super thick sword

It looks pretty decent. I would be interested in how it handled with the weight/balance. Also if you would have to modify the usual short sword technique to compensate.

I like it overall and wouldn't mind having one for myself; assuming it performs half decent.

According to his post on the All Swords Facebook group, it's either Amphy Her or her father? I have zero familiarity and am not having much luck gaining any.

Honestly, it looks better than I would have thought. I worry most of the weight is in the handle, and the thickness is all in that ridge, but once you get it it would be interesting to get some specs etc.

Well., I have another picture. I will reply to the other comments using quotes. 

So, I have a concern,, and that's that they welded the blade on, because the pictures are low resolution and it looks possible. However, they also added some rivets for looks (they are going to list the sword on their own website, and I gave them the liberty of decorations) ,, and I can see the heating from that,, so I can't say what happened, or how it will matter. 

If they welded the handle on, then technically that would be the correct approach, in order to have a different steel for the blade and handle,, however I did specify a single continuous bar, and amphy said yes that would be possible, and that was the plan. Now, she didn't actually make the blade, and I yeah yeah'ed a lot,,, so I will surely be satisfied either way,,, but,,,, I don't actually know, and perhaps i won't be able to tell, depending on the finish and polish. Also,,, if this is true, then perhaps it will be overall a better performer, for having some degree of damping. ,,,, anyway, My brass handled artillery sword gives me no actual complaints beyond the low quality universal swords steel choice,, so,,, I'm confident I will be happy. 

I don't actually know how much it's going to weight,, ,I have a bar of steel that is 2" by 2' round,,, it is about 20lbs. I estimate the sword should STILL fall under 5lbs.

in other words,,,, it's not really what I was HOPING to order, , which would have been heavier, but it still is what I DID order, because I gave them the freedom to make what they like. 
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as for the maker,,, amphy is the one on facebook,, and my impression is that her dad is the lead smith, and possibly sometimes the only smith, depending on the present workload. amphy does do work in the shop, but is not really the smith in the place. 

they do not forge all of their blades, sometimes they buy blades that are like, "standard market" blades that are common for their market, and made in bulk by more specialized smiths, and they finish them or custom finish them,,, while sometimes they make the blades in house. They primarily sell to resellers within china, and rarely produce export swords. When they ARE producing orders, they generally do not necessarily know where they will be sold, they just have someone placing an order, although they have some familiarity with their resellers and may or may not have a rough idea of where the swords are going. They can custom finish swords,, which is their ideal sale, and costs more,,, and what they do is basically upgrade the furniture. You can get all kinds of customizations to the furniture, with all levels of attention to detail. Generally, they try not to sell the "cheapest hardware" to a custom order, because these swords with budget fittings are usually bulk ordered by the reseller. They will want to charge a premium price for a very decorative sword, and these can be very expensive because the market is for household display in wealthy homes. (the "big score" for them would be a few thousand dollars to over ten thousand dollars, but somewhat often they can approach one thousand dollars for one sword) . right now they are making "chinese style kitchen knives" for the chinese market. They are fancy knives and in a traditional style. 

I have a few different swords. They are all not what you might have looked for,, but they are all good. For example, I have two heavy duty jian,, which are overly bulky compared to pop swords right now,,, and have a threaded tang. But you have to understand that the weight of swords that people seek to buy goes up and down. there is all of this talk of historically accurate is lighter, but people want heavier a lot. Also,,, that's not entirely true that swords are lighter than you think, , there ARE a lot of swords that are really heavy,, ,and actually once you get honest about what feels heavy to you,,, none of the euro swords are really that light,,, they are just lighter than you initially expected,, but they are still not light compared to really light swords. (for example, my windlass 1840 nco sword is quite light, and makes all of my other swords feel slow, clumsy, bulky, and basically overbuilt). ,,, so,,, the two jian are two handed swords, and actually do compare to two handed swords, and are super sharp, are thick, , they are really good. yes,, they will be slower,, but they will have stopping power. If hit with the short one, which is like 27",, you might come in half a little bit. If you parry with your dainty whisp, you will still come in half,,, if you win with a thrust, , you will still come in half. Remember that the chinese also used swords in real war MORE recently than everyone else,, and what they used was a bulky, clumsy, overbuilt two handed saber. What you do, is not get any training, not expect war,, and then when you DO have to go to war, and you DON'T have a weapon,, you get one of those. they are slow, but you charge, you ignore what they do, and you downward strike. If you DO hit them, it WILL wound them, whether they shoot you, whether they block, whether they are behind a wall,,, the sword is going to really hit. ,,, So,, if you DON'T have any skill,, actually heavier is better by the numbers on a battlefield, because it does damage if it hits at all, and all of the people who die charging in were not going to do any better with a proper fencing impliment, because they are charging a line of guns. 

