[Michael Beeching]

I stumbled across this on YouTube, and as per the title, found it to be a rather fascinating watch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07XPw--yDOM

In fact, I think you may be able to make some interesting comparisons to actual weapons from the paper models. Blade failures in the wood and paper swords could be analogous to metallurgical failures, but most interesting of course was the edge damage incurred from intentional destructive testing of the models.

In fact, if many training swords have a hard time simulating the bind, I wonder if something like a disposable paper trainer wouldn't be in order?

[Ben Joy]

I was surprised at the durability of those paper blades, especially considering they were some of his oldest and "junk" blades. Sadly, as he even pointed out, his newest blades -with the refined techniques- he's focused on making more and more of showy display pieces. However, if he went back and used his more refined techniques to create pieces that were as "heavy duty" as his originals, then that could make for one interesting durability and functionality test.

Regardless, now matter how impressively durable and effective the paper swords were at what they were doing (the damage to that many layers of cardboard would absolutely equate to some nasty bruises -or worse- on a person . . . particularly the thrusts' piercing potential) I don't think that they'd be usable for proper comparisons against metal blades.