The Samurai Sword Blog

In part four of the "how samurai swords for sale on ebay get made" series, I am going to focus on saya making. I know the owners of several of the factories making saya, and took pictures in a few different ones. Factory is a pretty lose term, as these places have 3-4 employees. As was shown in part one, the dealers will actually wrap the saya themselves. First up is a look at some of the Ronin dojo pro saya getting made. The brown horn is already attached, and they are about to be taped up …

Ebay sword dealers offer a lot of customization, including custom hamon. As with the other parts of sword making, that too is outsourced to locals who specialize in it. There are several places, that range from very fast, to very detailed. The lower the price point on a sword sale, the lower the amount they are going to spend on a hamon. Consider a hamon no different than fittings, or a saya. It's just something else they need to add to the sword to make the sale.I've visited around 10 places th …

Ebay sword sellers often, okay always, claim they have a forge and make the swords they sell themselves. Actually, in 100% of the cases, this is untrue. Yep, they are all lying, and not one of them owns a forge. So where do the mass quantities of swords they sell come from? In some cases, they come from overflow from large factories. Ronin, for example, orders 500+ soshu kitae laminated katana every year. Because of the high failure rate, three blades are forged for every one that we order. The …

Every few years this topic comes up in a big way, and my email box goes crazy. While I've published a few factory videos and wrote a few articles for Sword Buyers Guide, I decided since I already pay for a blog, I may as well put my inside access to use on Roninkatana.com as well. So here it is. Ronin Katana has been around for 10 years now, and during that time I've spent many many months in China living and working. My wife is the niece of Chinese national treasure smith Weiping …

Some good shots of the katana Deadpool is using in the movie. Deadpool is probably the most famous comic book character to eviscerate enemies with samurai swords, but he is not the only one to do so in the movies. Wolverine made good use of them in The Wolverine, and Psylocke will be using one in the upcoming X-Men Apocalypse. Odds are high we will see Wolverine using them again when Old Man Logan comes out in a few years. No word on if we will see the Deadpool katana for sale. …