The katana I bought from her was definitely underpriced, and is missing many of the features people will say are critical. it has one mekugi,, ,the tsuba rattles (but that's on purpose,, before she sent it she said,, will you try to remove the handle, we will install it loose so it's easy, and I said yes), the parts are cheap, but the blade is the best katana in my collection. For the record, I don't have any really nice ones except for that one,, ,but it IS a premium blade. (this is what they have,,, really really sharp blades) . it is also better balanced than my other katana,, and might be my weapon of choice of my entire sword collection if I were to pick what made me feel the most confident in a fight. (I don't dream of fighting, think I will fight, or prepare to fight,,, but when you have a machine and think about it's potential, and it's a sword, you do think about how it might work in a fight). To help visualize how I imagine using a sword in a fight,, I think of it as in how I might really find myself in an encounter. They will not have a sword, they will be bigger than me, they MIGHT have a gun (there are some guns in my house and plenty on my block), and I will basically have to kill them while they go for a tackle, or while they go for their gun. There isn't really another imaginable scenario,, but a tackle is scary, because if they get the tackle at all, I lose all the way, and they will get the sword. People around here get -pretty big- and a lot of people like fighting as a sport, so in the event of a tackle, I will lose for sure. I have to get them while they are basically full speed in a tackle charge. 

My LK chen sword is a completely different animal, and I'm certain more historically accurate. Historical accuracy is not a prime factor in the chinese sword market, as swords are heirlooms, mantle-pieces, and stage-pieces primarily. Amphy knows about the LK chen explosion,, and actually made some swords for them,,, usually if someone was particular with customizations. I believe they were the ones making the hidden dao models, or maybe one or a few of them. LK chen is actually just as famous in china for being so committed to historical accuracy as they are in the USA youtubes. I am sure that other sword makers will be following in those footsteps as it becomes socially acceptable to do so. (there will be a period of time where LK chen is the one,,, and then as market demand picks up for the style, more makers will end up with models that they can make that are similarly engineered). 

This final sword I will certainly wait to see how happy I am,, but as far as my customer experience I am already very happy. As long as the sword doesn't fail somehow that it shouldn't, it will be one of the critical list items for my collection,, although I will still need to continue to try to acquire the range of such "troll swords" as I have dubbed the style. 

updates

it's on the way,,, it shouldn't be long now., I think it's already on the boat.

An inch thick is thick, and to forge something that thick requires starting with something even thicker. I'm not sure stock can even be acquired that thick.

As has been mentioned before, making a sword completely out of the same piece of steel is not only not impossible, but not uncommon at all in some parts of the world at various times. I've especially seen several from the Indo-Persian spectrum.

I think the only thing really making this impossible is the required one-inch thickness. That's a lot of steel.

Here's my second attempt at some pics. 

Of course I haven't tried to really display the secondary bevel,,, it's quite small, but it is there. It's pretty obtuse, but is quite small. So,, the sword doesn't cut paper well,,, but I haven't tested wood, and unfortunately don't have any way to test "realistic targets", but it's confidently cutting bottles, and once I touched up the edge a bit the cuts are pretty smooth and clean,, not much in the way of rough scratchy edges. On the first day, the edges were quite rough,, but it turns out that a very pronounced burr was on the entire edge, (we did agree that I would do the final sharpening before the sword was complete), so once I stropped that off ,, I then had to use a fine stone after that, and then the cutting performance is quite good. 

I bought a light,,, from home depot, hoping it would improve the photo quality,,, but then i saw this youtube video about how led's don't produce ultraviolet light, which impacts flourescent clothings performance, and I basically decided that cameras must also benefit from ultraviolet light, which might be why my phones pics are so much better in broad daylight,,,, but I used the light anyway and anyway maybe you can still see a bit better. 

what do you mean by support itself?? 

So, the plan would be to have a nice beautiful taper and a functionally sharp edge. The hilt would (on the second go) perhaps be like the cross of an artillery sword,, (the gladius one), and the whole thing would crucially be solid one piece. The blade would be about an inch right at the base, but actually in this case I would expect the crossguard to actually be a bit thicker, meaning about an extra half inch, and then the handle would be at least an inch thick to be durable against the weight of the blade. ,, so the blade itself should be pretty stout in that case, and get lighter as the blade tapered, so that it would be pretty easy to rotate in a swing. (the one I have is like that. it feels really hefty when you first pick it up,, but so much weight is right in the handle that it swings pretty naturally up to a good speed). 

I would also want one that's maybe a bit longer than a gladius, just like the one I have, but basically the heman sword. So, instead of being the size of a longsword, it would be really heavy-built, but it would be scaled down so that the size and weight are manageable.