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Post by demonocus on Sept 26, 2012 7:33:41 GMT
has anyone got a sword from ryan sword and if so was it any good or are they a company to avoid? www.ryansword.com/
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Post by william m on Sept 26, 2012 7:42:55 GMT
Personally I would avoid them as I am not in the market for absolute tat. They are pretty crude swords with just an awful lot wrong with them. Do a forum search as this has been talked about many times.
If you are still wanting to get a budget katana then look for the Musashi brand, as they tend to be better.
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Post by demonocus on Sept 26, 2012 9:22:40 GMT
i have 3 musashi swords and i love them i was curious about these guys because of the vids showing what seemed to be very tough blades and they do custom jobs but thanks for the heads up i think i'll just listen to you and avoid them and stick with my cheness and musashi blades
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Post by William Swiger on Sept 26, 2012 9:30:12 GMT
There are some reviews in the review section of the forum.
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Kuya
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Post by Kuya on Sept 26, 2012 11:40:19 GMT
They can't be as bad as they're made out to be. There would be a ton more negative ratings on eBay if they were. I have a sword from a former Ryan Sword partner (Yao, Hanbon Swords), and it's as good as any other sword in the $225-250 price range would be. When it comes down to eBay Forges (Ryan Sword, Hanbon Sword, ST Sword, Hua Wei Sword), you're pretty much getting the same thing. Considering the recent issues I've been reading about on this forum of bigger brand name swords... I would say getting a Ryan Sword is as risky as getting any other mass-produced sword from a big katana maker in the same price range.
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Post by Lonely Wolf Forge on Sept 26, 2012 11:47:32 GMT
i have 3 of them and one of them was not heat treated at all, the other had an 18 inch tsuka and an 8 inch tang, and the other, a wakizashi was acceptable but far from nice.
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Sean (Shadowhowler)
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No matter where you go, there you are.
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Post by Sean (Shadowhowler) on Sept 26, 2012 12:30:08 GMT
Kuya: there are ways to manipulate your ratings on eBay... A good rating does NOT mean a safe seller. I used to buy cars off eBay and resell them to my wholesale dept when I worked for an auto group... When your every purchases risks upwards of 15k rather then a couple hundred... You pay a LOT more attention. eBay is a minefield of dangers... And the seller ratings are by no means a way of determining a safe buy, sadly.
To answer the op's question... There are a lot of sellers of Chinese sourced katana on eBay... Some with a decent reputation, some with a very poor reputation. Ryan sword (which also operates or has opperated under other names) has a very poor reputation... And in my opinion it's deserved. The two Ryan sword katana I have personally seen were crap... And a few of my friends have had bad experiences like saito's. Wiwingti famously posted some unforgivable swords and reported some abysmal customer service.
My advice? Dont buy from them. I would not.
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Post by aussie-rabbit on Sept 26, 2012 12:39:27 GMT
I have put up a review of one very inexpensive sword from (Yao, Hanbon Swords) and will be putting up another soon, both were recent purchases, both have a quality far above their price point, I cannot make comments on Ryan swords as I have not had one through here.
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Post by Lonely Wolf Forge on Sept 26, 2012 14:10:18 GMT
id like to also point out that to the untrained eye these ryan swords LOOK to be very good high quality swords, i myself used to think they were really good until i saw a REAL sword. Then the differences become very obvious. the devils in the details, non alternating cheap shoelace ito, poorly fitted saya, tsuka often hammered on and not properly fit causing cracks to form, cheap pot metal poorly cast fittings, and in some cases, not truely "full tang"
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Post by DavidW on Sept 26, 2012 14:12:59 GMT
To echo Sean, the sword business is a prime example of inability to trust feedback, because most buyers out there buy a sword for looks, the sake of having a katana, or cause they saw it cut through a tank in some movie/anime/videogame and are like "OMG SWORDZZZZ". They have little to no knowledge and do not care on what constitutes a good and/or battle ready sword, so naturally, all they see is a flashy hamon or what they think is a damascus blade (bonus points if it's a cool red on black color scheme or red and black blade). From that, they believe that they've gotten a super awesome sword, which is far from the truth in many cases.
