Dan Keffeler Super Assassin : As there are lots of discussions on less than ideal performance

It could have something to do with the way it is wielded. If you take a 48" sword, even one meant for hacking warriors and shields, and wind up (really get your hips into it) and chop into a relatively stationary object like a wood post or a log... well something might go badly. The sword might damage itself.

An actual sword strike would not have so much power.

Impacts against light and mobile objects like shields (viking shield were about 3 lb) or other weapons would not result in such high acceleration.

As far as the edges go I would agree with the me2 and Cliff and others... can't take a sword strike into soft wood then it probably is not battle ready

All just operator fantasy though

Edit I just had a thought... what if it's ok to take damage against shields and helmets and harder bones, but not ok to take damage chopping firewood before the swordfight begins?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/20/2014 05:50AM by wnease.

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Dan Keffeler
I don't understand why you're asking if my work is clumsy/awkward.

Dan

Cliff explained what he meant, but I had thought he was referring to the point of balance, as in Dan's sword had a more forward point of balance than a traditional sword.

I don't actually know what the normal point of balance is on a Wakazashi, but by bringing it forward you would gain greater chopping power and at the same time reduce the "liveliness."

So... does this sword have a more forward point of balance than a traditional Wakazashi?


Chumgeyser on Youtube
E-nep throwing Brotherhood. Charter Member

While at a bonfire at a friend;s house, an associate of mine decided to put his Dynasty Forge Musha Katana to use. I am really, really regretting that we didn't film some of it, as we probably could have given most of the katana cult an aneurysm.

Now a fair bit of warning about my friend, he is a bit of an idjit and an eccentric when it comes to his use and acquisition of knives, but what he does seems to work for him. The katana that he had seemed to be of reasonable quality for $90, and he was eager to whale on it this evening.

And great googly moogly, did we ever. We chopped branches, notch cut particle board and logs, cut branches into the ground, and batoned lumber with it. This caused extensive damage, ranging from rolls to dents in the primary grind, but it was not enough to prevent further use. Near the end of the night, my friend gave it to another fellow and told him to do his worst, which he did. I have never before seen someone straighten a katana with repeated chopping, but this guy did. It was really quite remarkable, but he did his best to bash it back into place. I told my friend that I will drop by at some point so we can try to fix the damage done to the edge of this blade.

Now a great deal of hyperbole does exist as to what constitutes abuse of a sword, but I firmly believe that this was. Despite this, I can really see the utility use of a Katana as a glorified machete or chopper, to the point that I am kind of interested in acquiring some sort of practical katana or wakizashi. Also, I may have inadvertently created a fan of Dan's work.

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Bill22252 on YouTube. "See you space cowboy"

Resident Emerson Fanboi

Folding knives are fun, fixed blades are important.

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Bugout Bill

Now a great deal of hyperbole does exist as to what constitutes abuse of a sword, but I firmly believe that this was.

Here is a question, is using a katana to cut another person in a violent confrontation considering to be abuse of the sword? It should not be obvious to note the dramatic descriptions, but even forgetting armor, just imagine chopping violently into a moving person while you are moving and hitting large sections of bone, let alone the sword is blocked with something capable of stopping it.

What did these swords look like after an actual combat engagement?

Cliff: Good point, I have never thought about that. You don't really see a lot of mention of Japanese sword repair or damage sustained by swords.

But could hitting a knot and simply hacking away at it until you went through (how we bent the sword) be seen as abusive? There really isn't a whole lot of comparison to that in combat, aside from repeated impacts into bone or another sword in the same spot.

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Bill22252 on YouTube. "See you space cowboy"

Resident Emerson Fanboi

Folding knives are fun, fixed blades are important.

It is going to depend on what you mean by abusive. If the sword is intended to handle combat I can't see jamming away at knotty wood to be abusive unless you are sledging it, or it is a poking type combat sword only.

