Biggest KATANA misconceptions DEBUNKED

this episode of Chatty versity has brought to you by my new full chainmail print t-shirts and pants as well as full print hoodies and new shadow versity t-shirts which are tunics chainmail like hybrid prints they're awesome perfect falafel just showing your medieval enthusiasm to low you in a long-sleeve one undershirt or the short sleeve on just out here because it's awesome it is a high detail historically accurate riveted mail print made from real came out itself and it's awesome so if you're interested in grabbing yourself a set there is a link in the description below [Music] greetings i'm chad and i have addressed the katana in many videos on my channel trying to dismiss the misconceptions but also establish what is our eight strengths vs us weaknesses and the katana generally comes up where I got casually in many different video topics and then I have my full large katana series but I've realized I don't have a single video that addresses all the misconceptions in one concise way which is what I'm doing in this video right now and if you want the deep dive well I do have a five-part katana series which goes into academic studies on the katana metallurgical analysis and all that stuff which is the proof it establishes all the things I'm going to be sharing here right now and I'll be trying to explain these points that I'm going through as best I can as concisely as I can because you know me I never go off on random tangents but anyway I do the best I can and hopefully make this video as a kind of a point of reference that can be used to point towards I the this is the truth about the katana so let me say right off the bat that the katana is one of my favorite sword okay I love this thing a button thing is I want things to be understood in their correct context and so even though I love the katana I hate that people misunderstand it and they also put the katana on the pedestal to make it seem like it's better than every sword in the world it's not okay the katana is not a magical sword that is the best soil in the world it is great at what it's meant to do so when put in the correct context of what the katana is made for what it excels at it's great at that it doesn't mean it is the best it I want cutting the katana is a beasty cutter is the best cutter in the world well I mean it depends what makes a good cutting okay if you made a sword that was ridiculously top-heavy that you just needed to drop it or what cut anything well there you can say it's the best color in the world but it would be unruly and you won't be able to use it okay a sword needs to hit a specific balance to be a really good sword a katana does hit a decent balance but there are other swords that can cut better than it okay there are other swords that's are better all there are swords that exceed it certain other things that that just the katana doesn't you know EXO it can thrust but it's not the best thrust in the world okay in terms of how new bull it is and how easy you can redirect the blade there other sorts that a far more nimble then and okay so the first thing that we need a understand and heuristic Etana is not a magical sort and it's not the best sword in the world it is a great sword at cutting and what it's meant to do it's pretty rubbish against armor okay and in a one-on-one jewel if you're fighting someone with another sword it has a lack of hair protection everything I had but that's the first misconception out of the gate is that it's not magical it's not the best sword in the world these next points I'm gonna elaborate on further but I'm just gonna say quickly is that the steel is not the best steel in the world okay the katana it's not the sharpest sword in the world it is not the strongest sword in the world it is not the lightest order in the world it is not the most shock absorbing sword in the world and this slight curve does not increase cutting capacity all these things that I just mentioned are things that I've heard academics try and claim about the katana and that it is better in these qualities than any other sword all of those things are incorrect and I'm gonna explain why I'll start with the metal and this is one of the most misunderstood things about the katana and it is usually the cause or reason that people give as to why it is stronger sharper Lysa and all these things and it all comes back to that it was folded 2,000 times because that that's made it so incredibly strong in people who say that if you fold steel two thousand times it inherently makes it better stronger sharper only things honestly have no idea about blacksmithing or metallurgy and I used to say that it was the 40 like when I was a teenager all I was I was fooled by these documentaries and even pop-culture that's because it's the folding that doesn't an okay folding steel is only necessary if the steel you are starting with has impurities in it if the steel you are starting with has the right carbon content it's the right grade of steel and it doesn't have impurities folding that steel will make it worse okay when you Forge something you inherently lose carbon content to the oxygen around all this making all the heating all the scale the scale is the steel oxidizing oxygen bonding with it okay flaking off and when you fold it not only do you have a chance of trapping scale in the folds you are d carburizing the steel and the more fold you do into steel that has already got the right carbon content the more carbon you will lose which means you could render it down back into iron so folding steel does not inherently make it better what it does do it can remove impurities how does folding steel it remove impurities well this is one if you have nonmetallic inclusions in this steel they have a lower melting temperature than this deal itself so when you heat up this kind of block of steel to the point where it isn't liquefied the steels and look