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 …

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. …

Ronin has restocked the elite line with lots of new katana for sale. O-katana, kogarsu maru (little crow), and ko katana are among the 60+ new elites this year. Ronin has also added some Chinese jian and dao this year. Ronin Katana is the world's largest seller of complex laminated katana, including soshu kitae. Lamination lines are clearly visible on our katana. Don't be fooled by Chinese ebayer's looking to steal from you by selling folded steel as lamination. As always, the elites are one of …