Video :

Hi everybody, longtime lurker, I registered just to answer to this thread because I felt I had some extra info, I used to be very interested in Japanese style blades and spent a while on the SFI gathering more knowledge on the subject.

The first thing to understand about japanese swords is that they are very expensive.In the samurai era, a decent sword for a samurai cost about 6 months of income. This might not sound like much, but the samurai still had to eat, feed his family, pay his servants, etc. during those six months, so comissioning a sword was a significant effort, many swords were simply passed from generation to generation, only the fittings were changed when needed.

So using a sword for chopping wood would have been extremely reckless, a samurai would do that only in extreme cases. Using an axe was much more sensible (axes were much cheaper and better at chiopping wood). Even more sensible was to have the low level soldiers (ie peasants) do the wood related work. The only reference I know of samurai having to resort to their swords to chop wood was before the introduction of the differental hardening. They had to use their straight, through hardened blades made of poor steel in order to create a barricade ( somewhere 1000 AD, iirc) and the result were more than half of the swords broke, that's why later on the answer to that problem was the DH, which also resulted in a curved blade.

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Bugout Bill
Cliff: Good point, I have never thought about that. You don't really see a lot of mention of Japanese sword repair or damage sustained by swords.

But could hitting a knot and simply hacking away at it until you went through (how we bent the sword) be seen as abusive? There really isn't a whole lot of comparison to that in combat, aside from repeated impacts into bone or another sword in the same spot.

There was a lot of sword modification and restoration, actually, precisely because the sword were so expensive, they were usually used to their last breath
You have a few examples here : usagyia

However, these swords are DH, which means that you can't just grind away 3mm from the adge if the edge was nicked, If you do that, you take away the hard casing and expose the mild core steel, the sword becomes useless. That's why deep nicks should be avoided, because they are difficult to actually repair.

Here's an example of damage from edge to edge damage: nicked katana, as you can see all the damage could not be removed from the blade. I guess the owner was still happy, the sword saved his life.

Just to clarify, I don't think anyone is making the argument that a katana is the ideal design for chopping wood. The issue that I have is the idea that cutting wood with a katana is abusive and if the katana suffers gross damage it was due to ignorance of the user for using it in such an abusive manner. The problem with this argument is that wood cutting is of a far lower stress than actual combat related cutting. The frank reality is that the ability to evaluate a katana by chopping up other armed people is very unlikely but it is trivial to take it and chop it into a piece of wood. It seems to me that this is nothing more than an excuse to allow poorly made swords to be produced because any sword which suffered gross failure chopping into a sapling isn't going to take chopping into/at another armed individual very well.

To be clear, this is talking about large chopping class swords, not small fencing type swords.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/30/2014 01:25PM by CliffStamp.

Bogdan: Thank you very much for the insight and links, they are both quite interesting.

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Bill22252 on YouTube. "See you space cowboy"

Resident Emerson Fanboi

Folding knives are fun, fixed blades are important.

I see your point, Cliff. The problem with Japanese style blades is that there's often a lot of oversimplification when discussing them, which leads to misunderstandings. I'll try to be brief while pointing out a few specificities, but it may still end up as a very long post.

First oversimplification is that we tend to speak of the katana as one type of sword, it's not true, the katana evolved in a similar manner with the western sword, in order to keep up with the changes in its use (see evolution). It's still a gross oversimplification but we could at least separate the types of katanas in two: the era when katanas were used mainly for war (as a cavalry and then infantry weapon), against armored opponents and the eras when katanas were mostly used for self defense/duels against normally clad opponents. It is a gross simplification and it's obvious the evolution from one to another was gradual, but it is also pretty obvious that between the two designs there are signigficant differences in dimensions and heat treatment. War swords were thicker, wider, heavier and, most important, much more resilient than modern era swords (you have a reference here mistake in japanese sword although the translation is very difficult to read). What we see at present used in clubs for tameshigiri are swords that fall in the second category, self defense swords, not optimised for heavvy use against many, potentially armored opponents. So what we will be talking about in the rest of this post is these shinshinto swords, although it is obvious that koto era swords were much more specifically designed to withold heavvy use.

