[Patrick Kelly]

[Paul Hansen]

I want to offer a slightly different perspective.

Nobody here needs a sword. We collect swords because we like them.

For me, there is something that is more important than quality. That thing is Character, or, if you will, Soul.

This is hard to describe, but it has to do with the maker as well as with the sword.

For instance, I my favorite swords are made by Jeroen Zuiderwijk, Neil Burridge and Vladimir Cervenka.

These are people that I've met in person and who I know personally, in varying degrees. With Jeroen, I've traveled to England, Germany and France, and I know him quite well. I've spent the night at Neil's house a couple of times. With Vladimir, I drank beer and šljivovica in his back yard.

None of these swords are perfect. They all have imperfections, although these are well within the norm of how swords were made in their respective time-frames. By contrast, I have a cutlass from Cold Steel that is much more uniform in appearance, and thus could, in some way, be considered better quality.

But the Cold Steel sword has no soul.

To me, the fact that I know how these swords were made, who made them and how involved they are with what they are doing is vastly more important than having a perfectly made and finished sword.

As for price level, I feel that the price of the swords made by these people is fair. OK, they are not as cheap as Hanwei or Windlass. But like I said, nobody here really needs a sword. They are no longer tools, except perhaps for fencing or reenactment. So it's OK to have to save some money before buying your next sword. And in the event that they would need to raise their prices, I would not complain because I know where the money is going. Everybody needs money to live.

Edited to say: in re-reading this post, it may come off as if I'm buying only from friends, but this is not my point. I think that there are many people in the business of making swords, because they are genuinely interested in them. Jeroen is not a full-time maker, but while Neil, Vladimir and I guess the vast majority of independent sword makers around the world, can support themselves by making swords, they are certainly not getting rich from it, and as such they deserve our support. But also from the sword's perspective, I feel that such swords have an individual character, that is very hard to express in terms of money.

[Harry J. Fletcher]

I agree with J. D. Crawford especially about Windlass swords. My first European medieval sword was their discontinued Spanish sword which had all the handling of a hunk of steel. It was heavy and clunky. I dubbed it Big Ugly as its name for its looks and handling quality. I really couldn't consider it a sword just an imitation of one. Yet I purchased the Spartan Lakonian and it was far above the price I paid in quality, looks and handling.

As for Hanwei Katanas, I purchased a Shinto katana, catalog priced at $860 for $400 from their official site, Edgefair.com,and the Shinto Elite also priced about the same in the catalog $ at $860 for $395 from Sword Buyers Guide Sword Store. Frankly, I wanted these katanas for their differentially hardened blades. The Shinto is sharp as a razor blade and the Elite cuts tough tatami very well. But I also have a Cheness SGC (Specialized Goza Cutter) which was designed for heavy cutting of tatami but it is a monosteel, heavy, wide blade and does as well as the Shinto Elite. Also, I have an Onyuri Bujinkan with a thin short blade with a bo hi and it surprised me by how well it cut the tough goza I buy. I suspect that I am going to have a hard time sharpening the Hanwei Shinto katanas differentially hardened blades while having a much easier time with the Cheness blades. Was the extra cost necessary? I don't think so now.

I purchased the Godfred Viking sword for about $459 but was not pleased with it at all and the catalog price was $599. Some of the people here at myArmoury had purchased them but seemed to be luke warm bout them as well. I returned mine for credit and got the Tinker Pearce Viking sharp and am well pleased with it.

The Sine Qua Non is do we need to spend $15,000 and upwards to get the benefits of a nihonto katana? As an art object maybe but asa practical matter I think not especially since the new steels and forging techniques equal or excell the quality of the nihonto. The foreign steel got a bad rap when unscruppulous swordsmiths mixed scrap in with the foreign steel to produce inferior blades in the making of the Shinto swords in Japan during this period which was about 1534 until the restoration of the Emperer