Feel free to let yourself go and let me know how you really feel about this tool  in the comments below

Not sure how you feel about the weather but it has been sunny & warm over here for the last couple of weeks so you won’t hear me complaining

In this issue you can find some of my rands about pictures, my trip to china, the movie 13 assassins and of course the link resources as usual.

Good weather makes me happy and makes we want to take swords out of their boxes to make some nice pics. Last week I’ve took the kami katana out and shot about 100 pics. Some are posted on facebook already, others will be added to the slideshow on the productpage and the rest will end up in my recycle bin…

Speaking about pictures, i’ve posted about 20 historical pics (old japan & samurai) here on facebook

As you know (or not)..i’ve travelled to China in March to visit some folks in Longquan . Yes I have pics and video’s but just didn’t had the time yet to do something with them. Longquan is a nice and crazy place with lot of ‘garbage swords’ and great food…haaa

Overview of longquan

Long story short, while there, I decided to stop all cooperation with the Folks at Konron and focus 110% on Zhui Feng. The disaster is just too big there and there’s no organization at all anymore. The only way to make it a success story is moving over to there for some time to get a descent planning and follow up and I’m just not willing to do that so it’s better to stop this whole adventure rather than running something on 25% of it’s capabilities and get highly frustrated..

So as soon as the Yoshan serie is completely sold out , Konron will be removed from the site forever. Custom sword projects are been taken over by the guys at Zhui Feng since last year already. Definitely need to post some detailed pics from some custom projects as well…damn why are there only 24h/day …

Speaking of Zhui Feng, had a great time over there, had some good conversations, made a lot of plans and lot of new stuff is already in the pipline… What took me 6 months at Konron takes a few weeks at Zhui Feng…

Polisher doing some foundation work

We’re having a prototype of a monosteel sword passing some schools at this moment and the feedback we’ve got so far is nothing but positive. Still need some very small tweaks but we’re almost there and ready to make a batch.

We’re also working on a choji blade and last week I’ve received the first pics. Not sure what you think but I feel they’re ‘not bad’ at all and a few should go into production soon. Still doubting if we will only offer them with stone polish yes or no.

Choji blade full

Choji Blade detail

The problem is that with a standard/mirror polish, you just can’t get the same nice effect and it just doesn’t make much sense to offer a sword that doesn’t show it’s true beauty.

So far the Zhui Feng stories for today..to be continued…

I’m not sure if you did hear about the ‘new’ samurai movie “13 assassins”. In short :

Cult director Takeshi Miike delivers a bravado period action film set at the end of Japan’s feudal era in which a group of unemployed samurai are enlisted to bring down a sadistic lord and prevent him from ascending to the throne and plunging the country into a war-torn future…

If you didn’t see it yet, it’s a must see (just saying…) You can find the official site here.

And to finish this edition, here are some very nice resources I came across last weeks :

Articles :

• Thoughts on Tameshigiri from famous swordsmen : interesting perspective on tameshigiri and some worth reading comments at the bottom of the post
• Shirasaya : Nice how to article with lot of pics
• Polishing and Conservation of the Japanese Sword : written by Guido Schiller
• A Lineage all but Forgotten: The Yushinkan (Nakayama Hakudo)
• Building and operating a traditional tatara : an how to article (with lot of pics) i’ve posted on the blog several weeks ago
• Quenching Process of Japanese Sword : very detailed explenation here
• Various types of tsukamaki : nice and clear pics
• “Polished Steel – The Art of the Japanese Sword” : written by Kenji Mishina
• Custom made fitting tutorial : great thread on SFI , a japanese tsuba can be found here. Who says Chinese are only good at copying ?
• History of quenching : another quenching article worth reading
• Japanese sword-mounts in the collections of Field Museum (1923) : even in the old days, people were interested in japanese swords

Video’s

• Documentary: Japan’s Secret Empire (Part 1 of 5) : History channel documentary
• The way of the samurai : PBS documentary
• Japanese Swordsmith Matsuda Tsuguyasu Part 1 : the importance of the traditional fuigo or bellows
• A Guy breaking a Nihonto while cutting : the Japanese owner is not really happy
• What is the japanese Sword (part 1 of 3)

I’ve posted more of these interesting links on facebook, just too much to mention here..

