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Post by Kumdoalan on Mar 10, 2012 23:50:36 GMT
Can you tell me the advantage of getting the leather handle wrap over the normal cloth?
Is there a 'look" that you get with leather?
Does leather on the handle give the sword a different look?
What image does a sword with a leather wrapped handle have among cutters?
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jhart06
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Post by jhart06 on Mar 11, 2012 0:36:25 GMT
Not sure what you mean by 'over the normal cloth'... Leather is standard for most european swords, and pretty much every culture by the Asian ones. As far as your third point, yes.. Leather doesn't resemble cloth much at all in most cases, so it is a different look. As far as the image it has among cutters.. I'm not sure how, if at all, it impacts the perception of the sword.
As for if there is a 'look' you get with leather, not sure what you mean by 'look'.. There's an aesthetic change from it over a cloth/ito or rayskin or wood handle.. But i'm not sure what you mean by 'look' when you put it in quotations. As far as an advantage, speaking from a european standpoint, it's generally more durable, weatherproof, and easier to add things like risers and the like.
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Greg
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Post by Greg on Mar 11, 2012 1:08:37 GMT
Can you tell me the advantage of getting the leather handle wrap over the normal cloth?This is where we get to "stand on the shoulders of giants" as it were. Swords were used for a decent chunk of the last millennium, and there was just as much research that went into swords as there is research into the modern AR-15 assault rifle. Cloth wrapped handles probably got ruled out rather early on for a two reasons. Low durability and traction. (Side note. Right here, I'm assuming that you are talking about using a sheet of cloth like you'd use a sheet of leather to wrap a handle and not the ito style of cloth wrap.) Just from using my first single handed sword as my primary cutter for a year, I had noticed that the leather had started to wear a little on it. Not enough to make it ugly, but you could tell that it was a well used sword. Had the grip been wrapped in cloth, it would have worn through within a month and would have needed replacement. There was already enough upkeep that one had to do to a sword in the field, and replacing a cloth wrap every week or so would not have been beneficial to the fighting force as a whole. Furthermore, leather is really good at handles because it offers a "non slip grip" (assuming it's been treated properly) And it shrinks as it dries, so that when you are wrapping a handle, it will become snug with the wooden core, instead of slipping all around. So, you may be wondering why the Japanese were pretty adamant about wrapping their grips with cloth? (Which I am assuming is what you are making the comparison with.) I think it's more about ceremony and the meditative aspects of the katana. Is there a 'look" that you get with leather?Jhart summed it up pretty well. Due to the leather shrinking as it dries, you can put risers in the grip to make it all fancy, or aid in gripability. But you can also do things like tool leather, or stamp leather, or wrap it in cord when it's wet and remove it after it's dried to really achieve a good gripping surface. I suppose that if you wanted a flannel grip, that you could use cloth, but since the "traditional" look of a sword is with a leather grip, then anything else doesn't really seem like a sword. Does leather on the handle give the sword a different look?Again, I don't know if you are using 'cloth wrap' from the Japanese as your basis for comparison or if you mean just taking a linen napkin and wrapping it around a sword's grip. For instance, I've wrapped a katana's handle in leather, and it looked really good. It did not have the traditional diamonds of a traditional katana, but it still looked good. But on a European sword, a leather wrap is just part of the complete package. There have been tons of tactical wraps that involved para cord, but they just don't really look like a sword. Ya know? What image does a sword with a leather wrapped handle have among cutters?Cutters are a funny bunch, because while we are cutting, I'm sure that most of us don't really care how the sword looks. I've never swung at a bottle with any of my swords and halfway through said "My goodness, that is a good looking blade." However, when it's on the wall or propped in the corner I do say, "My goodness, that is a good looking blade." Really, as a cutter, my sword could look like a giant turd, but as long as it cut well, I'd continue to use it to cut.
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Post by ineffableone on Mar 11, 2012 2:09:46 GMT
Just an FYI on Japanese wraps. They also used leather for wrapping their swords along with silk, and other materials. Japanese even used lacquered paper for wraps. The Japanese seem to have experimented with various types of wrapping. I think the reason you get so much silk, and not as much leather in Japan vs Euro swords with leather instead of cloth is due to availability. The lack of silk for a good part of Euro history, then the expense of it when it did get there combined with Japan not having a large leather producing nation in comparison with Europeans who had lots of leather. I think it boils down to availability for a lot of handle wrapping. People found the most reliable wrap that had large availability for them in their region.