fiber is red-hot well the nonmetallic inclusions have liquefied and when you hammer them down fold around and hammer it down you can squeeze those little little pockets of liquid nonmetallic inclusions out of the steel and the more you do it the more you fold it the more you squeeze it out to the point we can actually pop em out of the steel itself it does not remove all the impurities in fact folding steel like this it is impossible to remove all those impurities you can get rid of the larger pockets of impurities and a decent amount so it does help purify the steel and then the next thing the impurities that you can't get rid of because it's impossible to remove all those impurities in this method you homogenized those impurities uniformly throughout the steel so that means when you hammer it out into a long blade now it means there's no one large pocket of impurities that would cause a fatal point where the blade will break it's all uniform which means you can be very assured that the strength of the sword at this point is as strong as the sword at this point next thing the folding method on katana wasn't folded 2,000 times you can reach up to 2,000 layers but you only need like 20 folds to get there think about it one fold you've got two layers two folds you have four layers three folds you have eight layers four folds you have 16 32 64 it goes up okay so you can reach the glorious 2,000 layers but not two thousand fold so Kay if you folded steel two thousand times you'll probably render it down into iron and ruin it so then why do they fold it well it's because like I said the steel they start with has a lot of impurities in it and the method okay the actual folding method is an ingenious method to be able to take this lower quality steel and it is lower quality okay now people say tamahagane a the steel of a Claridge may have is glorious no it's just high carbon okay and especially with earlier technology it could be difficult to make higher carbon steel when you work didn't understand the processes perfect okay but the Tatara they're big you know a smelting thing that makes tamahagane a that Tatara is in his most basic state a large bloomery furnace and bloomery steel has been known in many cultures for thousands of years before the medieval period even okay bloomer is still it's how they started smelting iron in the Classical period even with the Romans okay bloomery forges has bit has been known for ages the difference between the Tatara and other bloomery furnaces is that it's big it's a big bloomery furnace but that is it another thing that kind of proves what I'm talking about okay is the metal the big metal slab chunk thing that you get out of the Tatara that's not all tamahagane a they actually have to look at it break off chunks of there's steel that has the right carbon content why because just it with any other bloomery this is the whole thing about preliminary furnaces it doesn't fully liquify the iron and if the iron isn't fully liquefying that means that the carbon content can't diffuse evenly through the iron to get perfectly uniform high-quality steel as a result the steel that you're going to get out of it is going to have a lot of nonmetallic inclusions and the carbon content is not going to be diffused uniformly and so what they do when they have this big chunk of metal from the Tatara they break it apart and they look for the bits of steel that are shiny a bit more silvery because the more silvery it is the more carbon content it has and then they actually look for what is good at tamahagane a which is steel that has the right carbon content break it off into chunks and keep them together this is why tamahagane a is always in little chunks and they need to be flattened out and put into this kind of thing to be forged welded together okay if it was a you know if the turret made good quality steel they wouldn't need to do that I would already you'll get a puck out of it of good quality uniform with no nonmetallic inclusions so pure steel or the right carbon content straight away you wouldn't need a folder then to get rid of the impurities and then you can just bash it down into this length that you want there are many types of steel that is actually better than tamahagane either steel that it makes the katana traditionally because it's better technology crucible steel okay if you put steel into kind of a Cray clay crucible put it in a I got Ford firing of the right temperature so much that you can actually liquefy the iron you will diffuse the carbon in it uniformly and you'll get a higher quality steel as a result of the right carbon content out of the gate if you put this crucible in a furnace that can get hot enough to the point where it will fully liquify the iron the impurities will naturally float to the surface okay these are bits of like glass silicon and only the other thing about generally all these bits of rock dirt and everything they melt and they rise to the surface they float on top and then the carbon gets fully diffused evenly throughout it when the result is a pocket gets diffuse evenly in the puck and you get much better quality pure steel as a result and guess what this is technology that did exist in the medieval period okay not everywhere in the medieval period because the thing people need I'm saying both and medieval you know Europe and medieval era Japan is that there was good quality and bad quality but everyone always grabs the best quality katanas do you know how many crap quality katanas they were that just would bend easily couldn't hold an edge that didn't have the right carbon content and we're closer to iron and steel there were a lot more than people realize okay sword quality historically was always on a spectrum and the best quality Smith's okay the best Smith's would be able to make the best quality ones and get paid more but there are a lot of crappy ones out there okay and people tend to like