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Post by wildv on Feb 26, 2024 12:26:57 GMT
All the Howard Clark talk recently got me thinking - who actually makes the toughest* katana? Is it Ronin with their dojo pros? A high end custom maker? HC? Motothara? I was wondering what you though? * By toughness I mean a general sense of durability; not breaking, bending easily or chipping. Don't care about edge retention or art style polish. Who cares about brands or names. Basically which steel or maker makes a sword you can literally try and break by hitting things you're not meant to, but still hold up and doesn't become a dangerous helicopter?
I know this is a hard question as anyone who owns a HC for example will never test it like this to failure. I sure wouldn't use mine above anything more than tatami. Is some cheap steel/maker actually the most durable (in regards to my specifications above).
What do you think sword friends?
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Post by larason2 on Feb 26, 2024 14:13:36 GMT
For tough as you describe, it's hard to do a lot better than a 1060 blade. Won't hold an edge well, might take a set on a bad cut, but even after a lot of abuse, it's still going to be in one piece and cutting things without any chipping. You can get one of these from pretty much any manufacturer.
If you want it to be less likely to take a set, you have to make the spine thicker. Here's where geometry matters, so a thick dotanuki geometry like Ronin uses, that's going to be less likely to take a set.
You want it to hold an edge but not chip, metal type and/or heat treat makes a difference. Bainite's good for that reason. But it comes with a cost.
For all these, to suit your definition you want through hardened. Differentially hardened blades are always liable to take a set, nothing you can do about that. Otherwise they can be just as durable.
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Post by AndiTheBarvarian on Feb 26, 2024 14:15:44 GMT
Probably a beefy niku Howard Clark bainite blade. Bainite is a bit tougher than TH steel. HC seems to make thinner blades because the material is so tough and doesn't need so much flesh or special thinner custom cutting blades. But a real thick shinogi zukuri blade with niku made from bainite with still a hard martensite edge should be extremely tough.
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Post by Lancelot Chan on Feb 26, 2024 15:10:12 GMT
Probably a beefy niku Howard Clark bainite blade. Bainite is a bit tougher than TH steel. HC seems to make thinner blades because the material is so tough and doesn't need so much flesh or special thinner custom cutting blades. But a real thick shinogi zukuri blade with niku made from bainite with still a hard martensite edge should be extremely tough. Agree
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Post by wildv on Feb 26, 2024 15:18:35 GMT
Probably a beefy niku Howard Clark bainite blade. Bainite is a bit tougher than TH steel. HC seems to make thinner blades because the material is so tough and doesn't need so much flesh or special thinner custom cutting blades. But a real thick shinogi zukuri blade with niku made from bainite with still a hard martensite edge should be extremely tough. I have heard a lot about this and to me at least this makes hc blades one of the best out there currently. Just looking to see if there are other compelling blades?
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Post by darknovashin on Feb 26, 2024 16:59:38 GMT
For raw durability, Cloudhammer does S5 and Shadowdancer does S7, both of which are nigh unbreakable if through hardened well. Both Matt Jensen and Shadiversity have demonstrated just how durable they can be. They don’t have great edge retention properties though. Looking more material science-wise, the shock steels like s5 and s7 end up similar to Bainite in raw materials testing numbers, though quantifying Bainite is hard. Bainite is a specific crystal structure so many steels can theoretically reach Bainite but the amount of that structure affects durability, which is nigh impossible to predict. Howard has commented that he gets much higher than other makers have (60-70+% vs maybe 40-50%). Motohara has done both CPMV3 and M4 TH with reportedly good effect.
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Post by darknovashin on Feb 26, 2024 17:31:27 GMT
Got cut a bit short. Continuing, the Bainite blades from Hanwei have very hit or miss reputations for durability despite the theoretical Bainite spine, probably from failing the heat treat or just not having enough Bainite %. Classically, the 1060 and up steels even DH can be very good with the right geometry and heat treat, but I think only the Dojo Pro has the reputation of durability that I would put up against the others and they use a stronger geometry than the average from what I hear. T10 is commonly going around as DH and TH from multiple makers and I haven’t heard any complaints about it. D2 is another big hit or miss steel with some catastrophic failures being cited though seems to be if you get it from one of the powder metallurgy foundries, it tends to be tougher and hold up better overall. Motohara does/did D2 and, while I assume they did the powder metallurgy version due to no rumors of catastrophic failures, it’s not on their recommended list any longer possibly due to being hard to resharpen and prone to chips. L6 even without the Bainite is popular and is a very functional steel but nothing special even with a good heat treat compared to the more modern steels. 5160 is the go to for many smiths who want TH spring steel for European swords partly from availablity and partly due to its very well understood heat treat. Longship Armoury doesn’t exactly do katana, but they do single edged cutters that come out very katana like and, again from report, tend to be very durable. The newer Supreme Cutter from Lancelot Chan are made with a similar steel, but I can’t recall anyone making katana with 5160 at the moment. Used to be quite popular though. KC Swedish Powder steel was the bugei standby and seems to have produced generally durable blades, but, again, that ended up very model dependent as certain geometries maximized that durability.