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jhart06
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Post by jhart06 on Mar 11, 2012 2:21:26 GMT
Although my marshal arming sword and antiqued bastard sword, both from hanwei, have some sort fo gun cotton cord wrap on it that is so far above and beyond any leather grip. gonna have to ask dave kelly where and how this came about.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 11, 2012 7:47:46 GMT
Cloth is next to useless as a durable handle wrap for a practical weapon, the Japanese used it extensively during the peacetime Edo period when the swords where pretty status symbol dress swords, with fancy decorations to show intricate artwork, this is not what they used at other times. A sword is a tool, and cloth would be your last choice of wrap for a tool that will see real use where swords were employed. The Japanese have taken a tool and prissied it up into an art piece, which is why the katana which we collect look the way they do. These katana reflect a very narrow period of Japanese history, and in no way are representative of the whole range of Japanese swords, especially ones that saw battle, either before or after this narrow historical period.
To put it simply, if you were wrapping the handle of a carpenter's hammer with something that will give you a good grip, will have very good wear resistance, and might get wet in the rain when working outdoors, would you warp the handle in cotton or silk?
The look and image you get with leather is a realistic, practical, "built to be used" look, as opposed to a pretty fabric wrap that says "I belong at an aristocratic Japanese party" or "I belong on a wall as an ornament". That's why we have "tactical katana" with western style riveted slab grips - you wouldn't dunk your pretty katana art piece in a muddy river now, would you? :lol:
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Post by ineffableone on Mar 11, 2012 8:12:37 GMT
This is wrong in so many ways, but I will let others pick it apart to point out all the errors in this very wrong representation of Japanese handle wraps.
Silk ito is quite functional and works very well as a practical handle wrap. Cotton is a bit less desirable and not as durable but still works. Leather ito works, however, often people complain of it becoming slick and slimmy in a sweaty palm. This is why modern psudoleathers like Fred Lohman's tsunami and nubuck started seeing use, to give a feel of leather that performed better than leather.
I have a feeling silk was the preferred wrap in Japan, while leather was more the ornamental display wrap.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 11, 2012 11:04:23 GMT
Ah, nothing like using haberdashery supplies for making weapons of war! :lol:
The Japanese have subverted sword making so seriously from its original purpose that it would be like going to war today with an assault rifle wrapped in pink chiffon and encrusted in painted miniature pewter figurines.
Guess durability isn't a concern in a culture where your house walls are made of rice paper hey? It should be quite telling that western swords had leather grips or wire wrapped handles. About the only other time cloth has been used on swords is on the military dadaos use by the Chinese who cobbled these swords together from recycle train tracks and whatever materiuals they could find during serious resource shortages, and wrapped the handles in cloth only as a last resort.
The Japanese in their Satsuma rebellion swords, which were minimalist and practical, used cord wrapping on the handles for their practical blades, not like their was a shortage of cloth, what were they wearing othetwise?
Lets think, Asia, monsoon weather, rain, humidity, wondering how those nice decomposable organic materials like cotton, silk would fare. Two weeks usable life perhaps? Luckily the hinoki wood is rot resistant!
Lets not mix up weird and irrational Japanese fashion preferences with practicalities of optimal materials for constructing sword grips. During WWII the Japanese manufactured their gunto, which were meant to see war, not dry, cosy mantlepiece shelves, with western sword hilts. Guess they knew what worked better than cloth wraps! They reverted back to traditionally styled hilts, but without cloth, using even things like aluminium hilts, when they started getting hysterically nationalistic and wanted to revel in their mythical fabricated past history, the cult of the katana and the code of bushido. The very actions of the Japanese themselves demonstrates clearly that cloth wrapped handles are impractical art piece niceties that have no place on a practical tool of war, but are right at home on collectable art pieces or blades that never leave a training hall.
