A Good Beginners Sword

I greatly apologize for the confusion Lunaman however i cannot seem to find the problem with my words.

However I feel that I have derailed this thread far to much and I will be making another thread to discuss the issue of edges.

I apologize again it it seems at all like I am trying to cause problems.

Thank you RicWilly that is kind of how I see it to.

However when I'm wrong I'm wrong and it seems that I don't have enough knowledge to say some of the things I have said only having handled several swords. So I am sorry if I have mixed things up a little and if it seems like I have purposely strayed to far from the OP.

Ah, Luna, it seems he has a fondness for Boromir's sword, but then you knew that already.
I don't know of too many of those except for Brenno's and DSA's.

John...even if your not using it to kill humans, once again we'll go to the m-16 (well the AR-15 which is the civvy version). So you can have an AR 15 that shoots fine or one that has a slightly dinged bolt that makes it a bit less accurate...so which one did you want to use for target shooting? Things that work like they should are just plain old more fun .

ya know, this AR-15 analogy got me thinking about how I can use it to explain why we recommend the Hanwei Tinker line and the Valiant Armory stuff so often and with so much vigor and force to new folks. I know we've said it is because they are made right and stuff but to use the analogy: if you wanted a civilian M16 you could get an AR15. from what I understand it is a well made gun and I'm sure there are people who love it and those who hate it. there are a lot of high quality firearms on the market because the makers of the firearms understand what makes a firearm good and they follow those rules before making cosmetic changes to increase the pretty. but imagine if the makers of firearms didn't know what made a gun good; or at least if many of them didn't. If makers of guns took the same approach as makers of swords you'd end up with not only an AR15 from a maker that gets it but you'd also end up with all manner of guns that look like guns but don't shoot bullets or do but do it unsafely because they use cheap materials. the gun-buyers-guide would call those gun-like-objects. but there would also be a variety of gun called "beaters" that were made "tough" with parts that were exaggerated in their thickness and extra large to make these guns really hard to damage. yes, they shoot bullets just fine but they are so heavy they are difficult to aim and if you tried to be a soldier with one you'd find that the weight was simply torture to carry around all day. there would also be some "better" quality guns that were made by people who love guns but had never handled a real one and some of these people would be real artists and would take an artistic approach to designing their guns. their guns would look great and cost more but would be impossible to site in accurately or would have other issues of a functional nature because the person who made them didn't know enough about guns to be able to make one that worked well. they just knew what a gun looked like and what it was supposed to do, so as long as they made a gun that looked cool and shot bullets they were happy. but they still hadn't made a good gun. now there comes along a couple of guys that understand what makes a good gun good and they work with some manufacturers to have them produce several models of inexpensive but good guns. so now we have a new guy wanting a gun and asking if the "tough" gun is really as tough as they say in the ads. tough sounds good, no one wants a broken gun. if it is tough it has to be good right? well what about the artsy guns? those look great and some people will even love them and tell about how well they shoot but they've never fired a really good gun and felt how easy it is to aim and how comfortably it sits in the shoulder and how perfectly it absorbs the recoil. so those who know about it try to encourage people to get the good guns made in China by the companies who got their designs from one of two master gun smiths because if people start out with those guns and get to understand how a gun should feel then maybe they will demand guns be made with those principles in mind before they buy a gun. then the artsy and "tough" gun builders would need to toe the line and learn to do it right and the myths about guns needing to be cartoonishly proportioned to be tough would go away and people would realize that designing a gun is not so much an artistic process as an engineering one.

you see this is exactly where we are in the sword market these days: most makers do not know what makes a good sword and they design swords from an artistic method: if it looks like a sword and is made from hardened high carbon (or better yet some snazzy spring or tool) steel then it must be good. there's a flaw in that thinking. . .

now I know we are hobbyists and not warriors who depend on our sword to fight our way through life and death situations. some of us will be happy with an art sword or a "tough" sword and that is fine I suppose but I'd like people to know that is what they are getting so that if that isn't what they want they can get something else. as for me, I want my swords to act like a sword should. if a seller in shows us a cutting video and then shows us a flex test on his blade and that blade bends in a uniform arc across the length of the blade like this: ( then that is an art sword not a real sword because that sword needs to be distal tapered. if a company cannot make a sword more than 30"long without it turning into a wet noodle then they are making art swords.

ok I'm going to stop now (waits for cheering to settle down) sorry this was so long but I got rolling. Tinker and Atrim are two makers who "Get" how a sword should be made and they have communicated that into their models that are being sold by Valiant Armoury and Hanwei respectively. so when someone wants a sword and get the moeny together to afford one of those we tend to push people towards them. there are still relatively few swords in the grand scheme of things that are both a good bargain and a good sword. the H/T and ATrim Valiant lines are them.

you read all that? wow!

sorry, I just couldn't shut up.

certainly there are people out there besides these two that know the same things, however, these two guys are the only two guys I know of that both have the knowledge and have designed a budget sword line (unless you count Albion's Squire Line as budget, which I do not). all the other guys that know this stuff charge much higher prices for their work.

in fact Tinker and Gus charge higher prices for their work too. it is CAS Hanwei and Valiant Armoury that actually make the budget swords, they just have their forges in China do it to their specifications. so basically it isn't as good as their personal work but it is really pretty good because they are following their designs. the fact that the Hanwei Tinker and Valiant Armory ATrim lines are made in china is the primary reason those two lines have such variances in them. if they were being made by Gus or Tinker themselves a lot of the little fiddly inconsistencies would be worked out.

there are lots of other high quality makers out there, most notably Arms and Armor, and Albion. then you can get away from production outfits and go custom and those guys run the whole gamut from art sword to really good swords. you just have to do research and see who makes swords the way you like them.

I do not see Deepeeka or Windlass stepping up much. they have a different market. they also don't have a consultant like Gus or Tinker to give them the information.

Windlass makes functional swords tho of varying quality imo and yeah they like to do repros of movie weapons. I do like some of there stuff. I also don't see them changing much as they are pretty successful tho I never say never.

Deepeeka has been more for the re enactment crowd and not so much function. I have heard that is changing so I keep an eye on them.

The term "Art" swords make me think Kit Rae and the like, not functional.