In general, my personal preference is for Howard Clark katana due to the mix of durability with the hardened edge for sharpness and edge retention. He knows his materials well and does do the thinner blades as he knows they can take the abuse of regular use and be thinner for weight and cutting efficiency. Even before the age of YouTube, Howard destruction tested a failed blade to prove their strength. It started with a crack in the mune and still took heavy mat cutting at speed with nary a flex, let alone a set. He put it in a vice and bent it to 90 and back, and still had to bend it 90 in the other direction to make it snap. And this was not a heavy cutter blade. He has made and will make heavier blades (I have an older one that is about half again as thick as my other 2) that I imagine are even tankier. Alientude has a review of a Howard Clark blade that was the dojo loaner at a Toyoyama Ryu school for years that is still functional, which is an incredible testament to their durability. I am not planning to take any of mine to destruction, but I have allot of confidence in using two of them to retrain (been nearly 20 years since I took a katana to a tatami) without worry of taking a set. The others I am saving to preserve the art quality polish, but I would even use the thinnest comfortably.
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Post by AndiTheBarvarian on Feb 27, 2024 0:33:08 GMT
I've only heard of edge chipping on the Hanweis which has nothing to do with the bainite spine, the edge is always hard and brittle martensite. Are there any records of blade bending under normal conditions?
TH tempered steel is tougher than the two DH areas, takes a set or breaks later, it's just a bit less tough than bainite. Additional alloys can improve this a bit. In doubt L6 (not bainite), 9260, 5160, EN45 etc should be good But all is in the heat treatment.
I have no idea how good those "super" tool steels like cpm3v etc. really are in sword blades. Theoretically very tough when combined with high hardness heat treatment, good for knives, but for a TH blade with enough "softness" for a long sword blade??
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Post by darknovashin on Feb 27, 2024 0:51:07 GMT
Sorta, I have come across a number of Oni katana reviews complaining about easily taking bends on basic cuts with tatami but not much in the way of video/images. I was looking into buying one a couple years back and did a bunch of looking through reviews, forums, etc circa 2018 or so and again in 2021. I didn't make a curated list of things though, so I'm going by memory of why I didn't commit. It seems it might have been batch dependent as earlier versions seem to have done the best, but definitely a bit spotty even then. Post fire, I have generally gotten the impression that they have had a number of issues including the bending and taking sets along with the chipping. I ultimately ended up saving for longer and committing to the first of my Howard Clark blades (which is still being polished and mounted) before diving headfirst into seeking out more that were already polished and mounted. I may have revealed my preference there on the options for the "toughest." As for the "super steels," I can say the S5 and S7 have been better proven from several forges as something special when it comes to durability. CPM3V and M4 unfortunately remain pretty niche so I don't have a great grasp of how real world performance has gone. Using knife steel nerds's graphs and information on knife steels, I would guess they will be tough enough, though edge chipping might be an issue with the Vanadium carbides if allow to grow too large. They may also start too large honestly, but I likely am not going to be the one who can afford to test this. Steel choice is a bunch of trade offs and knife steels lean into edge retention and stainless over toughness in many cases. I think CPM3V and Magnacut are in the range of a high sword toughness (if below S5/S7 and bainite) and would have good edge retention in excess of S5 and S7 (and probably hardened L6 for that matter), though that's less critical in a sword. And completely agree that the Heat Treat is key.
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Post by toddstratton1 on Feb 27, 2024 1:01:14 GMT
Comparing Howard Clark to any other maker isn't going to be a fair comparison, his swords are in a league of their own durability wise and for other reasons. Motohara offers quite a few custom options if someone wanted to work with a specific steel type for their order. Also an extremely high end maker though.
I wouldn't say for the most part that they are known for being especially durable as some lesser common super steel swords like S5 shock steel, for the common general purpose blade steels that are sold. They are more just swords specific to practitioneers that are really awesome training tools for cutting and iai practice. However not meant to be abused on targets that are out of the norm of what people typically use as mediums for cutting in JSA.