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CliffStamp
Just to clarify, I don't think anyone is making the argument that a katana is the ideal design for chopping wood.

Totally agree on that, in fact I would even be a tad more blunt : the katana is kind of a one trick poney: it is an excellent slicer, but it is a very average chopper. A typical katana has a lot of profile and distal taper, it starts grossly around 8mm thick and 32mm wide at the habaki and ends at about 5mm thick and 22mm wide at the tip. Theweight distribution is designed to give it enough stiffness to track well when slicing through targets, but that makes for a weight distribution unsuited for chopping. Also, the primary edge angle is quite large and the apple seed profile of the blade makes penetration difficult if there is no slicing motion at the same time.

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CliffStamp
The issue that I have is the idea that cutting wood with a katana is abusive and if the katana suffers gross damage it was due to ignorance of the user for using it in such an abusive manner.

This is the point that needs the most clarification.
It takes a lot of skill/training to cut well with a katana, the natural tendency for humans is to chop, not to slice. It takes years to learn how to tranfer energy from youur arms to the weapon so that this energy is mostly transferred to the material you are cutting. You have to start slow and increase progressively the amount of energy you transfer to the target. Chopping wildly with the blade will most probably bind the blade momentarly (if the wood is thick enough) and you'll end up transferring all your energy to the blade and bending it. The problem is the wild chop, not the material (wood). In fact if you chop wildly you can as effectively bend a DH blade in soft targets (rolled, soaked mats). If you hit hard enough you cand easily accumulate enough momentum (with a 30in blade) to bend about any DH katana. The abuse is cutting using improper technique (bad alignment + lots of muscle). Cutting wood is not necessarily abuse. Here's Isao Machii cutting bamboo or somebody doing a double cut on bamboo. It is not abuse as long as proper technique insures that the energy of the blow gets in the cut instead of just the blade.

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CliffStamp
The problem with this argument is that wood cutting is of a far lower stress than actual combat related cutting. .

This is a pretty debatable statement, I think very few people have enough experience these days about real swordfighting, I'm not gonna pretend I'm one of them. But if I were to guess , I'd imagine most fights would end the first time one of the swords hit something.

However when two swordsmen of relatively equal skill met and the fight was longer, or if, for any other reason (like one fighting against many) if serious blade to blade occured, there's a good chance the blade wouldn't see another fight, Deep nicks aare difficcult to completely repair (see other post) and the katana might become unsafe for future critical use (you would hate your blade snapping at the next duel because of previous damage).

Shinto katanas were fast and deadly, but not long distance runners. That is probably one of the main reasons why the most famous Japanese swordsmen of all times, Musashi, prefered to use wooden swords for most of his duels, including the most difficult one against Sasaki Kojiro. He felt that the resistence to weight ratio was better for wooden swords, and at the end of the fight he could always make a new one instead of replacing a damaged sword. By the way, he managed to kill some 40 opponents with wooden swords, which shows that cutting ability is highly overrated..

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CliffStamp
The frank reality is that the ability to evaluate a katana by chopping up other armed people is very unlikely but it is trivial to take it and chop it into a piece of wood. .

As dummy targets, it is said that the artificial target most resembling the human body is soaked mats rolled over a bamboo core. I have seen this type of tameshigiri done, just too lazy to search for videos right now.
In the times of old, cutting tests were done by cutting piled corpses of dead prisoners or animal carcasses. Sometimes they even used helmet cutting, although in this case a succesful attempt meant a sword that cut the helmet without breaking. It doesn't mean that the sword was actually usable afterwards.

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CliffStamp
It seems to me that this is nothing more than an excuse to allow poorly made swords to be produced because any sword which suffered gross failure chopping into a sapling isn't going to take chopping into/at another armed individual very well.

