{OT} Buying Swords

[Tsyr]

We started using some of the Hanwei practice blades in SCA fencing combat. They were real popular for awhile but now we are apparently hearing reports of breakage whereas schlager and del tin blades have lasted forever.

I'm sort of leery about any steel products coming from China, especially after watching fencing sabers snap off at the tang and go sailing through the air in high school and college.

I've a number of Chen peices, several of which have seen a fair amount of mock combat in one form or another, and have had no breakages. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but I suspect it's the exception, not the norm.

Like someone else said, you do get what you pay for, but you still get a pretty good blade for a fair bit less. And again like someone else said, paul chen is ALWAYS improving... For example, I think their "low end" katana (The Practical Katana) has gone through something like 4 or 5 revisions since the first model was put out, whenever someone found a weakness they fixed it. They used to use a disc of cut bulletproof plastic for the tsuba, for example, instead of iron or steel... in concept it's a very nice idea, it lightens the load a bit, and you would think that bulletproof plastic would suffice... but there were problems with it, so they went to metal tsubas. As one example.