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. It has a high carbon steel blade (although, they never say what kind of steel they use..in the beginning it was said that they used old railway steel) and is differentially hardened.
When you compare the price difference between this sword and his bigger brother, the practical plus katana, I can’t imagen that only the fake rayskin and the glued tsuka are making the price difference.
The Blade
There isn’t much to say about the blade , except the fact that it’s thin ( around 5mm )..but for the rest, it’s flawless and nice looking. The hamonline is enhanced in order to give it the white look, which do appear on real swords with a good polish but that’s another story..
Since the hamonline of this katana is straight, it can be possible that they folks at Hanwei are using a modern hardening process and not the clay hardening process. When hardening the modern way, there’s no clay applied on the blade and only the edge is quenched in water, not the back of the sword. Now that is saving a lot of time and maybe that’s the reason of the €100 euro price difference between this katana and the practical plus katana.
If you’re a practitioner, it can be used for light cutting but I wouldn’t really recommend it. In case you really want, don’t worry, the blade is strong enough to do some occasional cutting !
Fittings ( Tsuba- / fuchi & kashira)
In the years after Paul Chen brought this sword on the market, lot of changes are made and although it’s a cheap katana which you can’t compare with a +500 euro katana, it’s still a pretty nice katana. The fittings are not ‘the highest piece of art’ but they’re still made of iron and look simple & elegant. They don’t feature a theme like most of the other swords do… Two years ago they changed the look of all of their fittings and made it look like an antique one in stead of blackened. I think that was a good step in the right direction..
The handle – Tsuka & Ito
The ito (handle wrap) is made of synthetic suede and does feel nice and comfortable. Since this is a low budget sword, they didn’t use the small triangles (hishi-gami) underneath the ito and so the diamonds created by the wrapping are uneven. This katana also has a thick and almost straight tsuka (handle). If you compare to a higher end katana, you will see that the tsuka is following the curve of the blade where this one goes straight. The rayskin under the ito is made of plastic and it even doesn’t come close to a low grade rayskin. While the menuki look like copper, they’re just plastic.
Conclusion
If you’re looking for your first sword and you don’t want to spend too much money on it, this is definitely the sword you want to consider ! I don’t think there is any other sword out there that can beat this price vs.quality katana. As you can see in this video, the sword is doing his job…
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