Iaito Training Sword : Tori Katana
What differentiate this iaito with his fellow brothers in the iaito serie is the higher grade koshirae and the brown structured saya with rattan.
The fittings on this Tori iaiato is particularly well done. The steel fittings have a deep brown patinated finish , as we can find on almost all of the Hanwei swords, and such is quite attractive. The tsuba is made in the mokko-gata style, a popular shape that somewhat resembles a four leaf clover and features a crane (tsuru) flying above water with reeds growing on the bank.
The top part of the saya is wrapped with rattan, which was most often used to ‘repair’ a damaged or cracked saya. It’s nicely sanded and lacquered over very well in a smooth gloss black rattan finished with a very high quality kurikata made of darkbrown horn.The part of the saya under the rattan wrap is brown lacquered in an ishime or "textured" finish which is more interesting to practitioners since scratches doesn’t appear that fast.
A dark brown suede ito is used to wrap the tsuka (handle) and the rayskin is blackened.A little word about the blade ..it’s not that different from the other swords ( a sandblasted hamon and same shape) in this iaito serie but it does have a wider hi than the others.
To wrap up, a very special training sword that handles very well and looks different than most of the other iaito’s.
