christ...shes beautiful!
do you have a name for her yet?

Very nice katana love it

Thats very pretty. Nice workmanship.

O.O Awesome! gimmmeee!!!! <3

Whoa, nice.

Y'know, I'm interested in becoming a blacksmith. Where'd you learn?

I haven't done any blade smithing in years. I can't claim to have made this blade, sadly.
I've made a few knives and smaller swords in the past, Saddly, the knife Iw as allowed to keep got lost somewhere in the Carpathians years ago. but more recently I studied Japanese sword smithing methods when I was being formally schooled in a couple of the sword based martial arts.
I know of a couple of good introduction books for blade-smithing which cover how to build a forge and get the needed equipment etc i'm sure I could dig out teh titles if you wanted :)

Oops forgot to press tab. But yes sexy, sword, drool

woooow.....Much better than My katana XD......and custom too! Where woud you go to get all the seperate supplies?

My friend got a lot of the pieces for me. but all the pieces are fairly easy to get your paws on. Tsuba's and the smaller sword fixtures are always kicking around Ebay and a lot of the more serious sword collector sites sell ray-skin and tsuka wrapping. the saya and tsuka often are best made for easy individual blade but thankfully my friend had one of each that fit perfectly and just needed a bit of careful attention to bring up to standard :D

ok! ^^ Might try a compleatly custom one sometime ^^ lol....I get my only good katana back in a few days i think XD.....kinda like yours...a lot of it hand made, ray skin wraps and everything...but nto compleatly custom lol.....yous just looks so awsome!

This was the first tsuba that I've done, but it was fun and I'd love to do another one :)

*bows to the master*

::murrs:: I have to show you my collection of quality weapons. It may be small but there's history in them. =3

that blad is magnificent

This is a masterpiece. Just wondering how long did the actual blade take you?

I can't take credit for the blade itself, a friend of mine got hold of that for me.

for all the parts, including shipping, it only cost me around $150 which isn't bad considering i've seen swords like this selling for $400-$700, when I was doing Iaido tournaments.

A $50-$70 sword is very unlikely to be of much quality. Those ones are usually made of stainless steel and plastic. which makes them very easy to maintain but not at all functional. Good for decoration but you wouldn't want to train or cut anything with them.

beautiful!

If any zombies ever show up, you should be all set. :P

My god... It's stunning... So simple but so beautifully sleek...

Just loverly! It's great seeing all that work come together!

hot DAMN that is BEAUTIFUL!!

that blade doesn't look hand forged

really? it does to me,

to me it looks machine pressed with a uneven edge to give it the hammer look. all my machine press swords look exactly like it.

Well, it makes my Paul Chen look bad. I love the way that the duller Damascus Tsuba stands out against the shinier leather wrapping and saya lacquer.

Very pretty sword. I have sort of a fetish for ancient melee weapons...

Honestly, I prefer european broadswords and fighting styles. I don't think they get nearly the respect they deserve as weapons. But it's so hard to find ACTUAL masters of european martial arts...


THIS baby is my dream weapon. :)

http://www.sword-buyers-guide.com/k.....ght-sword.html

Anyway. This is just me, I know nothing about MAKING swords, but I think it might look pretty if you added like, a silver or gold rim around the edge of the tsuba. To me, it sorta feels... incomplete.

But again, I'm no swordsmith. Just a user. :D

I think the reason a lot of European sword style fall out of favor is that they never enjoyed a decadent period in which they can really be regarded as an art form. When you couple that with the social class aspect of things it's no surprise that the purely practical weapons and styles didn't endure as well as the more refined styles (I.E. European fencing, etc). I've studied a few Medieval and pre-medieval styles over the years. Although they have a lot ot recomened them, and I've learned a great deal from them, oriental sword styles do just click with me better.

I see what you mean with the Tsuba, but I wanted a very practical feel to the sword. something that won't show wear easily. I many make another, a bit more elaborate if I can find a suitable blade in the future :)

Yeah, I took some Aikido and Kendo myself. But really... I would feel more "at home" in a knight's barracks. :)

And yeah... It's pretty sad that europe's styles are all but forgotten, eh? :(

Well, the sort of weapon you're interested in weren't really the type of weapon used in dueling. Fighting style and fighting arts survive far ebtter if they are applicable to dueling and the like. there was a period that dueling was hugely popular in France and all sorts of weaponry and fighting styles grew up among Parisian gentlemen, many of the new styles drawing strongly from the old medieval styles.

I suppose... but I'm talking in terms of raw functionality. I think broadsword techniques would be most efficient in terms of general fighting ability, if the person is skilled enough. The rapier was certainly an elegant weapon fit for nobles. I can see why it would be popular.

Here. A cool video of actual broadsword techniques. :)

http://youtube.com/watch?v=5YQP6lthpLA (Love the move at 1:20)

http://youtube.com/watch?v=lYwdE3f5.....eature=related

http://youtube.com/watch?v=9G_d98ew.....eature=related


.... Yeah. :) Pretty darn cool. Definitely not just swinging randomly with pure muscle.

I will take this moment to say I am NOT in any way trying to say that asian styles are bad. :)

Erm. What I'm trying to say is that I am much more enamored by the "battlefield" sword techniques, rather than dueling. Yeah. I think that's a bit more clear. :)

fuck! thats bad ass!

Beautiful sword, as a blacksmith I can really appreciate the quality of what you have there. I don't have anything insightful to say on the sword but is that a little patch of chain mail I spy next to your pliers? I made a small patch of that stuff once and absolutely lost my mind...

Thank you very much :)
and yeps that is a piece of chainmail. It's only a small piece I made to test out a pattern and I keep it around mostly just to play with when I'm bored. I've made some fairly large pieces of chainmail in the past; it is always very time consuming but as long as i've got a good audiobook or something to play in the background it's not so bad :)

The Uk government isn't too bad when it comes to weaponry. You can own certain firearms but the selection is very limited and HIGHLY regulated (which is fine with me; On the whole I don't trust the general populous with modern firearms). New laws have been introduced in Scotland about the trading of of swords but low quality blades are still easily available; a decent functional sword is still somewhat hard to find amongst all the crap though. In the UK swords are totally fine to own for private collections, re-enactments and martial arts but must not be carried opening while in transit (a proper carry case or a taped up box is fine).
Buuut all that is somewhat academic as I live in the US now anyway :)

I love your Katana, I want to get one some time.

Gimme... OwO