to compare the you know best quality katana with the worst quality European swords but Noah all right if you want to compare best to best you compare the best quality katana against the best quality European into swords and when you do that you're looking at swords that were made out of crucible steel that actually made out a better steel having said that though the differences in quality are very small in all honesty in terms of the actual strength and durability I what has a far greater impact on the strength and durability of a sword it's not necessarily the steel as long as the steel is decent okay and the steel that you get the resulting steel that you get out of the folding process on a katana is decent and same with you know even crystal seals like the differences between a good crucible steel and the steel that again the katana they're both pretty good and I would say crucible steel isn't fine naturally is better because it has less impurities and it's more uniform and all those things but the differences between crucible steel and katana you know traditional folded steel are so small in regular use you would barely notice it okay you'll barely notice those strength differences with you look if you could very best the best okay so even though I think the crucible steel is better you wouldn't really notice the difference the thing that causes a much larger difference in its handling and mechanical properties is the quenching stage okay the quenching and tempering stage now the quenching and tempering stage is very important because that actually gives the katana not only its iconic curve but also its iconic hump is it the Hammond Hammond line which is the wavy pattern you see on katanas okay because Tanner's traditionally wear them when they're traditionally made how are done through differential hardening where they will make the edge harder than the back this is in contrast to most European methods of forging swords in the year quenching and tempering stage where they have a mono hardness is not differential it's all the same uniform throughout which is better well there's pros and cons to both but one has a massive advantage over the other which I'm gonna get to you but before I do that I want to address some of the other misconceptions next coming up which is that the katana is the sharpest sword in the world and this is related into the quenching and tempering because the katana is quenched in such a way where the edge is a lot harder they put a thin layer of clay on the edge thicker on the back and sew the edge hardens quicker in the back which makes the edge the crystalline structure the metallurgical crystalline structure of the edge martensite then they have a pearlite which is another crystalline structure which is not as hard as martensite a pearlite kind of jacket with a nearly ferrite or iron core as the ferrite can sometimes have lines of cementite and so it's a lower quality of pearlite steel but most traditionally made katanas have three types of crystalline structure now as a result you have a very hard edged Steel's that are harder okay can hold their edges for longer it doesn't mean they are inherently sharper they just remain sharper for longer you can sharpen up crappy iron to be as sharp as a katana it'll just lose the edge quicker that's the difference now to the misconceptions of the katana strength and shock absorbency because this is directly impacted by the differential hardening that I was mentioning before people assume that because the back edge of the katana is not as hard as the actual edge that somehow makes a shock absorber and therefore resistant to chipping and denting and breaking that's completely incorrect in actual fact because that the edge is so hard it's actually more prone to cracks okay the harder something gets the more prone or beads to crack instead of just deform and didn't okay so that's the first misconception to break off and then people assume that'll be resistant to bending which is also completely incorrect what differential hardening will do and I'll come closer to the camera is if you have a harder edge and a softer back is that when you get a crack or something that impacts them because remember the edge is much harder on a katana then the other parts of the sword when a crack happens and it reaches the part of the blade that's softer and there's a really soft internal core on most katanas which is closer to ferrite and then this outer kind of side jacket here is a pearlite start type of steel and so the crack will go in and it will stop alright if this whole thing this whole blade was as hard as the edge that crack will go through and snap and so what it generally does generally I'm not saying autonomous can't snap into you they absolutely can but generally by having differential hardening it Katara's will tend to bend instead of snapping into that's the answer the problem is they don't flex okay they are not Springs and to get a spring the whole sword needs to be about as hard as what the katana said usually is martensite but then it needs to be tempered which relieves some of the stress and gives the sword springiness now that type of steel is what you'll find in the best quality medieval European swords springiness see the springiness of my sword and as a far more springy up at the tip okay it's made to do that because this is a practice one all right that is purely possible because the type of Steel that this sword is made out of it is martensite that has been properly tempted to give it the springy quality now if I did this if I flexed the katana as much as I'm flexing this sword it would stay that way it would Bend and stay bent this is the truth about the katana okay is that they are not as durable as other swords but they are generally far more resistant so here see how easy it is to flex this saw this much to flex the katana to that same level I would need to apply far more force