Cheness 33" Katana - Pre-Production
Nov 10, 2012 19:37:52 GMT
Post by Rob Dorsey on Nov 10, 2012 19:37:52 GMT
Ladies and Gents, Friends and Colleagues, boys and girls, Brothers and Sisters, Comrades in Arms,
I very recently took possession of one of the semi-prototypical Cheness O-Katana having a 33" blade and made of 9269 through hardened steel (the fantastic spring steel demonstrated on Cheness's website. I am going to depart from the standard review template as I wanted to get some information on the sword out while still gleaning the rest of the story.
The sword was shipped out of Cheness's San Diego facility and was in stock so it came quickly. As we would expect with a sword from a noted maker it was very nicely packed and was in one of those cheesy brocade sword boxes that look like they were bought in a tourist shop in Chinatown., Inside the cheesy impression continued with the sword enclosed within a plain black cotton sword bag. All this I ignored since it's a minimal run trial blade. Pulled the beast out of the long block saya and man, what a difference 5" can make (Alright you pigs, no hoots or titty-bar giggles, it's 5" longer than most swords).
Nice sori, big sweeping curve of the Koshi Sori type and Shinogi-Zukuri with a strong Bo-Hi. The blade was covered with a white grease like lithium grease and had no plastic bagging or other container to keep that grease off the insides of the saya. Too bad, says me, 'cause that stuff will be coming off on my blade for a year. But, always on the bright side, yeah, that's me, so...there was no rust. You gotta like that.
Once cleaned off it's blade examination time and... oh deary, deary me. There are so issues I fear. For one thing - and I'm going to try to mention these in the order that they were noticed - the blade is polished to about a 600 grit polish, no more. Hold it up and there is no recognizable reflection. Second, and in concert with the first item is that the surface of the Ji is far from flat or smoothly contoured. Far from it, it is absolutely wavy. And turning the blade up to catch the light for a look down the blade is heart sinking for the blade looks fresh hammered. I mean it, more than ripples there are a multitude of little crooks and dinks. I can only assume that the 9260 is very difficult to work or, the smith is kinda new at this stuff.
In fact, the Hi groove has a couple of very notable wiggles in it, like the guy running the grooving tool was perhaps a bit into the rice wine. Again, in a $300 sword a bit disconcerting. Add to that the very disappointing koshirea, which is about the equal of the $49.95 eBay "battle ready" specials and, if I were a normal buyer, one for whom the fit & finish is of paramount importance there would most probably be a return in my future. The tsuba appears to be one of the laser cut alloy jobs and the tsuka-ito is brown cotton, parallel wrapped with cheap, plain black fuchi, menuki and kashira and what I am pretty sure at this stage is plastic same. In short the tsuka looks like one I could buy on eBay for $25 bucks or so.
The Kassaki is stoned in, not stoned in so as to be geometrical and the surface of the kissaki looks as it the polisher could not make up his mind whether to polish the thing or not.
Adding true insult to the thus far re-numerated injuries, the polisher chose to attempt to put in, or on, a super cheesy fake hamon but simply using the hazyra stone to shape an indistinct cloudy band undulating down the Ji near the Ha. A half hearted attempt at best and unavailable for photography because it offended my sensibilities to such an extent that I forth-with polished it into the next world. I HATE fake hamon. Even a good one.T his boys and girls was a travesty, an offense to the talents of every sword polisher worthy of the title.
So, what to do with this poor example of the sword smith's art? Does it have any redeeming virtues that might make me choose to keep it? Well, seems there are 'cause all this grousing regarding the sword so far is, if you think about it, all about the way it looks, nothing else. Fact is, besides the inescapable fact that the blade is made of what may in time come to be we of the best performing sword steels around, the smith more than redeems himself in the cross section contour of the blade. This thing has a real convex blade shape. From the shinogi to the ha is one continuous curve with no second curve or shoulder before the point. This I'm not equipped to photograph (actually I am but I haven't learned to do it yet) but it's there and beautifully done as well.
The blade came, surprise-surprise, poorly sharpened and the edge is poorly defined with the entry curve a bit indistinct and lumpy if you can imagine, but as I am a sharpener (in my own mind at least) so I sat down to correcting the ha profile and bringing out that uber-sharp that only a true convex blade can have, and hold. Sure a flat ground edge like on a razor can be sharper but how long does it hold it? About two shaves. Tatami omoti would be something else.
I plan to use this beast, because it is, I cannot imagine doing Iaido with this thing, as a cutter. A born cutter where nobody cares how it looks. I reckon that this big monster will whistle through the mats even better than my Tori XL and that's saying something.
