Gen2 Black Prince
May 25, 2007 6:31:28 GMT
Post by Deleted on May 25, 2007 6:31:28 GMT
Tom (my buddy) and I have recently ordered the Generation 2 black prince. I won't go into a full review here because I don't have any pictures yet, but I'll give a thorough overview.
We took it out for a cutting session immediately after receiving it. It balances very very well, and very closely resembles the dimensions(almost exactly actually) of our shorter wooden wasters from Newstirlingarms. The blade ends up being about an inch shorter, as does the grip, but it's pretty dang near close, which makes it an excellent sharp counterpart to our wooden simulators.
Dry handling was great. I know it's almost exactly like the original, but I'm not a huge fan of how thin the blade gets near the tip. That's just my personal preference, not a criticism. The grip and the entire hilt assembly was rock freaking solid. Probably the most solid sword I've ever felt right up there with, unsurprisingly, other gen2 swords I've had the pleasure of handling. My only complaint on the hilt assembly is that it's quite thick near the cross. This too is probably preference. As I'm kindof small(5'7'', 160 lbs) I'm sure a that a man with larger hands than mine would find this to be not a problem at all. The grip is shaped very well, despite being thick, and edge alignment was very easy to keep track of.
As for cutting this is among the best cutters i've ever used. All of our cutting was documented via the video capture function of Tom's 2 megapixel camera-phone. I'll have the videos uploaded soon.
Empty plastic bottles didn't cut. They just got batted away. Filled bottles cut amazingly well. This sword also made a very nice cut clean through the full cross-section of the box it came in - while free-standing. That was impressive, especially as it sheared the double-thick walls where the box overlapped itself with equal ease. I even made a nice zwerchau cut that I almost thought had missed.(when you see the video, you'll hear me go "Dang, that sucked!" pissed at myself for missing... only to inspect the box and realize that it got a very nice very clean very deep cut clean through it).
Then I took out our hardest target to date: A mailing tube. unlike other mailing tubes, this bad boy has 1/2'' thick pressed cardboard walls. I mean... this thing is BEEEFY. Free standing, this sword did not cut all the way through it. That being said, this sword DID cut through one of the walls clean through so you could see the cut from the inside of the tube... again, that was FREE standing(so you know how loosy-goosy the target was, know that we had trouble balancing it often).
While we didn't get it on film, this sword also sliced half of a leaf off a tree-branch. Perfectly laser-like line through the leaf, while the cut portion fluttered lightly to the ground.
This things absolutely EXCELS at light to medium target cutting. We didn't have much in the way of heavy targets though.
Now for the bad news. This actually ticks me off. I'll be PMing Clyde and Jason about this as well.
After the cutting, i did a flex text of the blade. I didn't even flex it very far... only a few inches. Upon doing so, the blade took a noticeable set. A VERY noticeable set. Not just in one isolated spot either... the whole blade had a uniform curve throughout as if the whole thing was far too soft. Flexing it the other way solved this problem immediately, but I'm not happy with how easily this thing takes to bending. I'm not happy at all.
Given this, and Shootermike's trouble with his ranger sword, and the SFI guy who had 2 bent swords in a row, and I think someone else had a couple swords come dull...I'm very quickly starting to lose faith in Gen2's quality control. I'm going to wait to see what Clyde and Jason say, but this is too much to just be coincidence... far too many recent stories to be isolated 'flukes'. I'll probably try the 'home-tempering-solution', and if that doesn't help I'll see if they'll accept it back for an exchange. If that happens and the next one we get has a likewise poor temper... I don't know... as much as I love Gen2(believe me, i'm faithful almost to a fault), I can't in good conscience continue recommending them to my friends.
I hope that this doesn't turn me evil in my fellow forumite's eyes... it's just the way it is.
We took it out for a cutting session immediately after receiving it. It balances very very well, and very closely resembles the dimensions(almost exactly actually) of our shorter wooden wasters from Newstirlingarms. The blade ends up being about an inch shorter, as does the grip, but it's pretty dang near close, which makes it an excellent sharp counterpart to our wooden simulators.
Dry handling was great. I know it's almost exactly like the original, but I'm not a huge fan of how thin the blade gets near the tip. That's just my personal preference, not a criticism. The grip and the entire hilt assembly was rock freaking solid. Probably the most solid sword I've ever felt right up there with, unsurprisingly, other gen2 swords I've had the pleasure of handling. My only complaint on the hilt assembly is that it's quite thick near the cross. This too is probably preference. As I'm kindof small(5'7'', 160 lbs) I'm sure a that a man with larger hands than mine would find this to be not a problem at all. The grip is shaped very well, despite being thick, and edge alignment was very easy to keep track of.
As for cutting this is among the best cutters i've ever used. All of our cutting was documented via the video capture function of Tom's 2 megapixel camera-phone. I'll have the videos uploaded soon.
Empty plastic bottles didn't cut. They just got batted away. Filled bottles cut amazingly well. This sword also made a very nice cut clean through the full cross-section of the box it came in - while free-standing. That was impressive, especially as it sheared the double-thick walls where the box overlapped itself with equal ease. I even made a nice zwerchau cut that I almost thought had missed.(when you see the video, you'll hear me go "Dang, that sucked!" pissed at myself for missing... only to inspect the box and realize that it got a very nice very clean very deep cut clean through it).
Then I took out our hardest target to date: A mailing tube. unlike other mailing tubes, this bad boy has 1/2'' thick pressed cardboard walls. I mean... this thing is BEEEFY. Free standing, this sword did not cut all the way through it. That being said, this sword DID cut through one of the walls clean through so you could see the cut from the inside of the tube... again, that was FREE standing(so you know how loosy-goosy the target was, know that we had trouble balancing it often).
While we didn't get it on film, this sword also sliced half of a leaf off a tree-branch. Perfectly laser-like line through the leaf, while the cut portion fluttered lightly to the ground.
This things absolutely EXCELS at light to medium target cutting. We didn't have much in the way of heavy targets though.
Now for the bad news. This actually ticks me off. I'll be PMing Clyde and Jason about this as well.
After the cutting, i did a flex text of the blade. I didn't even flex it very far... only a few inches. Upon doing so, the blade took a noticeable set. A VERY noticeable set. Not just in one isolated spot either... the whole blade had a uniform curve throughout as if the whole thing was far too soft. Flexing it the other way solved this problem immediately, but I'm not happy with how easily this thing takes to bending. I'm not happy at all.
Given this, and Shootermike's trouble with his ranger sword, and the SFI guy who had 2 bent swords in a row, and I think someone else had a couple swords come dull...I'm very quickly starting to lose faith in Gen2's quality control. I'm going to wait to see what Clyde and Jason say, but this is too much to just be coincidence... far too many recent stories to be isolated 'flukes'. I'll probably try the 'home-tempering-solution', and if that doesn't help I'll see if they'll accept it back for an exchange. If that happens and the next one we get has a likewise poor temper... I don't know... as much as I love Gen2(believe me, i'm faithful almost to a fault), I can't in good conscience continue recommending them to my friends.
I hope that this doesn't turn me evil in my fellow forumite's eyes... it's just the way it is.