katana for around 100 t0 150 bucks

Research, just trying to broaden myself.

BTW, what a good price for the Hanwei Tiger Elite?
 
The reason I ask is there are very different styles out there and if you start a style and buy a book from another system it will be less beneficial for you..

Try these sites for helpful sword info. I was a student of Toyama Ryu and really enjoyed it.

www.toyamaryu.org

www.usbattodo.com
 
Triton said:
Personally for 150 dollars I'd recommend buying some books and studying what a katana is.
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Agree with you.
I'm an old Iaidoka.. and I highly recommend to NEVER buy a (low price,) fuck#£$% katana with no practice, you will strongly hurt you..
 
Not sure if this has been mentioned, but last week i picked up a Musashi 1060 steel sword with real clay tempered hamon for 80 bucks. The thing is awesome, well constructed, tight handle wraps, and sharp. Could've done a bit better but i bet not till I spent a few hundred or more!
 
stefanj said:
Kohai,
Could you provide some recommendations for reading material on Katanas? There is a lot out there and I would rather buy something that is worth my hard earned little bit of money versus wasting my money on trash.

Thank you,
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Use, construction, history, art aspects?

What do you want to learn about?

I love the Warner/Draeger book on Japanese Swordsmanship, as those guys were USA boys WAY ahead of their time(published in 1982).

http://www.amazon.com/JAPANESE-SWOR...F8&qid=1346397795&sr=8-7&keywords=don+draeger

Best Regards,

STeven Garsson
 
Thank you Steven!
I do not know enough yet to really have an idea of what a good starting point is. I am going to dive in and do some reading.
I've always been interested just never had any time to invest until I broke my foot in two places (motorcross riding), while practicing for the over 40 year old motocross races. I'm still in denial of getting older and there is only one other guy riding in that class here in the interior of Alaska so no matter what I should at least be able to get second place trophies :-)
 
Triton said:
It's a simple answer, but I would ask that you expand upon it if you would. Why that response?
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It's based upon many things, but mostly personal experience. Swordmakers can often be much more difficult to chat with than a similarly talented knifemaker....not sure why that is.

Once you get through to Howard at a personal level, he is a lot of fun and responsive to work with your needs as a swordsman/collector...he doesn't really BS around.

I chatted with Rick at the San Francisco Token Kai about 8 years ago, and he was giving off that puffed up, "I'm an artist" thing and I had NO patience for it. The blade he had on the table was something that would be finished to the collector's request, but Rick still had a lot of strong ideas about what he wanted to do with it...It's a much more Western approach, and for someone who knows how they want a sword to PERFORM, an extremely annoying one.

Best Regards,

STeven Garsson
 
Kohai999 said:
It's based upon many things, but mostly personal experience. Swordmakers can often be much more difficult to chat with than a similarly talented knifemaker....not sure why that is.

Once you get through to Howard at a personal level, he is a lot of fun and responsive to work with your needs as a swordsman/collector...he doesn't really BS around.

I chatted with Rick at the San Francisco Token Kai about 8 years ago, and he was giving off that puffed up, "I'm an artist" thing and I had NO patience for it. The blade he had on the table was something that would be finished to the collector's request, but Rick still had a lot of strong ideas about what he wanted to do with it...It's a much more Western approach, and for someone who knows how they want a sword to PERFORM, an extremely annoying one.

Best Regards,

STeven Garsson
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Fair enough. I've actually found both men to be quite agreeable and think that they both do good work, but that too is my personal experience and admittedly I've never really been in the market for their work.
 
Well my small stack of 9 books from amazon just came in for my broadening enlightenment. Now I just have to find the time between family and work.
 
Also, please be aware that the early Hanwei practical series often had plastic habaki with a thin brass veneer on the outside and were absolutely not suitable for cutting of any sort! I'm talking ten years ago now (and even companies can learn a lot in that time). They also had very iffy HT (even the expensive ones like the Orchid). Tip geometry was also an issue on earlier swords. That's why I went for a Kris Cutlery blade and clad it myself, in the end. Cheness make an excellent cutting sword but the majority are mono hardened rather than differentially hardened. There are plenty of testing videos out there proving that a through hardened Cheness blade can be just as strong if not stronger than a DH blade. But to me, a KLO without even a real hamon is not even a KLO.
 
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