Shadow Dancer (swordcn.com) NEW Basic Musashi 1095DH Katana Review-It’s anything but basic!

[Music] good evening fellow blade enthusiasts and thank you for tuning in to another Studio gdt review I'm very excited to announce that we have a new manufacturer to review tonight in the form of Shadow Dancer swords wanted to take a quick moment to say thank you to Shadow Dancer swords for sending out a couple of samples to this new and upand cominging channel uh it's manufacturers like you that help me keep this project uh up and going tonight we're going to be taking a look at their new uh basic moushi this is an exclusive review in away in that it has not been reviewed in the uh sword review sphere yet so what is new about the basic Massi uh it has been upgraded to 1095 differentially hardened steel uh so that is a a nice upgrade at the price point that it has stayed at when we go over all of the upgrades that are included at that price point I think you will be pleasantly surprised so Shadow Dancer is not without their own entry-level budget line they do have the Tyrannosaurus series of Swords uh that are not typical construction but if someone's looking at getting into um reproduction Japanese sword ownership and wants to be be able to um take care of them in the traditional ways uh the basic mashi sword is really a feature Rich um Katana that is worth taking a look at so I was excited to get it it was really fun to have and there's some interesting things about it it's not without a couple of things the nitpick here and there that's the whole point of review but I think uh at the end um you'll see that uh it is worth its value so let's go ahead and take a look got to get this stuff out of the way first I am an amateur student in Japanese swordsmanship I am an amateur collector of Japanese reproduction swords I'm an amateur historian there's a whole lot of amateur going on here so take everything that I say with a grain of salt The Sword in this review was sent as a review sample uh that would recharge anything that I would say to you but if you think that it might um feel free to tune out if you would like so here we go taking a look at Shadow dancer's website you can see the price point of $2.99 for the basic mashi and a little blur about what makes it unique followed up by the detailed specifications on this one thing I will point out is the weight especially on the model with bohi this is an extremely light sword the fittings are lightweight the sword is lightweight it is very very maneuverable what you end up getting for that price point is a sword that looks extremely squared away has very very clean lines uh overall strong fit and finish one thing I will call out is the difficulty in photographing red I I've noticed it with this sword the red on the website isn't necessarily what the red over a cell phone photo looks like isn't necessarily what the red in person looks like so just be in mind if you're dealing with swords anywhere because I've had this issue happen with other manufacturers that the red might not be the red you think it might be the tsuka is the beginning of what makes the basic moushi not so basic you can see the very defined taii shape here very very clean EO uh very clean lines to the fui and the Kashira is definitely not basic in my opinion here you can see how cleanly the Kashira meets with the Ito on the Suka it is the smoothest transition that I've ever felt and literally the smoothest Suka I've ever felt in the hand so they did a really good job of blending the two surfaces in there and the casera feels great the cracked herb or cracked paint scheme that you can see on the Katra and the fushi is done well it's clean it's defined but it doesn't have any sharp edges on it but I want you to look at something else here especially at something at this price point and that's the brass sheto doet that are included on this it's just something that you don't normally see here again you can just see the uninterrupted lines from the wrap all the way to the Kashira and this Suka features shadow dancers Hami Pro uh I asked what's the difference between the pro and the standard Hami and they said that the pro is Tighter and that the diamonds are Neer uh I do have another sword that we'll be reviewing and as far as the tightness is concerned it's pretty similar but I do think that the diamonds on this as you can see are very tight and it does feel incredible the manuku was the one thing that I felt was a little bit out of place it has more of a glossy finish to it the rest of the Furniture has a satin to a flat finish so if I could recommend that they do anything different I would just say that they would maybe blast that with a little bit of a brace of media and make it match the rest a nicely fitted fuchi is shown here with the cracked Earth or cracked paint design one thing that Shadow Dancer does that I absolutely love is the single um Mugi pin now it is drilled at an angle you got to be careful with that and you got to check your Muki pins more often because the Nago can bite into them a little bit more than something that's drilled straight so if you haven't had an angled drilled before it's just something you might want to take a look at did I forget to mention that this beautiful looking Suka is wrapped in imported Japanese cotton this is another strong feature that the basic moushi has that kind of blows away other swords at that price point and you 100% Can absolutely feel a difference between synthetic silk or the the cotton that you would get in other providers it is a fantastic feeling Suka in the hand and this is I think all attributed to their design and of course the uh EO material itself in disassembling the tsuka I noticed that there was a a little bit of a burr on the Nago from the drilling for the Mugi and there were some metal shavings that were stuck in between the sagala um I did bring it up to Shadow Dancer and I thought hey you know this might be something to look at um they stated that uh you know it was an anomaly but that they would make sure that they would take a look at that issue on any swords going out going forward so I don't have any reason to believe that they wouldn't do that and um