That’s it for today..over and out…

Dave

ps: Hojo, our little samurai kiddo, is still alive and kicking

Februari so we’re getting closer towards spring & summer, something i definitely look forwards too

Anyway a short mail with 3 topics :

• Going to China
• Great raptor deal
• Resources (you will find a historical article about the real last samurai there…)

1. Going To China

From march 2e until the 15e I will be traveling to China to visit some forges. Some of them I know and I am currently working with (Konron & Zhui Feng) , other are completely new and never heard of them.

Some of them are situated in the longquan area so you can bet I will be taking my camera to shoot some vids and make tons of pics !  If I can find enough time, I’m planning to keep some (small) interviews there with several smiths & craftsmen.

So if you have any questions or any particular things you like me to go over while there, write it on our facebook wall, catch me on twitter or just mail me at dave@samurai-sword-shop.com.

I will try to post updates on the blog while there but it won’t be easy. Facebook , Youtube and twitter updates will definitely be a nogo since you can’t access these sites in China unless you know some black magic…

2. Raptor Deal

If you are looking for a nice samurai swords set that is beautiful, functional and fits your budget , i might have something for you.  What do you think about this set :

• Choose any katana in the raptor serie
• plus a Raptor Wakizashi
• plus a Raptor tanto
• plus a Bottle of sword oil
• Regular price +720 euro
• You can get it for 545 euro

A limited amount of sets will be available so first comes, first served

3. Resources

I’m getting a lot of good feedback on this topic so it’s one to stay..

• Utsushi – in search of Katsuhira’s tiger. Part 1 : a great documentary on tsuba making that you defenitely need to watch
• Utsushi – in search of Katsuhira’s tiger. Part 2
• katori Shinto Ryu : Nice preview of an upcoming documentary
• The real last samurai : if you like to read about the history about the samurai you will like this article
• The Tatara and iron smelting : Another detailed video about the process
• Historical changes in the shape of the japanese sword (PDF) : short but to the point and clear
• Nihon-to Shape Changes Over Time : a follow up on the previous link written by Richard Stein
• Japanese Armor Manual : a great resource if you want to learn more about the Japanese armor in detail

That’s it for today..over and out

After some manufacturing delay at the forge, shipping problems because of the expo in Shanghai which forced us to ship the swords by sea and some other issues I do not want to bother you with, the new budget friendly konron swords officially arrived in my hands !

When I started the first check on Thursday I came across a few unexpected guests. The boxes where slightly smaller and when I opend them, there was just a sword with a cleaning kit, there was no 2e saya included. When unsheating the thing, a hamon showed up on the t10 steel  blade…

Something went wrong since we didn’t shipped any hamon swords from the forge.

Long story short, they guy responsible for the dispatching at Konron included a batch (10 pcs) of hamon swords that had their final destination in Mainland China, not overseas

What’s the difference you might think between a sword for China and oversea ? Well..in terms of quality none at all so these swords are all build to take some serious cutting exercises, are having iron fittings, a solid tsuka and even a real yokote.

But I personally have a few issues with these swords :

1. The polish is kind of basic
2. Don’t like the way they enhanced the blade to bring out the hamon

Since we’re working on a hamon line that has much higher standards than these , this is definitely not something that fits in our ‘plan’.

Now shipping them back is just not an option, too much costs involved in that so we’re only left with 1 option. Offer them to you at a very attractive and low price !
So….we have 10 pcs available ( 5 pcs white and 5 pcs black) at the price of 275 euro. For that amount you will get the :

1. Sword
2. Cleaning kit
3. Nice storage box

If you need a good cutter and you like to have something more than the cheap through hardened pieces, this might be a good opportunity for you.

I’m not going to bother you with the ‘famous’ Konron story again but in short, when we broke up with them a while ago were able to track down some of the former smiths & workers there and are trying to continue with konron.

They had some very skilled people there and it’s not because the management of Konron screwed up the whole thing (and gave me and some of my clients a lot of troubles) that the people who worked there need to pay for that too. I still have faith in them.

We have a lot of plans together, which I won’t reveal here yet because I learned to not be too excited about this stuff since you never know what will happen. Dealing with Chinese people and companies is not an easy task, I can ensure you !

So you will only hear from me when plans are executed and a delivery is on it’s way to here.

The first thing on our todo list was creating a good and budget friendly sword that was somehow a bit different than all of the other swords on the market today. Since it’s hard to make a budget friendly sword very different than others , we decided to make some kind of “complete sword kit”.

We came up with lot of different variations and finally decided that the kit as we present it here would be the way to go. I can already tell you now that besides these 50 pcs that we have made, there won’t be a second batch which is exact the same. Both in items that are included as well as the price ! So if these are sold, it’s over …

So 2 weeks ago, the shipment has left China (finally because there’s another story attached to that…) and are on their way to the warehouse here. 1 piece was send by express mail in order to announce the good news and give you the opportunity to get a good discount on top of the already cheap price we will sell it for.

The retail price of this set will be around 245-256 euro but you can get your hands on it for 215 euro only if you pre order today. For 215 bones you will get :

1. T1O steel blade, through hardened with unique serial number

This is no fluffy sword where only display or cutting paper is the highest achievable level of the blade. This is a full functional sword that can definitely have ‘some’ cutting. The sword is made out of 73cm long, T10 steel blade and through hardened (around 58HRC) so don’t look for a hamon, you won’t find it…

The specs doesn’t lie neither, a thickness of 0,75cm at the habaki and a 0,5cm at the yokote with a motohaba of 3,2cm and sakihaha of 2,3cm. Total weight of the sword (without saya) is around 1065 gram and it has a sori (curvature) of 2,2cm and a point of balance at 14cm…pfffiew, that was a long and technical sentence

The tang has 2 mekugi and is nicely finished for a low budget sword.

And of course, each sword does come with it’s own serial number. Same story here, we did like to do it a bit different than usual and in stead of mentioning the number on the tang, we decided to go for the mune so you don’t need to take of the tsuka to check..

2. Double saya, 1 glossy and 1 textured one with a high quality sageo attached

We came up with the double saya idea because practitioners always told us that they felt sorry to put there katana on the shelf at home with a sometimes damaged saya from practicing at their dojo plus the fact that a glossy saya was more preferred to display the sword rather than a structured one, which was more better to practice with.

This is a try out so if people feel happy/pleased with it, we might come up with some better and nicer solutions in the future for the higher end line we’re planning to make later this year.

Although this is a low end production sword, the saya fits pretty well and the blade is not making noise inside the saya wile shaking it.

The sageo is not the usual shoe lace stuff you find on most of the budget katana. Both saya has a high quality two colored sageo attached.

3. Steel fittings

No brass or other low end (alloy) materials for the fittings. We went for iron and I agree the fittings are rather basic and not fancy at all but for this price we really can’t get any better fittings.

Only the menuki are made of brass but think that’s acceptable right ?

We decided to mount the sword with a patterned habaki just to be a bit different than the rest. It fit’s the blade quit well

4. Solid tsuka & real rayskin

On most low end production swords, there are lot of troubles with the construction of the tsuka so we really didn’t want to walk that path too. As you can see here , it’s a solid one and it has real rayskin panels on it of a descent quality.

5. Storage box and cleaning kit

Transportation is a big problem for us and for you as well so we had to look for something different than the cardboard box solutions available in China. After some searching we came up with this very nice and sturdy wooden box, covered with a traditional Chinese motif and foam inside the box so it get’s very hard to get this thing damaged…unless you use your car or a truck to hit the damn thing..

Since the box needed to be bigger to get the 2 saya inside we were left with a little spot in the upper corner and decided to shoot a basic cleaning kit there.

So you tell me after reading all of this..do you feel this is a good deal or a what ?

I expected the whole delivery to arrive around October 20th, depends on a little on the speed of the customs here…
Once they arrived, price will go up to 245 or 265 euro, not sure yet so order it now and you get this baby for 215 euro only !

Ok after all of the troubles I’ve got with the Konron dudes (have to post that thing here some day) there’s finally light at the end of the long, dark funnel.

A few weeks back we received the first monosteel katana sample from the Zhui Feng forge and last week the folded piece came in. Not necessary to say I was happy as a little child. Yeah, still after all of these years, when new pieces come in, it’s like Santa Claus who’s dropping a package )..always super excited !

Anyway let’s dig into this and give you a first review and some facts. This is the piece we’re talking about

Our Handpolished beauty

Doesn’t look bad at first sight right ?

This katana is a forged&folded piece. The forge is making their own steel in a Zuku-Oshi Tatara (high furnace – for the people who can read Dutch, I’ve posted an article about Tamahagane maken here). So basically we can say they are producing their own tamahagane for these pieces.

Second thing I have to pint out is that they are using the traditional method to forge the blade, in other words they are using a lamination method (can’t remember which one but will ask it again) to construct the blade.

And that’s a big difference with some other Chinese manufacturers who are also making their own steel BUT lot of them don’t laminated their blades which results mostly in a very bad edge and or soft blade. So it’s nice to look but not really good if you like to actually use it for tameshigiri.  Still have another tamahagane piece here from another manufacturer with chips in the edge just from some soft cutting (reed !!)…And for a sword in that price range that’s not something you like to see.

I didn’t do a cuttingtest yet with this one but the bending test I did is already promising and the forge is willing to give a nice warranty on this blade. Once they’re back in the forge (Chinese new year now) I’m finalizing this thing but I will try to aim on a very looooong warranty

The beauty of this blade is without any doubt it’s handpolish. To be honest (actually I can’t remember a time where I wasn’t) it’s the best polish I’ve ever seen on a Chinese blade in this price range..period! And have seen quit some handpolished pieces in the last 6 years. This one is very subtle yet prominent … judge yourself :

The Nice HandPolish

The only thing I want to see a little better is the polish of the kissaski but we’le get there…

This piece only feature 1 mekugi-ana where I definitely like to see 2 once they go into production as well as telling them very clear which side they have to start wrapping the tsuka. Typical Chinese to start at the wrong side…But for the rest, very tight wrap and nicely shaped diamonds.

The tsuka is very well constructed (forgot to take some pics of that), has a nice Rikko shape and is covered with real rayskin of course and bleu silk ito. No Chinese ito but the Japanese stuff. And I’m sure because I’ve send them the ito

Same goes for the fittings, I still had some Japanese imported fittings lying around here and I send them with express mail so they could mount them on the sword. First they were only planning to send me the bare blade (since Chinese new year was very very close and they were running out of time) but I preferred to see a mounted sword. Think you have the same feeling about that…

Despite the fact that this sword is a rather big ‘thing’ with it’s 78cm blade and no hi, it still handles very well and has a nice balance.

Anyway, enough for today…we’re back on the track and very soon, the option to make your custom katana will be available again. But this time with a better and more accurate delivery time.

I was so pumped that i had made a video

/p>

Leave me some comments there as well if you can and hook me up there because i have more video’s to come very soon..

For more detailed pics, you can head over here.

For the freaks, these are the specs )

Let me know what you think guys, need some feedback here…good and or bad…

traditional made katana sword box by Konron

Ok just a quick update from Konron since we got a ton of questions about the new shipment that was supposed to arrive end of January – beginning of February. Things got a little delayed as usual (adding more stuff & Chinese new year..)but the forge confirmed that there’s a delivery packed and waiting for shipping at the FedEx storage in China so it won’t take ages anymore before we can get them.

