Han jian from eBay swordsmith668 aka Yao
Nov 28, 2012 0:36:07 GMT
Post by Rafael on Nov 28, 2012 0:36:07 GMT
Hi I'll add pictures to this a bit later when I have access to my PC. There are good reviews for this seller here on SBG as being good for custom work and premade Japanese swords. Someone in one of the threads talks about how he makes the swords himself, puts his parents on webcam to meet people etc. based on these good vibes I decided to risk 200$ on one of his Han Jian swords. It looked a lot like some of the other crap going around, but I knew that a lot of the good stuff looks similar to the SLOs because both are made to look like the ancient examples. with these han jian, we cannot see the tang in the pictures of the assembled sword, so it can be difficult to tell the crap from the decent stuff or even the really nice stuff. For example the muneToshi hanjian looks very similar to the jinshi basic han jian, and they are both good. But there are also others that look essentially the same in photographs but are made with inferior metal, crappy hilt assemblies and either rat tangs, welded on tangs or in some combination with handles that are round inside and allow the tang to vibrate badly when you swing them or hit something. This continuously puts strain on the nuts or glue or whatever they've been attached to the handle with, and if you were lucky enough to have a tang screwed instead
of glued onto the handle then this is gradually shearing little corkscrews of metal out of the threads, so the screwdriver thread in handle is going to fail once there is not enough metal left in this to hold the tang in place and I guess at that point the blade comes flying out of the handguard. Nice.
So anyway, it was a gamble buying the sword off of eBay but it seemed like a relatively safe risk because of the reputation of the seller Yao. In fact I trusted him so completely that I put down a 100$ deposit on a custom job before waiting to see this han jian first. Yes I am mentally challenged, obviously. This I the eBay listing:
www.ebay.com/itm/200782216410?
The sword arrived in one of those Styrofoam rectangles wrapped in the yellow Chinese shipping tape. It came with one of those rectangular sword boxes with dragons on it, not the best one I've ever seen but hey it was there. Inside the box the sword had been held securely in place with Styrofoam braces the scabbard was wrapped in Chinese newspapers and more of the yellow tape. So far I was impressed with the effort made at packaging it securely. Inside the box was also a greeting card of the hallmark type except with Chinese writing on it and hearts. Inside was a note thanking me and promising to help with any problems also some Chinese currency which the note indicated was for me, and he hoped I liked it. Ok, Wierd but sort of charming. The blade of the sword was encased in a sort of plastic sword condom full of oil. Gross, but effective.
Once I got all the packaging off the sword looked and felt great. It was not sharp enough to cut paper, but it had a very finely ground point and easily sheared small branches off of some bushes. The pattern of the folded steel looked authentic not painted or etched on although I am no expert. the lines and blade design really catch the light brilliantly. It is without doubt a beautiful sword.
Unfortunately after some very light cutting the blade was becoming noticeably loose in the handguard. The pommel seems screwed on but I soon noticed that the cord wrapping the handle had actually been glued to the edge of the pommel so it was not possible to tighten the blade at all. Naturally I cut the attachment of the glue and set about trying to fix the problem. I could see that the tang was held loosely inside the around cross-section handle, but the real problem seems to be broken edges at either end of the cylindrical wooden handle. This was probably making it easier for the top of the tang to vibrate sideways and loosen the screw on the pommel. I can get it very tight but inevitably it becomes loose quite quickly allowing the blade to shift entirely sideways into one edge of the handguard. obviously very unsafe and definitely a sign of the swordlike object rather than a true sword. Another big problem is that the handle seem to be made out of two separate halves glued together links was into a cylinder. I contacted Yao by email and he responded almost immediately, apologized profusely, begged my forgiveness, wished health and prosperity to all of my family, and promised to ship me a new better quality handle along with the custom order when it is completed. I sort of got the feeling that he didn't really completely understand me about the two halves of handle rather than a single piece of wood. Still the guy was trying so hard and being so apologetic that I just couldn't bring myself to be mad at him.
Another thing that seemed really messed up was that at the point where the tang meets the blade, little rounded incisions had been made on either side of that connection. After consulting some of the more experienced SBG members, my suspicion was confirmed that this is in fact a fatal flaw severely weakening the structural integrity of the tang.
See this thread for more on that:
viewtopic.php?f=32&t=14421
My thanks to Lancelot Chan and Chris Peroni for clearing that up for me, and a golf-clap to Kuya for resisting the urge to point and laugh.
In light of all this, I think Yao is definitely not a guy that makes the swords himself and he seems to have a source for decent quality katanas or at least so I have heard from Kuya and in a few other old threads to which I don't have the link at the moment. However, his source for Chinese swords, at least in the 2-300$ range, is really very poor quality aYnd should be avoided at all costs. My impression is that Yao means no harm, cares about his business, and tries to take care of his customers. But unfortunately the manufacturer he sources these han Jian from is producing wall hangers. Maybe it was the Chinese greeting card, but I can't bring myself to give him bad feedback on eBay for this. I haven't contacted him again yet since I realized just how bad the tang was, i may try for a refund but the hassle and expense of shipping it back to China all for an uncertain finale seems like a giant pain in the ass. Maybe I can cut off the "tang", cut a few inches up or file down either side of the blade, and make a sweet little Longknife with an actual full tang, folded steel patterns etc. I'm still debating if I should try to get the hundred dollar deposit back or go ahead and give him another 300$ just to see what his $400 custom chingdao in T10 steel with differential hardening looks like.. /drool. The picture of the regular 1060 steel one looks great, but so did the picture of this POS I bought.