To be clear, this is talking about large chopping class swords, not small fencing type swords.

Well, again, a lot of clarification is needed here.

First off, there are defintely lots of katanas out there of poor quality which might snap/chip/bend under abuse (ie bad technique + lots of force) and even under proper use. Nobody should use them for more then display even if the may boast "traditional" construction (ie folding and DH)

Leaving those aside, getting to those that went through proper treatment and, if the steel was folded, the folding, was properly done, etc., etc. There are still lots of katanas out there who are not in the historical average. All people cut in the dojos these day are rolled mats, nobody duels anybody anymore, so you have many katanas "optimized" for mat cutting. That is, hard edge, low angle, thin, wide blade, no convex/apple seed profile. These zip through mats, but of course might chip easily on wood or bone. If you showed these to a Japanese smith, they would say they are poor quality reproductions, and this is what they are. For these swords I totally gree with you Cliff, the "cutting wood is abuse" is an excuse. I think your OP mainly targets this category and I agree with you. But it seems most are happy with the excuse: practitioners can cut with less skill, while makers have less work to do (creating a flat blade is much easier than a convex one). These sword represent a large part of the market.

After getting over the "mat optimised katanas" we get to the properly made swords, For these, wood, bamboo or pig carcasses aren't abuse, as long as you use proper technique. The makers specifically say they are suited for heavy cutting. Unfiortunately, besides custom makers, there are only a hanful of pcompanies that make these, and they aren't cheap. This is a much smaller part of the market than the above category, but at least they don't need excuses.

Now, all I said above is true about DH blades. If you're willing to skip DH, you can get a through hardened blade in 1060, 5160 or 9260 (many companies make those), and you can use them at chopping about anything you want, there's a good chance you might hurt yourself before you can bend/break/chip them. The danger lies in the quality of the fittings (katanas are hidden tang, and that is the weak spot when you do wild stuff with a springy blade). Still they will not chop as well as the assassin in the OP , because they are longer, lighter, more tapered, but they will most likely make very decent slicers. This type also makes a big part of the market, and you can find loads of videos of backyard cutters wacking stuff with them, they usually hold up well.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/01/2014 07:22AM by Bogdan M..

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Bugout Bill
Bogdan: Thank you very much for the insight and links, they are both quite interesting.

You 're welcome, in fact I should thank you guys for the interesting discussions I've been reading for quite a while, although I'm very much alive and I never got to Denver

glad you posted Bogdan, thanks

Bogdan- thanks for your perspective. Would you agree modern high quality steel and thermoprocessing such as seen in Keffeler's blades are superior to smelted steel made from questionable ore with traditional differential hardening? If not, mysticism aside, how would one fare in the work (and sheer power) shown by Dan?

Also, when reading this forum, just harness you inner Critical Bill and yell out- I am Godzilla! You are Japan! Your reputation far exceeds your skills, mammy rammer.
Just watch out for the derringer in Mr. shhhh's hand. Then we all have boat drinks.







Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/01/2014 04:22PM by chad234.

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Bogdan M.
The problem with Japanese style blades is that there's often a lot of oversimplification when discussing them, which leads to misunderstandings.

Again, to be clear I am talking about the blades which are designed for, intended to be use for, or at least marked/sold as being capable of being used for power cuts into people in a combat situation.

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The abuse is cutting using improper technique (bad alignment + lots of muscle).

Yes, I have heard this before as well, however this isn't a sensible argument, because ...

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As dummy targets, it is said that the artificial target most resembling the human body is soaked mats rolled over a bamboo core.

In combat situations is it common that you will ask your opponent to (and they will actually acquiesce) :

- strip naked
- drop their weapons
- turn so as to align perfectly to be cut
- stand perfectly still
- then wait without disturbing you in any way

and this is the critical part (they might not do this even if you ask nicely) :

- stay perfectly still and to not react violently when you cut into them
- make sure no one around you disturbs you can causes either you or the guy you are cutting to be violently moved

and of course you make sure you are calm, that your adrenaline isn't pumping which could cause you to exert too much force, even though you are at immediate risk of being killed you stay perfectly calm, stand back, clear your mind and then complete your perfect cut.