so it is more resistant to flexing it's more stiff the reason why is more stiff it's because the stick up do you see the thickness difference in these sores I'll try and kind of turn another thing it's if you can't see it like a town huh that the tip is three almost four mil at the tip compared to this which is about one and a half to two mil thick at the tip okay sorry resistant of flexing capable flexing the problem is when the katana does eventually flex even though it takes more force to flex when it does that's gonna stay it's gonna stay Bend katanas Bend they don't flex back unless they made out a modest you a lot of modern katana reproductions aren't made in the traditional way they're made in this way with spring steel because spring steel is ultimately more durable so almost by necessity katanas need to be thicker to resist any bending because when it'll Bend that that's where you're on into troubles so to make it a balanced functional sword a couple of things need to be done the blade needs to be a bit shorter because you're gonna have a blade so thick at the tip if you have it as long as a longsword it's gonna be way too top-heavy say do you see the length differences here between the katana and longsword quite different in length too top-heavy if you made a song having said that there are katanas that are about as long as a longer sword and they are beastie choppers so they're not completely unfunctional I think generally they will have a bit of a you know thinner tip but they won't be nearly as nimble as long sword and it's an interesting trade-off because this long sword if it was sharp would have nowhere near as much bite if you cut with the tip as you can with a katana see this is one of the adventures that the katana gets remiz always a bit of a trade-off with a katana being thick at the top like this it's chops are devastating even when you strike at the top end and so even though the katana is shorter than the longsword okay to get a good effective really good truck with this long sword you will need a strike someone they aren't right here on the blade but with the katana you can actually get a good chop right at the tip and you don't always need a aim further down the blade and so in that sense the katana still has decently good chopping range but where the longsword really excels at it's a course in thrusting okay and having said that if you try and chop someone you're just out of range but the long side because it's longer it's just in range well you could still like slice someone's throat open so even though the longsword isn't as good we're chopping at the tip it can still chop all right so it's always a decent trade-off between the two and remember the katana isn't a horrible sword like I said at the beginning I'm just trying to dispel the misconceptions but one of his great strengths is this cutting capacity and it does get that because it's thick okay and rigid and resistant to vibration because of that one of the weaknesses longsword in any sword that have you know thinner blades on them is that they're much more prone to vibration and if you hit something with wrong edge alignment they could vibrate and bounce off or as the katana is particularly resistant to that because it's thicker so now I've addressed the overall strength of the katana and the myth that it's shock-absorbing because the differential hardening no it's chocked absorbent because it's thick all right but yeah it's not gonna flex back so now let's address one of the other myths is that the curve assists with cutting ratio and the answer is it doesn't it's greatly got a curve okay not might like it it's barely off straight now you can get advantages in the cutting ratio if a sword is more prominently curved like you know say tall was the whole scimitar kind of family of swords Pawar shamshir those ones right and very prominently curved okay then you can of course do why draw cards but the type of draw cut you can do with a katana you can do long sword you can strike and draw in when you're striking and you can also do push cuts just as easily and remember the katana Bailey has a curve it's barely off straight and so the drawing motion that you can get between a straight sword and a katana doesn't change much at all I tested this with a 3d model in my katana series and the additional cutting ratio is PIP so much so it's not even worth mention a whole reason why the katana has a curve is actually due to the differential hardening process okay because the back is thicker than the edge there's more steel that wants to contract when you quench the actual blade and so that pulls the blade back first it curves forward because this cools down faster because the back cools down slower then pulls it and then the katana gets his natural curve so it's purely from the differential hiding but the thing is you could still make a straight katana with differential hardening if you started with an inverse curve this is actually proven in one of Alex Steel's videos where he was trying to make a rapier and I was he was trying to make it straight and I was always curving to the side because he I forget what he did with that one specifically I think he did a different pattern on one side he wanted like a hamon line or something like that and sorry to get the the rapier to remain straight he needs to make an inverse curve quench it and let the cooling down straight pull it back into straight and you can see look at that that is some serious Bend and then up of the tip like that's crazy crazy Bend completely unacceptable it's still bending I think that gap is still increasing as it's cooling unbelievable right righty-ho we put a bend opposite to the way that it warped itself as it did its final part of the cooling it's still just as curved I wonder if this time however it will straight things crossed all right let's have a look at this thing but that is straightened No so kept me down