It’s Saturday morning here and looks like we don’t need to expect a lot of sun today…Ideal weather to finish some things here 
It seems like most of you guys (and girls ) liked the cheap battle ready katana from the Konron Forge ? The forge had some problems lately..one of the problems was the fact that they did need to re-locate their forge..but that was not the only problem, there were 2 more things going on there. First, the smith (yeah, they only one they have) was in the hospital for 1 ½ month for an operation and one of the polishers was sick. So that sucked big time and caused a big delay !
But good news, they’re fully operational since this week and it seems like all of the troubles are gone and we can continue with our work. Actually the new batch of 9260 steel blades are almost forged so they only need to finish the blades and mount the swords now… and this is the point were I would like to ask you for some advice.
I don’t want they use the same fittings anymore as last time. They weren’t bad but I want something better. So we have 2 options now :
1. Use new improved ‘made in
2. Use imported Japanese fittings (can see them there too)
The last one sounds very good right ? And you will see they are indeed very nice..there’s only 1 negative point about that. The price…
If we use the new Chinese fittings, we will be able to keep the price of the sword under 200 euro. If we use the Japanese fittings, you might expect a price around 220 euro.
By the way, yesterday was a nice, sunny day and I had one of the new cheap handmade samurai katana lying in my car and a prepared Tatami ..Yeps we did some cutting and the results were kind of shocking…Don’t worry, I have it all on tape and you might expect the video very soon, just need some editing..
You can already found some pics here:
Black katana with hi
Brown Katana with hi
Have a nice weekend and talk to you soon !
Dave
Hi Paul,
Thxs for your input ! And it’s Dave, not sire
Very funny but today a new shipment arrived and the swords does have some updates. More on that later this week.
As to your 4th point, we’re busy with that and in fact the service is up and running but just not presented on the web yet.
Different kind of steels and polish. Blade type, length and all other specs can be chosen…
Thanxs again for your reply !
Dave
Dear Sir;
My only suggestions for your new 9260 steel katanas would be as follows:
1. Make the Katanas in a variety of lengths,
from 28″ to 36″, and make sure that they are of the traditional ‘differential tempered’ type. Make sure that the Nakago is a full 12″ to 14″ in length to ensure maximum strength.
2. Supply them to your customers with the option of getting them ‘shira-saya’, or even bare blade, so that the owner can customize them himself with his own saya and tsuba, etc.
3. You might consider having the Nakago un-drilled, so that the customer could determine where best he wants to drill the peg holes.
4. Also make available a service wherein your customers could provide you with a sketch of the sword they had in mind, in terms of blade length, curvature, weight, etc., and you quote a price to have Konron custom make the blade for them. These would be much higher priced swords, but would put you into the class of the custom sword makers who currently charge
5-10K per blade, but at a fraction of the price.
I Thank you for your consideration, and I remain,
Respectfully;
Paul R. Ward