lightweight Steel Iaito
Ok this was a long and wild ride to get here :)
People who are starting out with Iaido usually don’t want to spend big bucks on their first iaito for various reasons.
And that’s kind of normal right?
So you have basically 2 options (from my experience but feel free to let me know if I’m wrong) :
- Have a basic iaito made in Japan, deal with rather long delivery times, customs and taxes
- Get some crappy made-in-china iaito
Since quite some time I had the plan to come up with something in between and get some good & affordable iaito made in China.
With ZuiFeng we have a pretty ok forge but… dealing with Chinese forges is still a pain, don’t make yourself any illusions
:)
Anyway long story short, after 1.5 years trial and error (and a good amount of wasted $$$) I’m happy to present you this Shuisha Iaito.
An iaito with a durable stainless steel blade that comes in 5 different lengths, a good overall balance where the point of balance is near the tsuba (12-13cm) and maybe most important , produce a nice taichikaze (literally translated as ‘sword wind’).
You can’t choose the size of your tsuka but anything under 2.4 shaku comes with a 25cm tsuka, everything from 2.4 shaku on measures 27cm.
The ito used on the tsuka is some kind of Chinese cotton, not slippery and thanks to the fat hishigami they used (oh boy you don’t want to know how much troubles it took to get them to do that right..) underneath it feels pretty comfortable.
The tsuba is made of iron, fuchi , kashira and menuki is brass.
So far for the standard model.
If you’re in the mood to get something more personalized, I can offer you a pimp-my-iaito offer. For €175 extra I will personally rewrap your tsuka with Japanese imported cotton & color of your choice and you can choose between 5 different sukashi tsuba.
If that’s not enough for you and you want more ,
let’s talk because there’s a big chance I can fix it for you.