alright and sorry people who made big time I could have made it without the curve if they wanted to it would be a lot more work so and because the curve I mean it looks good and it does have an advantage it certainly doesn't harm its cutting ratio so there's no real point in going to all the work to make it straight and there is an advantage and it's that the curve makes it's kind of Auto correcting in its edge alignment and it's simply proven by this if I hold at the katana like this and let it roll watch how it rolls see that it'll roll into straight and sorry if you strike something with a katana and your edge alignment is off and naturally when it hits because of the curve wants to pull itself into correct edge alignment and then go through and then because it's also resistant to vibration that enhances the effect even more so and so the katana is actually easy to cut with than other swords does that make it better than cutting you know in some instances okay it doesn't mean it has the capacity to cut through things that other swords can't that doesn't have these properties because all you need to do is strike with good edge alignment and I'll go through it means the katana is easier at cutting and therefore it's easy to make good cuts with but it doesn't mean that it could always cut through things that other swords that are good at cutting but have more flex and aren't curved or incapable of doing those swords to still be able to cover the same thing you just got to be good at it okay get good edge alignment and then you'll be able to do it so the katana in that sense is easier to cut with and it's one of its advantages okay cool you know a mechanical kind of advantage to its design katana is still a good sword okay I'm just trying to debunk the bull trap and also give it credit where it deserves because there are some other things that make the katana good at what it does and I want address those right now because I basically addressed all the misconceptions okay it is not sharper it is not stronger it doesn't mean to that it's weaker is about the same with certain strengths weaknesses though it doesn't flex that's a problem it's not wider it's not made out of better steel on average and other swords and the curve doesn't assist in its cutting ratio but it is still good at cutting and I've already addressed some of the reasons why it's stiff it's forgiving in the cut it has kind of an auto thing thing on on the edge alignment rolls right into it and the other thing is the fact that it has a single edge now why does making it a single edge make a good it's not inherently because it's got a single edges that it's taking advantage of one of the things you can take advantage of with a single edge and that is the length of the edge bevel what do I mean I specifically mean the length that you have between the very end of the edge and the end of the bevel itself so I see this from tip rides to about there that's the actual length of the edge bevel now compare that to double bladed swords okay because you need two edge bevels on the sword the length of these edge bevels are much shorter than the katana and so the katana with having a longer edge bevel that means it can have a smaller edge itself like a more narrow finer edge what do I mean a sort that has an edge bevel like that is gonna cut far worse than one that has something like that this is a natural advantage that any single edge sword can take advantage of because it doesn't need to you know shorten the edge bevel to fit another edge on the back end so you can make the edge bevel go all the way in okay make it longer and every sword does have a secondary bevel so when you're looking at a blade okay this is the edge bevel all right now the secondary edge bevel is the final kind of point where it comes in to the blade so you got the normal edge bevel and then right at the tip it kind of curves off a bit more steeper right to the end of the sword every sword is going to have that no matter how narrow it can but by the design and age of the katana secondary edge bevel is far more shallow than what you'd have to do on a sword that has a shorter edge bevel and so again because that it has a very small secondary bevel the angle of the edge could be far finer okay doesn't mean it can be sharper but it can get that advantage and still be very robust with say again longsword comparison or any sword that is double bladed okay if you want an edge bevel to be very narrow guess what it needs to be because the edge bevel isn't as long it needs to be thinner needs to be thinner along that way because the more narrow you make that edge okay this is the middle of the sword were looking at more narrow you make it the thinner the sword needs to be and the thinner the sword the more flex it'll have and that means if your edge alignment is off you can bounce right off the target but with seeing edged sword well you can get away with having that narrow edge because this bevel is longer and you still have a thick blade as a result which makes it very resistant to vibration and bouncing of targets and so there we go these have been the main misconceptions of the katana and you know I think we covered them all if I missed any do share them in the comments below I look forward to reading them I hope you have enjoyed and of course I hope to see you in the next video so until that time farewell [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Shadiversity

Views: 2,103,232

Keywords: katana, samurai sword, sword, swords, folded steel, nipon steel, longsword, japan, japanese, anime, medieval, history, historical, misconceptions, martial arts, kendo, hema, historical european martial arts, tamahagane, hamon, tsuba, saya, knight, knight's, samurai, kenjutsu, tachi, nodachi, tatara, forge, blacksmith, quench, temper, blade

Id: Ytbh8mhknFA

Length: 27min 1sec (1621 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 07 2020