The cloudhammer s5 steel sword stuff I've seen has been the most impressive in abuse test results aside from what someone else mentioned with Mathew Jensens test review of the S7 steel from the other maker. But if edge retention doesn't hold that well then it kind of makes the steel not as useful. As you're going to be grinding material off a lot more often when re sharpening is needed. I would be curious to see someone do a differently hardened version of those shock steels to see if it could help with having better edge retention while keeping that same durability.
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Post by wildv on Feb 27, 2024 1:39:29 GMT
Comparing Howard Clark to any other maker isn't going to be a fair comparison, his swords are in a league of their own durability wise and for other reasons. Motohara offers quite a few custom options if someone wanted to work with a specific steel type for their order. Also an extremely high end maker though. I wouldn't say for the most part that they are known for being especially durable as some lesser common super steel swords like S5 shock steel, for the common general purpose blade steels that are sold. They are more just swords specific to practitioneers that are really awesome training tools for cutting and iai practice. However not meant to be abused on targets that are out of the norm of what people typically use as mediums for cutting in JSA. The cloudhammer s5 steel sword stuff I've seen has been the most impressive in abuse test results aside from what someone else mentioned with Mathew Jensens test review of the S7 steel from the other maker. But if edge retention doesn't hold that well then it kind of makes the steel not as useful. As you're going to be grinding material off a lot more often when re sharpening is needed. I would be curious to see someone do a differently hardened version of those shock steels to see if it could help with having better edge retention while keeping that same durability. To be fair, I should have specified I don't care about fair comparisons haha. If hc is the best I want everyone to say that however I'm looking to see if there is other options.
I agree with you on the edge retention point. If a hc blade has the same durability as S5 but holds a better edge then it is better. I'm looking for pretty simple answers here and I would prefer people don't respond based on emotion or price tag (eg; higher price tag = better).
I personally think hc might be the best out there but I own one and paid a heap for it so I feel I might be biased. Hence this thread post.
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Post by wildv on Feb 27, 2024 1:43:10 GMT
Got cut a bit short. Continuing, the Bainite blades from Hanwei have very hit or miss reputations for durability despite the theoretical Bainite spine, probably from failing the heat treat or just not having enough Bainite %. Classically, the 1060 and up steels even DH can be very good with the right geometry and heat treat, but I think only the Dojo Pro has the reputation of durability that I would put up against the others and they use a stronger geometry than the average from what I hear. T10 is commonly going around as DH and TH from multiple makers and I haven’t heard any complaints about it. D2 is another big hit or miss steel with some catastrophic failures being cited though seems to be if you get it from one of the powder metallurgy foundries, it tends to be tougher and hold up better overall. Motohara does/did D2 and, while I assume they did the powder metallurgy version due to no rumors of catastrophic failures, it’s not on their recommended list any longer possibly due to being hard to resharpen and prone to chips. L6 even without the Bainite is popular and is a very functional steel but nothing special even with a good heat treat compared to the more modern steels. 5160 is the go to for many smiths who want TH spring steel for European swords partly from availablity and partly due to its very well understood heat treat. Longship Armoury doesn’t exactly do katana, but they do single edged cutters that come out very katana like and, again from report, tend to be very durable. The newer Supreme Cutter from Lancelot Chan are made with a similar steel, but I can’t recall anyone making katana with 5160 at the moment. Used to be quite popular though. KC Swedish Powder steel was the bugei standby and seems to have produced generally durable blades, but, again, that ended up very model dependent as certain geometries maximized that durability. In general, my personal preference is for Howard Clark katana due to the mix of durability with the hardened edge for sharpness and edge retention. He knows his materials well and does do the thinner blades as he knows they can take the abuse of regular use and be thinner for weight and cutting efficiency. Even before the age of YouTube, Howard destruction tested a failed blade to prove their strength. It started with a crack in the mune and still took heavy mat cutting at speed with nary a flex, let alone a set. He put it in a vice and bent it to 90 and back, and still had to bend it 90 in the other direction to make it snap. And this was not a heavy cutter blade. He has made and will make heavier blades (I have an older one that is about half again as thick as my other 2) that I imagine are even tankier. Alientude has a review of a Howard Clark blade that was the dojo loaner at a Toyoyama Ryu school for years that is still functional, which is an incredible testament to their durability. I am not planning to take any of mine to destruction, but I have allot of confidence in using two of them to retrain (been nearly 20 years since I took a katana to a tatami) without worry of taking a set. The others I am saving to preserve the art quality polish, but I would even use the thinnest comfortably. Very well written, thorough and concise. Thank you! Lots of good considerations here.