MUCH MORE TO COME WHEN THE CUTTING STARTS :twisted:
I very recently took possession of one of the semi-prototypical Cheness O-Katana having a 33" blade and made of 9269 through hardened steel (the fantastic spring steel demonstrated on Cheness's website. I am going to depart from the standard review template as I wanted to get some information on the sword out while still gleaning the rest of the story.
The sword was shipped out of Cheness's San Diego facility and was in stock so it came quickly. As we would expect with a sword from a noted maker it was very nicely packed and was in one of those cheesy brocade sword boxes that look like they were bought in a tourist shop in Chinatown., Inside the cheesy impression continued with the sword enclosed within a plain black cotton sword bag. All this I ignored since it's a minimal run trial blade. Pulled the beast out of the long block saya and man, what a difference 5" can make (Alright you pigs, no hoots or titty-bar giggles, it's 5" longer than most swords).
Nice sori, big sweeping curve of the Koshi Sori type and Shinogi-Zukuri with a strong Bo-Hi. The blade was covered with a white grease like lithium grease and had no plastic bagging or other container to keep that grease off the insides of the saya. Too bad, says me, 'cause that stuff will be coming off on my blade for a year. But, always on the bright side, yeah, that's me, so...there was no rust. You gotta like that.
Once cleaned off it's blade examination time and... oh deary, deary me. There are so issues I fear. For one thing - and I'm going to try to mention these in the order that they were noticed - the blade is polished to about a 600 grit polish, no more. Hold it up and there is no recognizable reflection. Second, and in concert with the first item is that the surface of the Ji is far from flat or smoothly contoured. Far from it, it is absolutely wavy. And turning the blade up to catch the light for a look down the blade is heart sinking for the blade looks fresh hammered. I mean it, more than ripples there are a multitude of little crooks and dinks. I can only assume that the 9260 is very difficult to work or, the smith is kinda new at this stuff.
In fact, the Hi groove has a couple of very notable wiggles in it, like the guy running the grooving tool was perhaps a bit into the rice wine. Again, in a $300 sword a bit disconcerting. Add to that the very disappointing koshirea, which is about the equal of the $49.95 eBay "battle ready" specials and, if I were a normal buyer, one for whom the fit & finish is of paramount importance there would most probably be a return in my future. The tsuba appears to be one of the laser cut alloy jobs and the tsuka-ito is brown cotton, parallel wrapped with cheap, plain black fuchi, menuki and kashira and what I am pretty sure at this stage is plastic same. In short the tsuka looks like one I could buy on eBay for $25 bucks or so.
The Kassaki is stoned in, not stoned in so as to be geometrical and the surface of the kissaki looks as it the polisher could not make up his mind whether to polish the thing or not.
Adding true insult to the thus far re-numerated injuries, the polisher chose to attempt to put in, or on, a super cheesy fake hamon but simply using the hazyra stone to shape an indistinct cloudy band undulating down the Ji near the Ha. A half hearted attempt at best and unavailable for photography because it offended my sensibilities to such an extent that I forth-with polished it into the next world. I HATE fake hamon. Even a good one.T his boys and girls was a travesty, an offense to the talents of every sword polisher worthy of the title.
So, what to do with this poor example of the sword smith's art? Does it have any redeeming virtues that might make me choose to keep it? Well, seems there are 'cause all this grousing regarding the sword so far is, if you think about it, all about the way it looks, nothing else. Fact is, besides the inescapable fact that the blade is made of what may in time come to be we of the best performing sword steels around, the smith more than redeems himself in the cross section contour of the blade. This thing has a real convex blade shape. From the shinogi to the ha is one continuous curve with no second curve or shoulder before the point. This I'm not equipped to photograph (actually I am but I haven't learned to do it yet) but it's there and beautifully done as well.
The blade came, surprise-surprise, poorly sharpened and the edge is poorly defined with the entry curve a bit indistinct and lumpy if you can imagine, but as I am a sharpener (in my own mind at least) so I sat down to correcting the ha profile and bringing out that uber-sharp that only a true convex blade can have, and hold. Sure a flat ground edge like on a razor can be sharper but how long does it hold it? About two shaves. Tatami omoti would be something else.
I plan to use this beast, because it is, I cannot imagine doing Iaido with this thing, as a cutter. A born cutter where nobody cares how it looks. I reckon that this big monster will whistle through the mats even better than my Tori XL and that's saying something.
MUCH MORE TO COME WHEN THE CUTTING STARTS :twisted: