CASHanwei Dao

Here they are, the pictures of my new Huanuo Round Grip Battle Sword (liuyedao/willow leaf sabre) - I bought it from here: sevenstarstrading.com/site/huanuo/rndbattle/

Yeah, $385 for a sword Huanuo sells on their site for $500, its a great dea!!

Forgot to mention, it's really is paper-cutting sharp straight from the factory too! It's a high carbon monosteel blade, and that's plenty really.

For those with fancier tastes (and bigger wallets), Huanuo also make the same sword in a fancier specification - the Qing Officer’s Dao (Chinese Saber), Folded Steel Sanmai Blade, Shark Skin Covered Scabbard, which is sold by Huanuo for $1100, they have it for $799.

Well, you know that to get rid of those demons you'll need... a sword! :lol:

Obviously not enough to keep the demons at bay.

My room is unlimited, cuz I got a 1800 sq/ft TEMPLE !!! YEAH!!!!! I can fill the back with more~ oh yea oh yea!!!!! I GOT LOTS OF SPACE!!!!

You might be running out of space soon, maybe you wanna put some here? I don't mind to let you put it here for free, just ship it over and I will put it up nice and good for you to see by webcam! LOL!!!!

I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that I own one of those 60-ish dollar carbon steel swordnarmory dao swords, but since some of you are thinking of getting one I feel like I need to fess up. For the price it is definitely not terrible, but there are some serious flaws. For one thing it is heavy. not sure how heavy exactly but it feels like I'm holding two of my cold steel Gim. I think MakChingYuen was saying he wanted a heavy sword so maybe it might be good for him actually! At least as far as weight. The fittings are decent looking in person but they don't fit snugly so there are some ugly gaps here and there on both the sword and the scabbard. Also the Fullers are noticeably uneven when seen up close.

None of this really bothered me that much. It was cheap and came bundled with my munetoshi Han sword with free shipping. Best of all it is really rather sharp, mine made short work out of several half-inch tree branches with one good swing. The edge was not really ultra sharp enough to take on thicker targets without significant effort. The overall balance when doing some basic oxtail forms was okay but not great.

The main issue was that after this pruning the handguard and handle itself had shifted a bit out of position, and the whole thing was getting loose. No problem I figure I'll just take off the pommel and tighten the nut. Unfortunately the handle seems to be glued or welded on somehow internally so that it was not possible to disassemble the sword or remove the pommel.

So overall it looks okay and is pretty sharp but is about twice as heavy as a real dao should be. The handle assembly is more close to what i would expect from an SLO.

On the other hand, because it's so heavy doing forms with the sword would make swinging an actual dao very easy. As a wall hanger or a sword for practicing Kung fu, not so bad.

I wouldn't recommend this if you're on a limited budget. save up and get something better

the jinshi oxtail dao does look awesome. Unfortunately Garrett is only making Han and Tang Jian these days. By email he told me that the Dao might be available later, but for now he is focusing only on the Han and Tang jian. Hes also not doing full custom swords (as is stated on the page that discusses different manufacturers) anymore, or not currently doing them for random people that send him emails :mrgreen:

I also contacted zhengwu sword and got a quote on their oxtail dao (one handed). here are the prices they quoted me for various versions:

Blade option 2 (sanmai folded 4000 layers) $1480
Blade option 4 (sanmai folded 16000 layers) $4100
Blade option 5 (sanmai folded 32000 layers) $7500

option2 is AISI 1050 CS core. mechanically folded. water quench with Through hardening
Option 4 is hand forged and folded with 16000 layers, has the same TH
option 5 is, well lets face it, more than i want to pay for a nuiwedao LOL. but trully drool-worthy with clay temper differential hardening, 1060 steel core and 32000 layers

One of the reviews by Paul Southren is for the Hanwei Practical Qongfu sword. Paul gives a really good review for this sword, makes it sound very good indeed. It is listed as discontinued eslewhere on the site and on the KultofAthena site. However, on hanwei's direct sale site CASHanwei.com, they have what seems to be the same sword for sale. They even have a blinged up version of Oxtail Dao that has brass fittings and costs a bit more. Both of these are still well under 300$. Has anyone used these recently, are they still as good as Paul indicated? If so, it seems like we all need one (or two) of these.

no problem kuya

I have the Hanwei Practical Gongfu sword, it's like a Chinese sabre version of the Hanwei Practical Katana, really basic. Looking at it you wouldn't think it was too thin, as it's not too light at 1lb 10oz and feels quite solid. It's just not built for real combal just like most Chinese swords on the market unfortunately, but you would never know that unless you bashed it really hard into a solid tree or asked Hanwei themselves if they recommend it for cutting practice, but it's very sharp, and can handle any bottle cutting very easily. The scabbard is literally open on the back (spine side of the blade) for three quarters of the length, and has two fastening straps which are very secure. Yes, you need to hold it from the lower half when putting the sword back in, but I don't see it as dangerous personally, just not as idiot-proof as a scabbard with an opening on one end.

With a lot of the higher end dao, you're spending a lot of money purely on looks, fancy folded/laminated blades, rayskin covered scabbards, fancy detailed engraving and even gold plated fittings. You can get the plain monosteel blade versions for much cheaper, and it will probably be just as durable.

There's no point getting hung up on swords that vendors are promising to release, you could be waiting forever, in the software industry it's called "vapor-ware", software a company promises to release but never goes ahead with it, this would be the equivalent. You either stock it or it doesnt exist in my mind.

When it comes to real "combat ready", I trust what I've seen tested in brutal tests to see if swords are really durable. I've seen videos of the Huanuo sabres and the Hanwei Rodell Cutting Jian hacking into the side of a hardwood tree at full force, then cutting ligt tagrets afterwards, not beforehand. I've seen videos of the Hanwei Military and Warlord dadao hacking through wooden posts, that's real proof of durability and toughness. I hear that JinShi make very high quality blades, they appear very well made, but there's no proof of durability to date, only conjecture and opinion, so I'll wait for some real tests...

Amusingly, considering that niuweidao (oxtail sabres) were never used by the military and were only ever civilian swords, it's hard to imagine spending those huge amounts of money on one!

If you look at this post on "Sword Testing Criteria" by Scott Rodell on his forum, link here - forum.grtc.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=191 you will see that the criteria is very tough for testing swords to ensure they're as tough as antique that were used in battle. Way more demanding than the SBG ones. This is why I'm not sure how some of the higer end Chinese makes would stand up to this kind of testing without badly loosening up, bending, chipping or breaking. Something worth considering...