Look what we have here
December is the month of Santa Claus and lot’s of gifts….For the first time we don’t have to wait until end of December here. Since he’s a very busy men and already start to stress by thinking at the end of the year, he decided to come more early here and he brought us a new delivery of fresh and totally new swords.
As you could read in our previous posts about the new sword samples that arrived and our cheap budget katana, we finally have some of these models in stock now. It will take some time to get things right but we will ‘officially’ announce these new swords on our little sword show (December 22th, Gent)
For the folks that placed a pre order, don’t worry, as soon as we figured out which one is yours, we will contact you and send it your way !
Stay tuned !
Here under one of the many different models we have available now : Read more
Paul Chen Praying Mantis Review
One of the newest creations of the folks at the Hanwei forge, the Praying Mantis Katana. Although I didn’t immediately felt in love when I took the sword out of the box, it definitely had ‘something’ which I admired. I just didn’t figured out what…. The blade is the part of the sword that has least of my interest. I just don’t like the finish of this blade, it’s too dark for my taste but perhaps that’s because of the fact that the famous L6 / Bainite steel is used to forge it.
One of the first times I heard about the L6 steel was back in 2005 I believe. And one of the most famous Japanese smiths in the USA was very well known for using this kind of ‘hard to master’ steel for his Japanese Blades. Read more
A ’special’ Hanwei Naginata came in today.
As the end of the year is coming closer we’re feeding our stock in order to get everybody happy 
Among some other stuff that arrived today there was this beautiful Hanwei Naginata. We had some of them before but none of them could match this piece here.
In Hanwei’s catalog, they describe it as a “hand forged 1065 high carbon steel weapon” and there’s nothing said about folding the blade. But it looks like this one here is folded because it really shows a kind of pattern that you can’t find in any other monosteel sword they are offering. Read more
A Low budget katana is coming…
The winter is coming and it’s getting harder to go outside and take some nice pictures when new swords are coming in… This morning started very nicely and we had a about 15 min. of good sunlight to take the new sample out and make some pics. It looks like the incoming flood of samples doesn’t stop.
The one that arrived today was a 9260 spring steel katana. We never had any katanas in our shop that were forged with that kind of steel and it’s hard to find a forge who is using it (You don’t want to know how long it took us ). Anyway, while it’s a real (read REAL) low budget katana, it’s a great sword to hold with a great balance ! Read more
Paul Chen Practical Katana
For all the folks out there who are not sure which sword is suitable for their needs, we decided to make a small guide. In the first articles we will discuss Paul Chen’s swords range and we will begin with the practical Series. Tree years ago, there were only 2 models available, the practical katana and the practical plus katana. Later on they added the Practical Pro katana and last year the new “cutting models” came on the market.
Practical Katana
The practical katana is a great sword if you’re a starting collector. After all it is a ‘real’ sword and you can’t compare it with any other stainless steel look alike. So in that sight, it’s a good deal if you have a smaller budget but you want something that is going the ‘real deal’ direction. Read more
Some new Paul Chen swords arrived…
I almost forgot about that with all the other things that are going on here..but more than a half year ago we ordered some of the new Paul Chen katana. And gues what we received today in our Hanwei delivery…..yeps..the first batch of the new Paul Chen swords. We didn’t get all of them..’only’ 3 different models but that’s better than nothing after such a long time
Just consider this as a ‘preview’ photo shoot..which was taken inside again since the weather didn’t allow us to go out to make good clear pictures. Read more
Just did some tameshigiri with the new sword.
What a day….it seems like I just woke up but it’s 0.30am here and no I didn’t sleep for a whole day . We wrote about it this new samurai sword in a previous post and since we were not very patient at that time, we already did a small cutting test with pine branches.
Anyway, today was the big day for our new baby here ! So we took the tatami we prepared 2 day’s ago to see how well it could perform on these kind of targets. The first target, only 1 tatami was really no match for this sword so after cutting a few single tatami, we placed his big brother on the stand. Read more
We received the new sword samples !
Sunday evening, a perfect time to “exit” the week with some good and exciting news. A couple op posts ago, we mentioned that we found a young smith in
Hardening process of a japanese sword - part 2
When the clay coating process is done, the blade is heated again until it reach it’s critical temperature, which depends on the kind of steel that is used but will have an average of 750 - 800°C.
Once the blade reached the 750-800°C, the structure of steel changes to austenite. Now, when the blade is quickly cooled by quenching (in water), austenite changes to martensite, the hardest type of steel. However, because of the clay application, the blade will cool more slowly where the clay is thick (on the back of the blade), turning not into martensite but instead forming ferrite and pearlite, which are softer and more flexible. Read more
Hardening process of a sword - part 1
Lately I was involved in a discussion about the hardening process of a Japanese sword and I did found it very inspiring to write a small piece about that just to give you a better understanding of that part of the forging process.
The hardening process of the blade is in one of the most important and perhaps the most difficult part of the sword making process. It is the correct hardening of the Japanese sword that gives the blade its ability to take and retain an amazing sharpness.
After the blade is forged and finished to it’s final (raw) shape, the differential hardening process can begin. Read more
