you know not something you're going to see necessarily but this samagawa stuff is actually really hard it's not very pliable leather uh and it adds some structural integrity to the sword now historically speaking you could get a sword that had panels or a sword that had a full wrap semi-go is expensive sometimes you know you'll find examples of historic blades that only have panels on them but if you can opt to do the full summing hour wrap it does add some structural integrity to the handle it makes it less likely to if the the wood underneath cracks makes it less likely to become problematic in your hand and the thing holds together a little bit better so highly recommended full wrap of some ego if you can justify the expense the suba so there's a few different iterations and i think most of these companies whether it be any of the manufacturers i have noted here or some of the others online probably buy these fittings from the same company i guess because they see a lot of the same options across many different companies i tend to prefer the kind of iron sukashi style cutout fittings as opposed to these gilded or or you know colored fittings here i think these there's not my style um alternatively they have there's a few different things basically just pick what you like but i personally would recommend something in iron that emulates tsukashi stuff something that's reinforced here doing some of these little frilly things here it looks like there might be parts that poke your hand or something like that some of these really dainty things they might be very light but it looks like i would probably poke my fingers here and it might not hold particularly well i have some examples to show you as well there's a smattering of various sub i've collected from swords i've broken over the years that are all in the sub 500 category i tend to prefer simple shapes like these examples here some have sharp little ledges like this guy or this and they can bite into your hand which can cause some discomfort that said i think they are closer to what they're trying to historically emulate and in their simplicity i like the elegance of it it's a personal preference however if you prefer something like this or like this it's it's all in whatever you want however i i find that very often these types of fittings they just look muddy and they they don't they don't look as clean they look cast and kind of poorly made in contrast to some of the simpler shapes that at least for me hit the mark closer sometimes you can get gaudy fittings that i don't know aren't the worst this doesn't happen to be some of the the worst example but at the same time i still think it it kind of misses the mark a little bit what i would encourage you to be aware of are thin examples like this for whatever reason in the design of this particular guard it uh it's only fixed at two points and it basically bends really easily this is a relatively inexpensive 135 dollar sword from ryan's sword and one of the notes that are criticisms that i had in the review i did was that this guard was able to bend other guards like this here are a little gaudy for my taste but functional if you're doing a custom project you can also ask if they have the capability of making fittings this is an example of a iron or folded steel sub of some kind that was made by ryan sword on an example they sent over it's not the same type of cast stuff it's it's different it's smaller but i happen to like the lines and it adds a little bit more character i talk about this sub in the review of this actual sword so if you're interested i'd encourage you to watch that however the point is if you want something a little bit more bespoke that isn't on the the list of fittings you can choose you can certainly ask the manufacturer if they're capable of doing something unique different special or you know even if this doesn't look unique different or special to you they might be able to carve something specifically for you to your tastes the fuchika manuki again kind of same thing it's i would say less important than the suba but anyway you just pick the ones that you like i tend to favor the iron simple versions the habakki you can see there's a few different iterations here i as well have some examples to show so this is the kind of common brass color that you're going to see in just about every sort it's the default so to speak and this is one example of the hibaki choices you will you will inevitably get on most katanas and if you're going on the extreme budget uh this is kind of the default that you're going to see on most swords sometimes the standard brassabaki has a little bit of character some scuff marks or something like that and it can add a little bit of character you'll also see hibaki that emulate two piece of bucky this is all brass and so it doesn't do the best job of emulating a two-piece obaki it doesn't have the same contrast that you might hope to see but there are others that do miss sabaki for example has a rain pattern on it or some sort of scratch pattern also emulating a two piece of bokeh but you can see it's just a sheet of copper that's been welded or soldered on to a standard brass sobaki still an artistic effect they're also hibaki that tend to have this style of appearance and this is emulating a historical style but if you were to see the historical example it's not at all like it still it's an interesting pattern and adds some character some hibaki come polished this is an example i'm not sure if it came polish from the vendor but sometimes you can make a request if you're doing a diy build type katana they're also silver hibaki or ibaki with various patterns or symbols etched in them there's a myriad of different options here these are just a few sepa as well i like that you can pick the different colors and different kind of patterns here adding some combination of metal or keeping it all the same color can add some zazz to your color scheme depending on what you want but i like that there are different options for having some copper hibaki with brass here some silver i like the the variety of things and the combinations that you can put together to make something that visually stands apart now there's the sci and i'll show you some examples in a moment but do know that there's a variety of colors that you can also pick from the sci if you want to have wooden or black or brown horn and then there are various segal colors in terms of the scion look at the variety of options they have here i'll show you what i have around just to give you some idea of examples in person you can see here we have a gloss bladder pattern versus an ishimae pattern that's this stonewashed looking texture and you can see how they hit the light differently you can also note that sometimes you can get wood or horn fittings so here's an example of wood and then some of these are likely to be horn also as we move on the mouth of the scabbard area here you can see that some of these are adorned in horn some of them are different color horn and some of them are are simply wood and how it lines up there are other fittings that you can get or at least decorations so you can have a small retained wrap like this alternatively on the other side here i have a fully retained wrap scabbard i pretend to like fully rattan wrapped scabbards or at least scabbards that have some additional adornment whether it be the rattan like this example or the partial semi-gal wrap like this one here these tend to be harder to cut through it's very easy to cut through this part of the scabbard and into your hand so any additional rigidity or strength or something that's harder to cut through than wood prevents me from hurting myself there's also a lot of different colors and things like that that you can get so you can really get it to your preference in the sub 500 dollar category it's tough to find a saya that really fits well but fortunately in the at least at the moment there's a ton of options out there whether it be kind of ribbing like this somehow wrapping like this retain wrapping a lot of these options are available in the sub 500 category it used to be that these used to cost quite a bit more to get those kind of additional upgrades but now they they're available this is an example of one that swords of norshar made for me that has a a custom moan on it as well as some decorations further down the scabbard that type of decoration is a little bit more expensive and tougher to get people to do at the moment sometimes you can find a vendor who will do it but it's it's tough to find the other thing to note is the cigar you can kind of pick what you want most of these are cheap and better ones aren't terribly expensive but you can you can kind of pick the color and it all all can sit together real pretty generally speaking though i find that these segayo can come in different lengths you might want to verify if you have any preference on how long it should be you might want to also ask that these little spaces right here these are called shitty domains these little washers on the side they often come out if you untie this knot which you generally do if you're going to use the sword you untie this presentation knot there are video tutorials on how to get it back if you want it there but these little brass washer things on the side come out real easy and then they scratch everything up so sometimes i request that they glue them in the swords of norshire site there's a engraving option as well this is something i think you can request from jayco but it's certainly a cool option to have an engraving your name or some sort of symbol or something on the blade they can offer some pretty cool options all right so hopefully that has been an interesting bit of ramble rambleness um earlier on i mentioned that recommendation is by a sword that you're comfortable using at a price point that you can afford if you break it damage it and you're not going to get bent out of shape about it practice with the tool you have especially if you want one is an oh [ __ ] moment and if you want something pretty there's a lot of different options out there to give you a katana-like object sometimes you favor something closer to the traditional look and feel and dynamics or at least materials or sometimes you want to go all performance and so long as it looks like a katana it's fine either one of those is fine they're all going to work for sword-related activities but which one is more important to you hopefully this video will i guess at least explain some of it and you can decide for yourself where you want to spend your money anyway that's all i've got hopefully it's been of use as always cheers and thanks for watching

Channel: Matthew Jensen

Views: 11,149

Rating: 4.9602275 out of 5

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Id: SwMhCKA5raA

Length: 43min 34sec (2614 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 23 2021