Hanwei mini katana, am I delusional?

N

npk

Joined
Jun 26, 2010
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Is this strictly a novelty or can such a knife work well as a boot knife of sorts? I know that just about anything can be used as a weapon, but can these mini's make GOOD boot knives, or are the dimensions wrong for use as a knife(blade to narrow and thin)? I hope someone with hands on experience can give me their impressions of these mini's. Are these knives usable or are they just for show? I have a few knives with narrow blades, the MOD Ayoob is one such example.
Thanks for helping,
npk
 
I guess you could use one as a boot knife, if you're comfortable carrying a 12" knife that probably weighs a pound or more in your boot. They are differentially tempered an supposedly made to the same specs as their bigger Katanas.

As far as I'm concerned a boot is lousy place to carry a weapon, and I'll tell you why. Several years ago I had a friend who owned a catering truck - at one of his stops a couple of guys came up to him and demanded his money. He reached down to pull up his pant leg to get his pistol and was shot before he ever got the pistol out of his boot. He spent a couple of weeks in the hospital but pulled through and went back to driving his catering truck about 2 mos. later. Now he carries his pistol in an inside the waistband holster for fast deployment... I don't ever anticipate having to pull my knife to defend myself, but if I did I would much rather have a Spyderco Endura or Para-Military clipped to my pocket that I could deploy within 2-3 seconds instead of fumbling with my pants leg trying to pull a Katana out of my boot... Just my 2 cents.
 
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I think this is meant for display purposes as a miniature.

You might get some milage out of it if you need a letter-opener, otherwise, leave it on the display stand and not in your boots.
 
Wow that is an awesome little sword. I know what I'm going to be asking for the holidays.
 
Hi BooZoo, I agree with you on the boot knife carried in the boot. I carry fixed blades on my belt but didn't know any other termiology for that sized knife.
 
Is it just me or are boot knives intended to be more of a backup, backup weapon (tertiary), than a primary, or even secondary weapon.
 
After looking at pictures of these mini swords, I think that they have blades that are too narrow for real use(although I do have a high quality boot knife with a blade just 5/8" wide). The handles look tiny, too small to get a good solid grip on. They still are cool though.
 
They're really quite tiny. As others mentioned they'd be best suited for use as letter openers. They weigh less than the average pocket knife by a large margin. The blades are maybe only 1/4" wide.
 
Last year we had a problem with gangs of tiny ninjas attacking people. The hospitals were full of people with ankle lacerations, stabbed toes, etc.
 
Hard to tell from the picture how effective the Hanwei will be.

I'm currently in the progress of making my own, it's OAL is ~14", and inspired by the Swamp Rat Waki.

IMG_7320.jpg


I'll post pics when I'm done.
 
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