Hi all, just an introduction

Hi everyone, just wanted to introduce myself and such... Been lurking on here here for a while.

So a bit of background - I'm half Japanese but was born in the states. I never had a large family in Japan, and our family history is really spotty. What I do know is that I do have Samurai blood, from both the Hirayama and Kasahara families from the Osaka/Kobe area. I do know that both were at Osaka jo and my family mon at least. So being that I'm the last remaining male from that side, I've felt that I have a obligation to my ancestors to not let my family history slip completely away. And with that, any swords that were within my family have been long lost.

Which dovetails into my hobbies - I've done gunsmithing, knifemaking, woodworking, etc. Basically anything crafty and detailed. But I don't have the space or time (yet) to spend years perfecting my own forging techniques. So I had long been after what would be a decent 'real' blade, but struggled to find anything of a new manufacture that wasn't the horrid stainless chrome plated $50 specials. And of course, for now I won't even touch a true antique katana blade for risk of ruining it (not to mention the cost).

But then I found this site! So now I've found my "in" to better quality blades, and am finally looking at my first significant customization project. It's great to see nowadays that there is a market niche being filled for affordable, decent cutters. My goal is to become skilled enough at the various aspects of refitting and customizing so that I can 'reintroduce' a family sword and have something worthy enough to start passing down to future generations again. And also have it be a reflection of me and my interpretation on the art.

Anyway, for my first project, we'll see how it goes. I am confident in my abilities so long as I take my time and stick with it. I ended up ordering a Cheness Kaze-ko DH from Paul, as the blade and tsuka dimensions were what I was after and in all honestly, it won't be seeing significant cutting duty as I'm favoring aesthetics for this project. We'll see how the blade I get looks when it arrives - the blade is one of my favorites appearance-wise that I've seen and I'm planning on replacing all the hardware and at least doing a rewrap, so I figured spend the cash on the blade I prefer, rather than pay for fittings I'd not use. The stock Cheness fittings aren't apparently anything to write home about anyway. Hopefully the tsuka core will be usable, but I'm prepared to redo that if necessary.

And yes, some may think that all this trouble on a Cheness is a waste of money.. but I didn't find one single pre-made katana, fittings and all, out there at a affordable price range that really clicked for me, and I'm also doing this just purely out of passion and for the learning experience. I also have ordered fittings from Yamato, as they were the only ones who had a set that fit the look I was after and I didn't want one of the more common themes you see with the fittings available in the states.

I'm going to wait until that stuff gets in, then check dimensions, and probably source any remaining incidentals from Fred Lohman - I'm in Portland so I've actually met him before - ironically, one of the mon decals he sells is my family mon and I've only run across it a few times in my life.

In the meantime I've been absorbing as much as I can from this site and other resources about the craft involved, and am pre-planning, etc. I'm very much a measure twice and cut one kind of guy.

Anyway, enough of my rambling - just wanted to give a proper introduction and a "thanks so far" for some of the great info here!