It might be a shock to some, but if you look at the history and development of the katana, you'll see that if you take of the fancy miniature art sculptures (which are on nearly all the sword fittings) and replace them with plain components, ditch the godawfully useless fabric wraps and use leather or make them even more durable. or yet with more solid materials, and the swords work just as well, but are more durable, and that's what history shows the Japanese fought with when they needed a backup weapon, when they lost their primary weapons, their bows, spears and polearms. But yes, we all love the fabricated myth of the honorable Japanese swordsman who walked around anachronistically on a battlefield with an aristocratic civilian's peacetime dress sword wrapped in cloth, guided by the code of bushido, and defending women and children from villains...
To answer the OPs question, ditch the imaginary manga/hollywood history in regards to military technology. Real swords of war in any culture would not use something as ridiculous as a cloth wrap unless they were scrounging for materials in the direst of circumstances and could not find anything better.
The Japanese are hardly an example to compare the rest of the world with when looking at military developments, such as contructing swords. Firstly, they invented nothing in terms of military innovation. An isolated primitive feudal nation plagued by constant bickering between local warlords, living on a closed off island, who didn't even have the technology to forge swords and invited Chinese smith over to teach them, and having never fought anyone in real warfare but in ritualised one-on-one warfare on horseback amongst themselves. Sure, they fought the Koreans, who are their genetic kin anyway and a they had a brief encounter with the Mongols (which they lost, but survived because of a freak natural disaster that hit the Mongols ships at sea).
To even mention the Japanese as a standard to compare the rest of the worlds swords to is the greatest insult to all historically significant nations who changed the world we live in today, who forged durable, practical weapons that could be carried across nations for years on epic conquests that captured and subdued the majority of nations on the planet and changed the course of human history. Thnk of the eastern Mongol empire, which ruled over half the nations of the world, or the western Roman empire, who conquered nations far and wide. It is no coincidence that none of them used cloth handle wrappings as a structural component of the hilt, and some of these empires predated the Japanese by centuries! The Japanese historically didn't really ever leave home... Not accusing the OP here, so hope it doesn't come across that way, just pointing out that it's like comparing an Armenian donkey cart to an Italian Ferrari in terms of military innovation and historical significance.
To sum up, Japanese ito wrapped tsuka are a historical peculiarity typical to a narrow period of Japanese culture heavily influenced by fundametalist traditionalism and an late history obsession with turning everything into an art, and their swords into art pieces. It is not a technically valid standard to compare the rest of the worlds developments to.
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Post by chuckinohio on Mar 11, 2012 11:26:32 GMT
There you have it.
form VS function, art VS life, stylized visions VS what have you...........................
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Post by Kumdoalan on Mar 11, 2012 11:50:14 GMT
Lets talk about the options a person has when they order a SBG sword.
You can get the Katana with normal cotton handle wrappings. or you can get the man-made cloth wrappings.
Or , you can spend a few extra buck$ and get the Katana handle wrapped in leather strips.
Now I have looked at the leather handle wrapping on a Katana only in a few photos and I still dont know if this look is what a person would like on a Katana or not?
Does leather on the Katana handle make the sword look more expensive? Does it add to, or take away from the use of the sword for cutting?
The reason I have this doubt over the use of leather compared to other materials is that I worry that with just a little sweat from a guy's hands the heather handle wrapping on a katana would get very slippery......
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 11, 2012 12:52:44 GMT
No doubt if someone from the materials sciences put their minds to it thay could come up with a flexible flat cord synthetic material that would be waterproof, offer excellent wear resistance, provide a very secure grip, and feel comfortable in the hand while providing cross grain tension to structurally support a wooden core, then again, they could create a totally waterproof and rot-proof synthetic core which is superior to the wooden varieties... But, as we're fixated on tradition, we're stuck with the limitations we have created for ourselves. So we have a choice of natural materials such as leather, silk cotton and synthetic fabrics on a criss-crossed (or whatever other pretty pattern) flat cord wrap. This type of wrap over a soft conifer wood has its inherent limitations compared to a western full leather wrap over structurally stronger timbers, and that's life. So we just accept that katana ito wraps wear out eventually, and treat them like a consumable. The design is inherently inferior, and that's the price you pay for inferior design, its no big deal, simply the laws of physics. If you made the tyres of your car out of cotton rather than rubber, they would wear out quicker too. You can't have the impractical art approach of form over function, and have optimum function. When it comes down to choosing a traditional style japanese wrap in natural or synthetic, it's just personal preference. My katana have cotton ito.