It all depends how difficult the customs are this time…there’s still a lot of inspections and security there.

Anwyay, the shipment will contain 9260 steel and 1070 differentially hardened blades although not sure how many of each. My guess only a little of them are with hamon so they will be sold out pretty fast.

The special serie we added to our original order won’t be included yet, some parts are still missing so it can take a few weeks more before they get here. There’re no super galactic swords, they just have a nice different saya than the usual stuff, battle wrap and entirely …black

The 9260 serie will contain a new model themed with a dragonfly…the forge made a new tsuba which I posted on facebook…ow you don’t have a facebook account yet ? Damn..go create one

Anyway here’s the pic

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3472/3192682288_df4d3917b9_o.gif

I also got a fast movers offer here. When talking to the forge this morning they told me they had a nice surprise for me which they forgot to mention…

They now have traditional swordboxes in stock..Now before you say : “so what..”, just take a look, there’s a big chance you had never seen these kind of boxes !

http://www.samurai-sword-shop.com/konronslideshows/slideshowkonronbox/slideshow.html

Since there’s another shipment leaving the forge within 2 weeks, we can offer these wonderful box for just 120 euro only ! Once in our store the pricetag will exceed 150 euro at least..So if you’re interested, just send me a mail at dave@samurai-sword-shop.com ! You just need to be fast to get one of these…

For those of you who ordered a custom sword, you will get this box for 0,00 euro ! How about that ! The forge started to work on the custom orders so soon you may expect some updates and pic about that too..

It’s coming closer very fast, the end of the year. I don’t know about you but it always remind me of how fast everything is passing by (and how old we become ).

Last weekend I was digging in the store and found a lot of swords that are nowhere to be found in the shop. Models that were produced as a prototype but never made the actual production or one time pieces that came in some how , wrong deliveries, etc and while I was planning to do something with most of them I need to face the facts and tell myself that I need to stop dreaming.

Literally a dozen of swords but just no time left here to remount or fix them so I decided to through them in (or out ) to the shop for our loyal subscribers at at ‘Christmas price’. Hey, it feels good if you can play for Santa Claus once a year…you should try it too some day.

Here is the result, click on the pics for bigger one’s (once you have a big pic, you will see a next button on the left so you don’t need to close each time you want to see another pic):

It’s not complete yet and there still 5-8 swords here that are not listed yet but I do my best to get them there within 1-2 days max !

If you’re interested in one of them, just send me a mail at dave@samurai-sword-shop.com or call me at 0032 477 90 36 12. First come , first served so don’t yell at me if your favorite katana just left our building.

If you don’t find a nice one, just keep an eye on the page and you will see that more of them will be added.

After months of dealing with a lot of problems (may they rest in piece) we finally got some good things coming out of the box. In case you didn’t noticed it yet, we now have the “customize your own katana” project up and running !

A short description of how this thing is working. You can go to here and start to design your own katana by choosing all of the components you like to see on your dream sword. There are over 20 different option boxes there that have multiple choices. Not sure how many actual combinations that you can make there..let me know once somebody figured it out ..

So you start with choosing the components (if you click the catalog, a pop up window will appear with pictures of most of the components) and you will see instantly how much your dream katana will cost.

So once you got it ready, just proceed with the checkout process as usual. And no you won’t be billed yet After we received your request, we do send it to the forge and they will make a drawing of the blade with all of the specific measurements you gave us in order to give you a better understanding of how the blade will look like.

Later on we’re planning to provide you with a full drawing of your katana, including tsuka, fittings, saya, etc but that’s another story and need lot of work to achieve that.

So only after you saw the actual drawing and you agree with the specs, we will ask you for a 50% pre payment so the forge can go ahead and start forging your sword. During the whole process, pictures will be taken and send to you so you can see the progress of it.