Again, I am talking about a blade which is designed for, intended to be used for, or at least marked/sold as being capable of being used for power cuts into people in a combat situation. In a combat situation you are not going to be cutting a clean and consistent made and perfectly presented target which is stationary and where you have time to align and make a perfect cut and no one disturbs you or the target.

Now if you want to say that wood cutting can be abusive to a sword which is designed to be used for mat cutting by a high level practitioner - sure, but no one really makes that argument. It would be like saying that a grass machete could be damaged by cutting hard woods, sure it can.


--

Now as for the chopping ability of a katana, I have never held a "actual" katana meaning some made by a Japanese swordsmith. However it is not uncommon for young hillbillies around here to get the cheap stainless steel ones. The chopping ability of them is extremely high meaning that a common 2x4 for example is at most 5 hits and I have seen them cut in three. They are generally not significantly affected by anything done to them as they are solid hardened stainless steel, 3Cr13 class. It takes pretty severe work to break them, it usually happens when the guy using them gets drunk, says "Watch this!" or similar and jams it into a tree and tries to use it as a diving board or something equally idiotic. My brother wanted to make a short sword out of one a few years back so he tried to vice it and crack it off after scoring it with a angle grinder. He gave it up quickly and later just cut it in half with a plasma cutter.

Back to frank reality, the main reason that cutting with a katana on wood is likely to damage it is the same reason why I could easily bend Joe Calton's large chopper I have, and many other blades I have used of the same style (including many Japanese ones) - they are shallow edge quenched. This means that the bulk of the steel is very soft and the blade as a whole is very weak as essentially the strength comes from the edge and that could only be 1/8" thick or less which is hardened, in extreme cases I have seen them as low as 1/32" thick which is hardened and those are so easy to bend I saw a adolescent bend a 1/4" short blade like taffy because again only a tiny amount of it is actually hardened.

In general, aside from rare cases, human bone and especially teeth, is much harder than woods and cutting into a person in combat is far wilder than cutting into woods (unless you are jazzed on PCP and think the Ents are coming to get you), so the edge will see far less stress in being used as a lumberjack tool than if you were to cut up a bunch of people in an actual fight where the other guy was trying to do the same to you. The main issue is just the bends in the blade which are again just due to the shallow edge quench. If the blade was through hardened it isn't like that is going to be an issue, hence why you can see Mike and Dan bend their swords with no concern.

Now this isn't an argument that edge quenching is directly inferior, there are a lot of reasons why it has benefits and it can still make a very strong blade if the edge quench is high and the spine isn't left fully dead soft.

I can't recall where I read it but in addition to cutting dead bodies, hanging bags of coins (extreme unsupported edge cutting) were also some times used as test targets... far cry from the art-sword period mat-cutters nowadays

The reason I started using 2 by 4 as test media is because it takes so much power to cut in one swipe. In one chop (slice if I can manage it) I test the geometry of the sword and the durability under extreme impact. I think it unlikely that this much power is used in combat, as that would be like taking a baseball swing in combat i.e. standing still, setting feet, pre-twisting torso, anticipating pitch from a very specific direction.

2 by 4 in one shot is probably abusive to full size swords but 3 to 5 hits (much less power) I would not consider abusive to a cutting sword.

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wnease

I think it unlikely that this much power is used in combat, as that would be like taking a baseball swing in combat i.e. standing still, setting feet, pre-twisting torso, anticipating pitch from a very specific direction.

I think there are interesting questions here, but all too often they get lost in the fantasy of some kind of perfected idealized combat. I really doubt that the fighting in wars took place in that manner.

My two main concerns are :

-the hard impacts off of bone, teeth, other weapons and buckles, fasteners (metal bits on clothing) (not to mention armor)

-the extremely hard twisting forces in cutting live and moving targets.