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Post by Kumdoalan on Mar 11, 2012 13:05:57 GMT
Lets say you changed them to the same type of leather wrappings as offered on many SBG Katana sword handles...
what would you notice as being a real difference?
What would the look of the Katana be as it lay in the sword rack?
would the way the color of the same Saya seem to go with the handle now as well as it did before, or would a leather handle wrapping cause you to decide that the color of a saya needed to also change?
Now you pick up the sword and start cutting on a few targets. Would this leather handle wrapping cause you any issues that the cotton warpping didn't?
is the leather better for doing cutting, and thus has a reputation for being one-step up from a standard type of wrap for a cutting sword?
I guess Im asking about the over-all "contenx" of seeing a leather wrapped handle on a katana and what meaning it carries to people compared to the very same sword with a standard wrapping of the cotton?
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Post by Lonely Wolf Forge on Mar 11, 2012 13:54:48 GMT
im with blackthorn on this one, the only real example of cloth handles is the japanese katana, everyone else uses leather or wood or bone, never cloth. however, i do like the Cotton and SIlk ito wraps on modern katana :lol: but im not going to war either
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Post by Kumdoalan on Mar 11, 2012 14:41:32 GMT
Is the implied context of a leather wrapped katana handle different than the normal type of handle wrapping as seen on the vast majority of katana seen in the Hall?
Does the use of leather carry with it a different meaning?
Would it tell you about the implied use of the sword as a 'serious' cutter more than that of a sword with a normal katana wrap?
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Post by Jussi Ekholm on Mar 11, 2012 15:33:51 GMT
First I'd like to know if were are talking only about katanas or swords in general in here? There have been so many sword types used by different civilizations that it would be needed to know bit more accurately what sword types we are talking of.
Not sure what the cloth in opening post means but I can answer with some information about japanese swords.
To my ear this sounded bad. And I would like to hear some actual facts to back this up? Sure now in Heisei era swords are no longer practical weapons; they are a piece of art. I have not held many Heisei era nihonto in my hands but I don't believe that they are so far away from earlier swords. Although I believe that people with more knowledge have said that Heisei era swords have their own characteristics but there have been many changes before in japanese history too.
Blackthorn as the most active forum you been is Japanese Swords, I suppose you could answer why you think that traditional tsukamaki is bad?
As for "cloth" being used in narrow time period, Itomaki no tachi is one usual tachi koshirae that uses a lot of cloth material. If it would have been useless, why it would have received wide usage. There have been many intresting koshirae types in history, and if they would have proven to be superior to traditional tsukamaki I guess they would have been more common.
I think you might have meant Kyu-gunto here, they were made mostly in Meiji era and some in early Showa (I believe) and Meiji Restoration having a huge effect here. You might want to recheck what WWII gunto koshirae are like.
No the leather wont make the sword look more expensive, in my mind as far as average chinese forge is considered leather just gives out cheaper impression in the end. Depending on the quality of leather and the quality of tsukamaki it may affect the handling of the sword in a bad way. Hopefully I'm not stepping on anyones toes in here but I'd say that ordering leather tsukamaki from chinese manufacturer may turn out to be a risky move.
Now all this above is just a collectors point of view. This is in no means just an attack against Blackthorn, I'm just pointing out that if you make bold statements you usually need facts to back them up...
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Post by Kumdoalan on Mar 11, 2012 15:49:58 GMT
thanks....I was seeking to hear views like this .
I have a friend and he also was thinking about getting a Katana sword with a handle wrapping in leather, and I was unsure how this would be viewed by others.
I guess Im asking about the implied mental image a person has when looking at two Katana that are the very same except for one being the normal type of wrapping, and the other with the leather wrappings?
does the leather wrapping automatically carry with it a context that tells you something that the other handle cant?
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Post by Kumdoalan on Mar 11, 2012 15:56:29 GMT
Yes, lets hear your views on the use on a katana?
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Post by Jussi Ekholm on Mar 11, 2012 16:19:47 GMT
To me the material itself wont give any imperssion of the quality, it's the execution of tsukamaki that gives out the impression. I don't see how one could consider a sword with leather ito more capable of cutting but for some it may be so.
As I believe that leather is more difficult material than silk or cotton for tsukamaki that may result in tsukamaki of lesser quality. If both tsukamaki are well executed I don't have any mental images of one sword being better, it's just matter of personal preference.
