Hello all let me start by saying THANK YOU! Many of you customers and friends as well as sword folks have helped aided and encouraged Gus and me this last year. It’s been a good year, trying at times and a great joy at others. Over all it’s been a good, good year and to our customers; thank you.

Well I want to drop a line abought the New Year and two new line up's All Saints and Gus are working on.

We have over the last year spent a lot of time and energy working on upgrading our general look; Leather wraps, new crosses, blade finish, QC, and new swords.

I feel we have been very successful at this. This New Year will bring more changes in many directions. First I will continue to work on the Standard line. We'll be doing some price restructuring, some will go up slightly, some will actually drop and most will remain the same. But over all we need to fill in the gaps, get updates done and kinda fill things in a little. Some minor changes; we have shifted to Gun Box's for standard shipping. Long Long swords will still go out in rifle cases, but primarily boxes will be used for most swords. The web site is under a major rework, all sword pages are being updated as well as navigation. I really hope it gets easier to move around. We have SO many swords we really need to make it user friendly to see them all.

Other new things; we understand the need for a basic, Mercenary line. A set of blades, easy to finish, well balanced, good looking but with out all the fancy extras we have been adding to the standard line. The Mercenary line will be substantialy less expensive but still hold a lot of quality, a throw back to the prices and bare handled basics of a year or so ago.

On the opposite side of the fence we're going to bring out a better, higher end line of blades. The same performance standard as the standard line but with more handwork in the hilts, three different fire and hand bluing options, finer cord wrap and more handle detail. Look for this to launch mid January.

All of this will pop up over the next month or two; it will probably take the whole first quarter of 04 to bring every thing out. But we'll be covering the $350.00 market up to the $500.00 market with a lot of options. And I feel really offering the customer a great deal for the $$. We are not going to make custom swords, or detailed historical replicas; we'll leave that to the fine folks at A&A and Albion (not going to mention the whole world of custom makers, there so good and we all know many of them). We should however bring a nice mid priced option to Western Martial Artist's looking for the basic no frills blade to the good-looking ever practical carry weapon.

Happy new years folks and I hope this year is good to you and us all.

Josh

A cool picture just to add (Best I have taken to date, I like it!):
[ Linked Image ]

Hi Josh

And don't forget to mention the slightly heavier models based on the standard line for the thumpin' crowd, for the occassional helmet on a pole tilt.........

First of all, thanks to both Josh and Gus. The rifle case arrived in good shape (and before Xmas, which surprised me!), and the 1428 is exactly what I had in mind. The three band wrap works well with the long grip.

Second, a question: is the Mercenary line a line of blades or swords? I tend to use the two interchangeably, except in this case it could be either one. I guess that they are swords, but would like to confirm this.

Hi Felix

Glad you like her, I played with your 1428 a little before shipping, it's a nice sword I bet a lot more buzz would pop up abought that sword if we could get her in the hands of more folks.

The Merc line will be a whole line of swords. Things like the Classic Crusiform blade 1315, probably a 1313 variant, maby a 1422. Not cheeper, not crow bars, but funtional ATrims with basic crosses; Bow-ties, bars, hexs, that we can keep the extra costs out of and sell to the beginer, or the handling guys who cut all the time and don't want $50.00 wraps and upgraded crosses on. Should keep the single hand swords around $340.00 and the 7" hilted swords like the 1313 around $375-$380.00.

Oh i see what this is............ Your pittiing me Josh, so you guys made a line even I could afford eh? lol

just kidding, I think its great the explosion All saints has had in the past year. Its a one stop AT shop!