Just imagine cutting into someone, even doing a perfect cut and then turning seeing someone running at you to cut your head off. Are you going to ask that guy to wait as well while you slowly and with care draw you sword out and then get in position to make the next perfect cut?

Now maybe that is how the Japanese fought, and they all bowed politely and then set themselves before they tried to cut their heads off and no one interfered with any other pair who was fighting and it was all done in a calm and ritualistic manner and no one was ever tired, angry, frustrated, just at perfect peace and harmony and would casually pick the arrows out of their bodies and go back to cutting each other up.

Maybe, but I would bet on it being a much more chaotic affair and that any katana/sword that I could grossly damage by chopping it into a 2x4 is not going to fare well when two adult men charged at each other and tried to see who could kill the other one first all while having to deal with the mess of people around them who at any moment picked them as the next target.

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CliffStamp

Again, to be clear I am talking about the blades which are designed for, intended to be use for, or at least marked/sold as being capable of being used for power cuts into people in a combat situation.

You mean "battle ready" swords?

No serious company says that about their swords. Serious swordmakers will say about a "traditionally made" (that just means DH in fact, without all the tamahagane process) sword that is built for heavy cutting. The cheapest price you get on something like that is about 600$. If you see a forge folded, differentially hardened, polished on japanese stones sword that is battle ready and can cut 3 bamboos, selling for 300 $ you should know that there's a 95% chance that's just a nice wallhanger. So many corners were cut doing that sword that you can't have any confidence in the quality of the HT and of the folding process.

This type of marketing is all lies, of course, but it is meant for the backyard ninjas. It's all fantasy and hype, imho it's not worth a serious discussion of more than ten lines.

In a car analogy, it's like buying a "high quality italian style super car" made in China for 3000$ and wonder why it doesn't perform like a Ferrari.

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CliffStamp
In combat situations...

I hinted earlier that we may scientifically unequipped to talk about combat situations with Japanese swords, we haven't been in a Japanese swordfight nor watched enough real ones to at least have a remote idea about what we are talking. I did some 6 months of iaido, play with a Japanese sword once in a while, read a few books and watched a bunch of samurai movies and documentaries, but I think I lack a real grasp on what the average katana swordfight was.
I have a pretty good idea about how a hand to hand combat goes, I had a lot of training in traditional karate, boefore moving on to thai boxing, I've been continually training myself and others for more than 20 years, so II'll try to extrapolate from these bases. I still think we're mostly guessing, but let me play the game and try to make educated guesses.

First let's get one misconception away:

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CliffStamp
- turn so as to align perfectly to be cut

Alignment only refers to the blade itself and its moving direction, that is all that is required, it is your force that bends the sword, it puts too much lateral stress on the blade if your are pushing on the blade at an angle from its direction. The way your opponent is positioned at the moment of impact has very little influence on the alignment of the cut, if the impact is on the torso or leg, the speed of the moving torso is negligible compared to the speed of the blade. There may be more speed from the limbs, but here there's not enough force to knock your alignment off. In fact, most movement from your opponent except evading your cut is probably going to help to the cut, instead of hindering it.

You might not beleive me, but look at this mid air bamboo cut, the bamboo is moving, but the duration of the cut is so small, al that matters is blade alignment (with itself) and that the initial angle should be aproppriate (if it would be too low the cut would be deflected). But the cut is so fast there is very little momentum transmission from blade to target and vice-versa.

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CliffStamp
is it common that you will ask your opponent to (and they will actually acquiesce) :
...

Now, to the rest, regarding actual combat, there's a lots a lot of rules of thumb about what to do and what not to do, making those rules of thumb into reflexes is what all the training is about. If one is completely uncapable of aplying those rules of thumb in combat due to adrenaline or due to the other guy moving, it means either he wasn't properly trained, or he completely lacks talent, or both. In any case, his biggest problem isn't that he's gonna damage his sword in a combat, there's a much better chance he'll just bite the dust.before that.