I don't really think it's an issue taking a look at the atsuka removed here you can see that it uses real Ray skin sagawa panels uh you can also see the various fittings here so let's take a look at those a little bit closer I know there's a lot of conversation about Company B using company A's furniture and then maybe it making its way over to company C but as far as I'm concerned to quote the great Eddie isard did you put a flag in it um if you don't mark it if you don't stamp your name on it it's just a different culture over there and expect it to be used and be copied so on Shadow dancers's website they clearly state that they've been given access to zay's bucket of parts and you can clearly see that it's marked on the fui here Zay so good on them um because they put a flag in it you can see that the Habachi is a very beefy brass unit not prone to deforming more important than that though is the machian that's installed inside there to meet up with the Hamachi this is going to provide a much tighter and solid fit than a standard mass-produced uh Universal habaki the sepa D is smaller than than the overall size of the sepa doesn't have anything to do with functionality uh maybe it might bother you um really it doesn't bother me in this instance but it is something that I noticed I found the fit of the Suka to the fui to the sepa to the sua to the sepa to the Habachi to be absolutely fantastic with beautiful alignment um it was one of the best aligned pieces that I've seen and this is a using air quotes here basic sword the alignment awesomeness didn't stop there it also had a fantastic fit with the SAA uh there was no filing required uh it was uh ready to go right out of the box and now let's move on to the Saia now this is where Shadow Dancer could get really basic here you've got a plastic kuchi you've got a plastic kojiri you've got a plastic kuriata but then all of a sudden they throw in brass Shido and they're fixed they don't fall Out imagine that uh so again hard to call it basic I'll say one more thing about the Saia it's often said that in the Chinese reproduction swords the SAA are all oversized possibly as a means to be able to mass produce them and fit a wider variety of swords and that their dimensions are typically significantly larger than what meono dimensions would be um I find this to be true most of the time I will give Shad Downer Kudos because the SAA on at least two swords that I've seen of theirs has been very very um small narrow tapered the sword has minimal rattle on it and it it's it's kind of a nice feeling uh something that I'm not used to now on to the fun stuff as mentioned earlier this new version of the basic moushi features a 1095 differentially hardened steel blade it is a shinogi zukuri shape with bohi uh and a clay tempered hon and Chu [Music] Kaki taking a look at this here you can see that it's somewhat difficult to photograph the MTO steel blade in the basic licing conditions that I had the overall shape of the sword or sugata is a Tori Zori shape with the majority of the curvature occurring at the center of the sword the blade features some niku it's not on the heavy side it's not on the light side it's just right blade Flats were nice and flat and the bohi was uh pretty smooth now the hon on this is advertised as sanon sui or three seedar and really that's the only advertised specification of this sword that I would have a little bit of an issue with I can't really see sandon Sugi in this normally that is classified as a peak followed by two small uh valleys followed by another peak in a repetitive pattern we don't really get that pattern here and there's also some um slant on the Ashi on this as well it's not a bad hone at all I actually think it's got a lot of interesting stuff going on in it but I'm not quite sure I'd call it sunon [Music] sui the next issue I would have would be with the mechanical mirror polishing on this now you have to keep in mind this is designed as a basic sword it's in the name and they're trying to give you access to certain features with the basic sword that you wouldn't have with others so the Polish is something that maybe went and took a back seat one thing if I could recommend that they might want to take a little bit that is the machine polisher kind of biting into it and jumping it I think there are ways with a basic sword to be able to not have these bite marks into it the other thing I would do is the uh cross polishing on the Cosmetic yokote it's kind of odd to me because it's at an it's at an angle I'm used to it being you know perpendicular or or something uh the angular cross polishing is a little bit jarring to me so if I could make a recommendation be to make sure that the machine doesn't jump when polishing the blade and that you do a perpendicular uh counter polish on the kasaki the blade produced a significant tachic Kaz it was a little bit wind Breezy outside so it was hard to pick up but trust me it is a loud [Music] sword no sharpness issues out of the box uh there was no secondary bevel present the monoi was um in perfect condition and had no real issues moving through uh printer paper with ease um I think it would be a very very good [Music] cutter so at 299 is there really more bang for the buck here I say absolutely this sword really impressed me you're going to get a neonto shaped and sized SAA that is a good fit out of the box you're going to get uh brass Shido on both the kuriata and the Kashira that don't come out you're going to get imported Japanese Cotton On The susuka that has real Ray skin uh inlays on it and then you're going to get a 1095 differentially hardened blade uh could the mirror polishing use some work sure but if you're going to actually cut with this and use it heavily you're going to be scuffing up that poish anyway so is it a big deal I don't really think so um there are way more positives to this than negatives at the price point feeling the Suka in the hand alone is enough I think to convert most people so all in all I think Shadow Dancer has a winner [Music]

Channel: StudioGDT

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Id: Osj_EjAVeD4

Length: 14min 31sec (871 seconds)

Published: Thu May 16 2024