They disregard (most likely don't even know about) details such as non alternating or loose ito, poorly done kissaki, low quality fittings, messy or fake same, and find things like glue (I reckon some ebayers will use glue to secure some fittings) to be perfectly acceptable. Most won't disassemble it (or even know how) to check the tang, and may miss things like improperly fitted habaki and blade balance. When I first got into swords, I was buying SLOs off of TrueSwords. One of them, a so called "ninja sword" looks nice, but the ito has since been shifting around like crazy, and there is no kashira for the ito to run through (of course I didn't know anything about sword fittings at the time). The same was fake, the saya was cheap and wrapped with a nylon cord "sageo" (wasn't even tied like a proper sageo), and the tsuba is just some metal square. I'm pretty sure most sword buyers on ebay have the same knowledge as me back then.
TL;DR Sword seller feedback on ebay is unreliable because the buyers are most likely sword newbs.
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Post by DavidW on Sept 26, 2012 14:15:45 GMT
ah, saito beat me to it :lol:
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Post by aussie-rabbit on Sept 26, 2012 15:09:18 GMT
Yes you are right, at the same time there are some good swords about if we keep in mind the SBG $300 price range. I have a Taisho period (1912-1926) sword, despite approaching nearly 100 years old the Ito is tight, granted the saya is a touch loose after all those years yet it has a beautiful blade, there are two small areas on the blade where you could likely get some poor guys DNA from The beauty of SBG and the forum is our ability to look at what is available and meets the criteria, I would suggest that safety comes first followed by blade quality and then fittings.
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Sean (Shadowhowler)
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Retired Moderator
No matter where you go, there you are.
Posts: 8,828
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Post by Sean (Shadowhowler) on Sept 26, 2012 15:46:20 GMT
Safety is HUGE... Because most of us on sbg use our swords... We don't just hang em on the wall. Look at the rat tail tangs on some of the Ryan sword pieces that wiwingti had and posted... That is NEVER acceptable.
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Sébastien
Senior Forumite
Retired Moderator
Posts: 2,967
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Post by Sébastien on Sept 26, 2012 16:29:38 GMT
I agree with what Sean, Saito and others have said. I am a member of SBG since 2008 and, so far, I have seen much more reliable reports of faulty, poorly-made RyanSwords than reports of well-made ones. Overall, most of their products are terrible, and the best one of them are okay, but mediocre for their price.
If you want to try another low-cost seller, I suggest that you go check Munetoshi on Sword'N'Armory, they have a strong track record.
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Post by chrisperoni on Sept 26, 2012 22:48:27 GMT
it is true that there are only a handful of reviews in respect to the vast amount of swords ryansword has sold- however that shouldn't be the deciding factor. We can't know what all the other buyers thought so in their case we'd only be able to guess. We can however use the feedback we have as a source of factual information (albeit with personal feelings involved). The point is- if all you have is one piece of firsthand experience then that is better to consider than the unknown. In the case of ryansword what we do know is not good, and that is good enough to say it's better to buy somewhere else. There are many other similar offerings opn ebay which have much more positive reviews- which have alreayd been mentioned. It's a commonly used method of reasoning especially within a group such as those who collect swords, because a closely related group would be those who collect and recreate based on historical reference. It's called proving the negative, or formally "argument from ignorance" (ignorance being meant in it's literal meaning, not an insulting connotation) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance
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Post by Kumdoalan on Sept 27, 2012 0:23:40 GMT
I have a new ryan sword...so if you run into someone with questions send them over.
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Post by DavidW on Sept 27, 2012 6:08:14 GMT
Oh God fallacies. freaking TOK
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Post by aussie-rabbit on Sept 27, 2012 11:49:40 GMT
"It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false, it is "generally accepted"
A good example would be the new 2012 hype "-we is all gunna die!-"
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Post by Kumdoalan on Sept 29, 2012 13:39:48 GMT
The best idea is to find someone with the brand of sword you are interested in, and ask them questions.
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Post by Bodhidharma on Oct 11, 2012 23:27:31 GMT
I have recently purchased a Ryan sword. I posted here a while ago to learn about a ww2 sword (which was a knockoff) and have since entered the sword minefield. I now have a Kanemichi Gendaito, which is brilliant and i will restore it. I have purchased two more but wanting to learn more i won an ebay auction for an 1060 carbon blade Ryan sword and all i can say is, thank the stars it was cheap. I only paid 62 bucks, delivered, for it and the tsuba is nothing like the posted item and nor is the habaki. The handle and menuki are also very cheap looking, nothing like the posted one. Very clever photography make it look great but the real thing is vastly different. In their favour, service was excellent and follow up was exceptional. So was the letter of request for a positive review, which i did not do. I cut 1'' bamboo and a small wattle with it and the blade went through like butter..and was bent. And i think that is all that is needed here.
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