Here is the listing for the qing dao
cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 950wt_1193
I'll attach some pictures of the sword, the packaging and some looks under the hood at the garbage materials later tonight. Can't figure out how to upload pictures to here from an iPhone.
of glued onto the handle then this is gradually shearing little corkscrews of metal out of the threads, so the screwdriver thread in handle is going to fail once there is not enough metal left in this to hold the tang in place and I guess at that point the blade comes flying out of the handguard. Nice.
So anyway, it was a gamble buying the sword off of eBay but it seemed like a relatively safe risk because of the reputation of the seller Yao. In fact I trusted him so completely that I put down a 100$ deposit on a custom job before waiting to see this han jian first. Yes I am mentally challenged, obviously. This I the eBay listing:
www.ebay.com/itm/200782216410?
The sword arrived in one of those Styrofoam rectangles wrapped in the yellow Chinese shipping tape. It came with one of those rectangular sword boxes with dragons on it, not the best one I've ever seen but hey it was there. Inside the box the sword had been held securely in place with Styrofoam braces the scabbard was wrapped in Chinese newspapers and more of the yellow tape. So far I was impressed with the effort made at packaging it securely. Inside the box was also a greeting card of the hallmark type except with Chinese writing on it and hearts. Inside was a note thanking me and promising to help with any problems also some Chinese currency which the note indicated was for me, and he hoped I liked it. Ok, Wierd but sort of charming. The blade of the sword was encased in a sort of plastic sword condom full of oil. Gross, but effective.
Once I got all the packaging off the sword looked and felt great. It was not sharp enough to cut paper, but it had a very finely ground point and easily sheared small branches off of some bushes. The pattern of the folded steel looked authentic not painted or etched on although I am no expert. the lines and blade design really catch the light brilliantly. It is without doubt a beautiful sword.
Unfortunately after some very light cutting the blade was becoming noticeably loose in the handguard. The pommel seems screwed on but I soon noticed that the cord wrapping the handle had actually been glued to the edge of the pommel so it was not possible to tighten the blade at all. Naturally I cut the attachment of the glue and set about trying to fix the problem. I could see that the tang was held loosely inside the around cross-section handle, but the real problem seems to be broken edges at either end of the cylindrical wooden handle. This was probably making it easier for the top of the tang to vibrate sideways and loosen the screw on the pommel. I can get it very tight but inevitably it becomes loose quite quickly allowing the blade to shift entirely sideways into one edge of the handguard. obviously very unsafe and definitely a sign of the swordlike object rather than a true sword. Another big problem is that the handle seem to be made out of two separate halves glued together links was into a cylinder. I contacted Yao by email and he responded almost immediately, apologized profusely, begged my forgiveness, wished health and prosperity to all of my family, and promised to ship me a new better quality handle along with the custom order when it is completed. I sort of got the feeling that he didn't really completely understand me about the two halves of handle rather than a single piece of wood. Still the guy was trying so hard and being so apologetic that I just couldn't bring myself to be mad at him.
Another thing that seemed really messed up was that at the point where the tang meets the blade, little rounded incisions had been made on either side of that connection. After consulting some of the more experienced SBG members, my suspicion was confirmed that this is in fact a fatal flaw severely weakening the structural integrity of the tang.
See this thread for more on that:
viewtopic.php?f=32&t=14421
My thanks to Lancelot Chan and Chris Peroni for clearing that up for me, and a golf-clap to Kuya for resisting the urge to point and laugh.
In light of all this, I think Yao is definitely not a guy that makes the swords himself and he seems to have a source for decent quality katanas or at least so I have heard from Kuya and in a few other old threads to which I don't have the link at the moment. However, his source for Chinese swords, at least in the 2-300$ range, is really very poor quality aYnd should be avoided at all costs. My impression is that Yao means no harm, cares about his business, and tries to take care of his customers. But unfortunately the manufacturer he sources these han Jian from is producing wall hangers. Maybe it was the Chinese greeting card, but I can't bring myself to give him bad feedback on eBay for this. I haven't contacted him again yet since I realized just how bad the tang was, i may try for a refund but the hassle and expense of shipping it back to China all for an uncertain finale seems like a giant pain in the ass. Maybe I can cut off the "tang", cut a few inches up or file down either side of the blade, and make a sweet little Longknife with an actual full tang, folded steel patterns etc. I'm still debating if I should try to get the hundred dollar deposit back or go ahead and give him another 300$ just to see what his $400 custom chingdao in T10 steel with differential hardening looks like.. /drool. The picture of the regular 1060 steel one looks great, but so did the picture of this POS I bought.
Here is the listing for the qing dao
cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 950wt_1193
I'll attach some pictures of the sword, the packaging and some looks under the hood at the garbage materials later tonight. Can't figure out how to upload pictures to here from an iPhone.