I haven't cut a lot but I'd suppose tsuka size, shape etc. are more important factors than the ito-material.
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Post by Lonely Wolf Forge on Mar 11, 2012 17:58:38 GMT
two tsukamakis done by the same person, durability wise, the leather one will last longer in real combat use, wet, moisture, dampness, ext, whereas the cloth wrap will deteriorate faster. For general modern day use, theres no reason a cotton or silk tsukamaki will not be acceptable however. I Love leather ito and swear by it, but silk and cotton is good as well, and if your talking cheap low quality, IMHO low quality leather is NOT superior in any way to high quality cotton or ito.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 12, 2012 3:01:56 GMT
Hi Jussi, to answer your questions, the OP was asking why every other culture wasn't using cloth like the Japanese, the historical perspective was incorrect here, as the Japanese are historically relatively insignificant in terms of ancient world history during the era of swords in warfare, and hardly a standard to compare the rest of the world to. A better question would have been to ask why the Japanese would bother with such a useless non-durable material such as fabric to wrap their sword grips when no other nations did historically. That would show up all manner of unusual Japanese cultural nuances that would not necessarily be founded in logic or reason, but rather art and aesthetics, and blind tradition and conservatism.
Katana started being pieces of art during the Edo period, under the Togukawa shogunate, 400 years of peacetime lead to an explosion in ornate sword fittings as hirorical records show, it was a cultural artistic rennaisance of sorts for the Japanese, for the idle aristocracy that were now known as samurai.
I thought I covered why traditional tsukamaki is inferior - non-durable organic matter highly subject to rot, mildew, decomposition, unable to withstand outdoor conditions such as rain, dirt, as you would encounter in a battlefield (and in Japan which has a very wet humid monsoon season), along with blood. Apologies for the graphic details, but imagine how a pretty tsuka wrapped in nice absorbent fabric would look after becoming blood drenched, which this seeping under the ito, ending up between the ito and same, and drying into a stinking, rotting unhygenic mess. Mind you, injuries to the abdominal area would result in the outpouring of gastric fluids, fecal matter urine and many other bodily fluids. In close combat, imagine this all over your sword grip. How would you clean it? No, sword warfare is not the clean, sanitised rubbish you see on samurai movies! Having a nice, pretty tsuba with artisic cutouts means a lot of whatever is on your blades will run down, theough the gaps, onto your hands. Hope that explains it.
Itomaki No Tachi came into use during the Nambokucho Period (1334-1392), wher the use of armour became popular, and the saya was wrapped to prevent it getting scrathed up and damage when it rubbed against the armour. The simplistic solution was to wrap the upper portion in fine silk lacing, and the lower two thirds of the saya was sometimes also wrapped in fur. This is a very crude solution, a bit like wrapping something in duct tape in an energency today, and the silk wrap was sacrificial, it would have been abraded instead of the saya.
Yes, I did mean kyu gunto, which is what the Japanese used until 1934, which had western hilts and D-guards. Like I said, nationalism took hold of them, and in 1934 they decided they had an issue copying the superior western designs, it hurt their national pride, so the Japanese, lacking innovation and being extremely conservative, to restyled their gunto after the tachi of the 12th-14th century Kamakura period to create the 'type 94' shin gunto, an officer's sword, with traditional tsuka with same and traditional ito wrapping. This just shows that when the Japenese pride was hurt from emulating the west, they, having no innovative capability to more forward technically, did what they still do best and imitate. They imitated their old design from 800 years ago! This was short lived, and a year later, in 1935, they started producing the 'type 95' shin gunto, a cheaper, mass produced non commissioned officer's sword, with cast aluminum or copper tsuka and no ito, and by 1945 the cast metal tsuka were replaced with simple tsuka with no ito that had grooves cut into it for grip.
Hope that should back up my points, it's Ok I'm not seeing it as an attack. I appreciate a collectors perspective, I'm one too, but I really think it's important for collectors to know what they're collecting. All swords have a lot of interesting and important history attached to them, and understanding the history gives you a better appreciation for the swords in my opinion. Unfortunately there is a lot of nonsense and fabricated history attached to Japanese swords, which just muddies the waters and perpetuiates a lot of misinformation.
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