Huanuo Forge

I would say buy a jian from Garrett when he is fully set up.

who?

That double fullered on looks like an amazing blade.
cgi.ebay.com/Hand-Forged-Folded-Steel-8-sides-edged-JIAN-Sword-492_W0QQitemZ180251656928QQihZ008QQcategoryZ88922QQtcZphotoQQcmdZViewItemQQ_trksidZp1742.m153.l1262

Didn`t Scott Rodell test some Huanuo stuff with great satisfaction?

And I personally would alwas go for a correct repro of antique swords, not some phantasy influenced modern stuff.



www.grtc.org/news/index.html

seems that you need to brush up on some of your chinese sword history, the han sword is one of the more well known styles of ancient chinese sword, and having one with eight sides is extremely accurate. Also, I believe Rodell had tested several swords produced by Zheng Wu forge, and had ended up with far superior results.

Sorry, English is my 3rd language, so sometimes, my usage of words will be not standard. Please tolerate also non native speakers! ;D

I should have said, that those repros are a bit inaccurate?! Too much for me, in fact.

Here my points, and if wrong, please ellaborate and brush up my knowledge of Chinese swords, as I`m new on the forum.

1. Guards, handles and pommels of most Han swords had been made of natural materials, i.e. jade, wood and bone. Only few bronze guards have been found, and to replace them with high quality steel is a possibility, yes, but not a reproduction.

2. Both blades, the eight sided one and the double fuller, were typical only for bronze stuff, as this material was easy to be worked on, beeing much softer. My sources say that in later Han, also first iron/steel blades appeared, probably out of trial and error at the forge, with the first real forging process in several steps. But there were no tools to work this much harder material in the beginning. So all cross-sections of iron/steel blades (carbon of up to 5%) have the thick ridge in the middle section and thinner edged on both sides, creating 4 sides, not 8 and having no fuller.

My sources are: Yang Hong, Alex Huangfu Jiang and Thomas Chen`s pics.

Yours?

For those reasons, I personally prefer the higher developed Song (or even later) swords, which had been made of good quality steel, so they can be reproduced with equivalent materials. And also here, I prefer hand produced steel to industrial production.

I am well aware of traditional han fittings being made out of materials such as jade, but then again, today these materials have become very expensive, if one seeks a han sword with jade fittings, then Zheng Wu forge is the only one that I know of that still uses jade fittings, but those swords are their higher end models, they hover around the $1000-$2000 mark.

Well below the jade ones. Although those are dao fitting...but then again dao became the sword of choice in the later han era. But that isn't to say that the jian was stopped entirely. Basically late era han swords were dao with brass fittings. When a jian was made in that era, it would be steel with similar brass fittings.

And of course you can't discount the era of transition. Swords don't change styles overnight after all. A steel jian with brass fitting in the early han era style might be rare...but it would still be a historical sword (assuming everything else is correct for the era). It is a replica of an archeologist's wet dream...but still realistic .