Once the sword is ready, it will be send to our warehouse where we will personally inspect & compare the katana with the exact specifications you gave us (and confirm to you of course) once more just to play the game safe. If all is ok, we will ask you for the other 50% of your creation and ship it out.

The delivery time for a custom order is around 50-60 days which is quite fast..and we’re taking orders from all over the world so this service is not limited to European countries only !

However, if you feel that the different options we offer are not enough to create your own unique katana, we have another solution

Send us your request, together with exact measurements and pictures if you have from (other) sample katanas and the forge will once more work it out for you. There are almost no limitations in this process and I’m sure we’re about the only ones in the sword world who are offering such a customization service at that price level !

In case you like to add some more value, we do have good connections with Japanese companies who can look for antique or new super duper high quality fittings to mount you sword !

No need to tell you I’m really excited about this custom thing and it took us nearly 2 years to find a forge who had the right knowledge & skills (and was prepared) to support us. I’m planning to go to the forge again somewhere next year and I promise you to come back with lot of video’s & interviews !

Besides that good news, the forge did start working on a new order for our standard line and we hope to receive them before end of the year or beginning next year..not to make you too curious but there might be some unannounced surprises in that delivery

A little note about the folded blades Konron is offering, you can find a pic here of how they make their own steel (tamahagane) to forge these folded blades which does have a kobuse lamination by the way !

The summer is slowly passing by and after a relative calm (depends what that is to your definition ) period we’re ready to go full speed again.

The most important thing to mention here is the fact that the new 9260 Konron swords are ready. If all goes well, which is dangerous to say, they will leave the forge this week or next week. The problem we face at the moment are the damn Olympics. The security in China is on red alert now and no transportation company is allowed to transport swords within the whole country. So that’s a major problem that can still take a while after the Olympics.

Now…we are having a very close relationship with Konron and the owner will take the whole order and drive them to the airport himself. Not a big deal you think….it’s a 8-10hour drive to the airport and 8-10 back so…

We don’t have very good pics yet of the new swords but here are some of them..’straight out of the box, not edited’

So what will be different with the previous generations ? First of all, as mentioned before, they are mounted with imported Japanese Fittings , better ito and signed on the tang. But that’s not all, we do have a little extra for you : There will be different tsuba designs available. I’m not quit sure about how many we speak here but expect 3-5 different designs to choose. And if they’re done their job at the forge (which is sometimes hard to predict) both the hi and non hi version will be available in 2 lengths…but don’t take my word on it for now.

Since there are a lot of updates on the 9260, we won’t be able to maintain the original price of 175 euro. So the new price will be 220 euro, which is (taking all of the updates in consideration) still a bargain.

We expect 50 pcs in this shipment (that’s all he can transport in his car) and looking at the backorders we still have for these, half of them are already sold. Now, I don’t want to make a sales pitch here but if you have any interest or planning to buy one, please make an backorder for it now. Last time, we had some angry people because they sold out just too fast and I do prefer happy customers

Second reason…the oil and especially the price of the steel is still going up and there’s very little chance we will be able to offer the next shipment at the price of 220 euro…

Once again, this is no “hurry-to-buy-it” talk, just for your information.

We do have lot of other plans with the Forge (since we’re partnering up with them) which does include offering traditional polish (just check this sample here) , using different steels (experimenting with the famous L6 steel now), offering real traditional katana kits (mainly for the collectors) which will include a tamahagane katana with traditional stone polish, Japanese fittings ,ect. The sword will be presented in a big box in shirasaya and with the koshirae.

We have some other cool things in mind but can’t say too much about that at this point….

Enough talk for today..ow yes before I forget ..just finished our discussion board so if you have any questions, or just like to share something, that’s the place to be. Perhaps you’re interested in becoming a moderator ? All help we can get is welcome ! Eather way, it would be nice if you could introduce yourself there so we have an idea of who our customers/visitors  are