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Post by toddstratton1 on Feb 27, 2024 1:59:07 GMT
Comparing Howard Clark to any other maker isn't going to be a fair comparison, his swords are in a league of their own durability wise and for other reasons. Motohara offers quite a few custom options if someone wanted to work with a specific steel type for their order. Also an extremely high end maker though. I wouldn't say for the most part that they are known for being especially durable as some lesser common super steel swords like S5 shock steel, for the common general purpose blade steels that are sold. They are more just swords specific to practitioneers that are really awesome training tools for cutting and iai practice. However not meant to be abused on targets that are out of the norm of what people typically use as mediums for cutting in JSA. The cloudhammer s5 steel sword stuff I've seen has been the most impressive in abuse test results aside from what someone else mentioned with Mathew Jensens test review of the S7 steel from the other maker. But if edge retention doesn't hold that well then it kind of makes the steel not as useful. As you're going to be grinding material off a lot more often when re sharpening is needed. I would be curious to see someone do a differently hardened version of those shock steels to see if it could help with having better edge retention while keeping that same durability. To be fair, I should have specified I don't care about fair comparisons haha. If hc is the best I want everyone to say that however I'm looking to see if there is other options.
I agree with you on the edge retention point. If a hc blade has the same durability as S5 but holds a better edge then it is better. I'm looking for pretty simple answers here and I would prefer people don't respond based on emotion or price tag (eg; higher price tag = better).
I personally think hc might be the best out there but I own one and paid a heap for it so I feel I might be biased. Hence this thread post.
You won't find anything out there that will be a near comparison to a Howard Clark IMO. The s5 steel swords are a nice super steel option you can get at a far lower price though. The Hanwei L6 bainite swords are also really chip prone from my understanding , a lot of bainite L6 quality comes down to the very particular demands that heat treat places on it , to get it dine right. I think Howard Clark sometimes goes through several swords when working a commission himself, if some don't end up being properly heat treated and etc which need to he discarded. When we compare the fine detail attention and care that a custom smith does for his swords. It's a lot different than high volume production mass forged swords like the manufacturers in Longquan China. It's not about the price difference itself being fair or not, rather the price being much higher because the quality of work, expertise, and care is vastly better. But a lot of modern made mono steel katana are simple enough to produce that they don't really need a ton of that extra care to be perfectly functional, and arent so complex to create like a traditional nihonto, that it can't have most the process be machine processed and etc. Howard Clark has some old video of abuse testing one of his L6 swords as well.
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Post by wildv on Feb 27, 2024 3:22:58 GMT
To be fair, I should have specified I don't care about fair comparisons haha. If hc is the best I want everyone to say that however I'm looking to see if there is other options.
I agree with you on the edge retention point. If a hc blade has the same durability as S5 but holds a better edge then it is better. I'm looking for pretty simple answers here and I would prefer people don't respond based on emotion or price tag (eg; higher price tag = better).
I personally think hc might be the best out there but I own one and paid a heap for it so I feel I might be biased. Hence this thread post.
You won't find anything out there that will be a near comparison to a Howard Clark IMO. The s5 steel swords are a nice super steel option you can get at a far lower price though. The Hanwei L6 bainite swords are also really chip prone from my understanding , a lot of bainite L6 quality comes down to the very particular demands that heat treat places on it , to get it dine right. I think Howard Clark sometimes goes through several swords when working a commission himself, if some don't end up being properly heat treated and etc which need to he discarded. When we compare the fine detail attention and care that a custom smith does for his swords. It's a lot different than high volume production mass forged swords like the manufacturers in Longquan China. It's not about the price difference itself being fair or not, rather the price being much higher because the quality of work, expertise, and care is vastly better. But a lot of modern made mono steel katana are simple enough to produce that they don't really need a ton of that extra care to be perfectly functional, and arent so complex to create like a traditional nihonto, that it can't have most the process be machine processed and etc. Howard Clark has some old video of abuse testing one of his L6 swords as well. You pretty much echo what I was thinking too. I was just thinking that surely there can't just be the one sword out there. Something I didn't consider when I asked this question is most of it I bet comes down to the actual forging process, not the steel. So these makers using S5 you could get an amazing sword one day and a lemon sword the next. I'd never personally trust Hanwei with L6. I just love their Celestial katana and have almost purchased it on two different occasions, but I always back out at the last minute as I'm worried it'll most likely be a lemon.
