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Guest post by: Iron Fist

Swords, Wonderful Swords

A few weeks ago now I wrote a bit on knives, especially high-dollar knives. Today I want to touch on knives bigger brothers, swords. Sword making is truly an art form, one that has fewer practitioners as time goes on. It is a difficult, fairly low-demand market, and one where actual functionality of a weapon is not necessarily the primary goal of the smith creating the weapon. Thus we have thousands of low-end, factory made weapons that are of inferior quality that flood the market and satisfy most of what demand is there.

These low –end weapons aren’t necessarily cheap, themselves. Paul Chen, is one such manufacturer, and their weapons approach being of what I would consider acceptable quality. They are definitely of sufficient quality for a weapon that one doesn’t require as a weapon of personal defense (I wouldn’t bet my life on them). I have wanted a Chen Naginata for some time now, but have not been able to justify the money for something that is entirely for decoration (although I refuse to decorate with weapons that are not sufficient to the task for which they are ostensibly designed).

At the more moderate price-point, we have blades by a company named Last Legend. I own a daisho (set of katana and wakizashi; the katana being the long sword and the wakizashi being a short sword. The right to carry such a pair of weapons belonged exclusively to the Samurai cast even before Japan passed the draconian weapons-laws that are still basically on the books today) made by this company. Specifically, I own a pair of their top-end 8192-layer forged dual-steel blades. These are way more than is necessary for simple decoration. They are designed to be used, mostly for cutting competition today. They are, quite simply, weapons I would bet my life on if I had to. Last Legend makes only a small quantity of each of their designs (the pair I own was limited to four hundred blades), so they have a measure of potential as collector’s items as the years wear on. These are not (quite) the best production level katanas available. That distinction probably goes to weapons by Bugai. The price differential easily exceeds 100% of the lesser weapon (i.e. the Last Legend).

Where one goes from there is basically the “godawful expensive and up” market. Hand-made, custom swords with Damascus blades, 10,000 layer blades, exotic steels, cryogenic tempering (Last Legend used to offer the cryo-tempering, but do not appear to any longer. My pair are cryo-tempered), and a host of other options come with that decision. The sky really is the limit, up to and including six-figure weapons by top-ranked smiths adorned with gold and jewels.

All the pretty-pretty doesn’t make the weapons more efficient tools for killing, though. The Last Legend is admirably suited to that task. Owning two, I want to get a third. I really like the Taketoshi design. I will eventually get one if their limited run does not run out first.

(Savage, this one’s for you)