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Post by cjb080781 on Feb 27, 2024 3:30:29 GMT
Probably a beefy niku Howard Clark bainite blade. Bainite is a bit tougher than TH steel. HC seems to make thinner blades because the material is so tough and doesn't need so much flesh or special thinner custom cutting blades. But a real thick shinogi zukuri blade with niku made from bainite with still a hard martensite edge should be extremely tough. What I learned from my correspondence with Howard is that he will make a blade with pretty any dimensions you want. The reason you see thinner blades that do come up for sale is because the original buyer is almost always wanting a blade for a specific purpose. When I asked him to just put something together for me he was like, yea no one who inquires about my blades ever says that.
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Post by toddstratton1 on Feb 27, 2024 4:38:53 GMT
You won't find anything out there that will be a near comparison to a Howard Clark IMO. The s5 steel swords are a nice super steel option you can get at a far lower price though. The Hanwei L6 bainite swords are also really chip prone from my understanding , a lot of bainite L6 quality comes down to the very particular demands that heat treat places on it , to get it dine right. I think Howard Clark sometimes goes through several swords when working a commission himself, if some don't end up being properly heat treated and etc which need to he discarded. When we compare the fine detail attention and care that a custom smith does for his swords. It's a lot different than high volume production mass forged swords like the manufacturers in Longquan China. It's not about the price difference itself being fair or not, rather the price being much higher because the quality of work, expertise, and care is vastly better. But a lot of modern made mono steel katana are simple enough to produce that they don't really need a ton of that extra care to be perfectly functional, and arent so complex to create like a traditional nihonto, that it can't have most the process be machine processed and etc. Howard Clark has some old video of abuse testing one of his L6 swords as well. You pretty much echo what I was thinking too. I was just thinking that surely there can't just be the one sword out there. Something I didn't consider when I asked this question is most of it I bet comes down to the actual forging process, not the steel. So these makers using S5 you could get an amazing sword one day and a lemon sword the next. I'd never personally trust Hanwei with L6. I just love their Celestial katana and have almost purchased it on two different occasions, but I always back out at the last minute as I'm worried it'll most likely be a lemon. A chinese made monosteel katana won't really have issues with being a lemon, at least not in the majority of cases. They are also a lot more durable than most traditionally made Nihonto due to being made with much higher quality modern steels. QC issues will start to be a problem more when you get into any folded steel swords though as there is more points of potential failure that can happen in the manufacturing process with those types of swords. Hanwei also makes some really awesome swords. They just won't often have the same quality in fit and finish, tsuka tightness, Tsuba rattle issues that occur etc, thats the more common issue which isn't really a huge deal. But something to kind of expect at certain price points which might require a bit of maintenance. The level of sharpness that is consistent across the blade might not be perfect. Or the blade shape and geometry might not ideal every time either. They are good options for budget cutting and training swords for modern iai practice and tameshigiri. You just have to look into getting the types of swords that are going to have better reliability in the type of blade it is, and how that manufacturer takes care of the other parts that are mounted and fitted to it. All that said a Motohara or Howard Clark is a dramatic step up with a lot of added quality in fit, finish, attention to detail, craftsmanship quality. The reliability of the sword itself and how good it is as a training tool and etc. Most swords listed 1k or lower are going to have pretty cheap fittings and wrap, but its still good enough to serve its purpose. And the price will often be a bit more for a folded steel sword versus a mono steel one, despite the folded steel one having less quality control consistency in durability and etc. Folded steel swords just have extra steps to the process to create them, they do make the blade have a very pretty hamon though. Which is usually not there or acid etched into one for mono steel swords.
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Post by zsg1313 on Feb 27, 2024 20:16:37 GMT
I'll take Aldos w2 over just about anything else. Simply for looks.
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Post by blairbob on Feb 28, 2024 0:46:14 GMT
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Post by blairbob on Feb 28, 2024 1:00:40 GMT
Hanwei Raptor series.
Doesn't surprise me that S5 or S7 don't hold an edge well. Both of their carbon contents are lower than 1060 or 1070.
For the money, likely Howard Clark's are the toughest thing you can buy. There don't seem to be any contenders except the S5.
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Post by Gelue on Feb 28, 2024 2:56:50 GMT
If what you are concerned with is the most durable sword overall and are not as concerned with edge retention from what I have seen the s5 is hard to beat. An l6 blade by Howard Clark is an amazing blend of toughness and edge retention but will most likely be less resistant to shock than s5 if it is properly heat treated. The amazing thing about the l6 by Howard Clark is it blends some of the characteristics of a through hardened blade with the benifits of a differential heat treated blade. It also has the added bonus of a real hamon as well for a more traditional look. I personally have never been a fan of a blade with no hamon. If your beating steel into a rock or other metal objects chose the s5 if you want a sword blade that will be uktra resistant while making a great cutter and martial arts sword chose the Howard Clark.
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