First off, you never hit with the same force in combat as in training. In combat, precision, speed and the capacity to recover from a missed hit is much more important than force, that is why you'll be hitting with, say, half of your force, if not less.
You learn to target the soft spots, you learn to create an opening before targeting a soft spot, so that there's little chance of something hard coming between the weapon and the soft spot.
When you are unable to make sure you will hit a soft spot and some hard thing will come between, you will dial down the force of your attack even more. If, while you are doing your attack, you notice your opponent is going to block it, you reduce the force of your attack or let it go altogether, change it to something else.
This is equally applicable if your weapon is a sword or if it is a shin. And if you find yourself repeatedly incapable of following these rules, it most likely means your opponent is more skilled than you énd you are going down, You might hurt your shin or bend your sword, Now, in a hand to hand combat it might take a while before you get KO'd, so you might have the time to hurt your shin with improper attacks, but when sharp pointy things are involved, the first mistake is probably the last, too.

Now, leaving aside all this general stuff and going more specifically to Japanese sword fights, first difference to notice is they tended to be very short. There are historic accounts about Musashi's duels, for example, most of the fight is just positioning and moving around, evading the other guy's intentions and attacks. Given that any small cut or thrust with a katana can open a very sizeable gash, one contact is what it took the vast majority of time, as soon as the two opponents engage (that is, get close enough to hurt each other) the fight ends. This means that most of the cuts/thrusts that make caontact are done with the tip/upper part (monouchi).

This also means that the type of stress the blade has to support is impacts at the tip and monouchi, thats is where most damage occurs from hitting hard materials. That is why the tip of the katana is reinforced with a lot of material and the edge is also helped with niku (blade meat) to avoid cracks and chips.

By far, most references of blade repairs I have found are about dings and chips, the complaints about quality also (again, this guy here) complains about blades being too brittle, not about them not being resilient enough. This shows that, for their style of swordfighting, the biggest problem wasn't bending when improper technique is used.
But they do bend too, Japanese made DH blades bend as much as non Japanese ones, from all the accounts that I've read. If you botch a powerful cut with a real Japanese katana, you'll most likely bend it. Although the best blades aren't just hard martensite and soft pearlite, they also contain some intermediate states (see utsuri, which seems to point out the existence of tempered, tough martensite) they still have a fair amount of pearlite which makes them susceptible to bend under high lateral stress.

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CliffStamp
Again, I am talking about a blade which is designed for, intended to be used for, or at least marked/sold as being capable of being used for power cuts into people in a combat situation.

I understand, I just make sure we understand each other that power should be your last concern in a combat, you need speed, balance and precision in this exact order. You do power cuts while training, that's how they become a reflex and you can hopefully achieve 50% of your power in combat,while focusing on speed, balance and precision

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CliffStamp
In a combat situation you are not going to be cutting a clean and consistent made and perfectly presented target which is stationary and where you have time to align and make a perfect cut and no one disturbs you or the target.

Well, if you need somebody to stay perfectly still in order for you to make a good cut, you are probably not very good at cutting. As an example from thai boxing, I rarely fail to find the other guy's chin although he is usually moving and trying to hurt me/block me in the same time and I am also trying to avoid any of his attacks . If I were able to hit the chin only when the other guy is stationary, I would stick to chess. Now, I agree that delivering a well aligned cut is more difficult than delivering a good jab to the chin. In fact, that is the one biggest problem with Japanese swords and JSA: they require a lot of training and skill. Really, a lot. In fact, if there were a zombie apocalypse tomorrow and I had to pick an edged weapon (guns are harder to get by in France ), now that I know more about Japanese swords, I would definitely opt for a European style long, double edged blade. While they still require skill to be used very effectively, they are much more forgiving of bad technique.

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CliffStamp
Now as for the chopping ability of a katana, I have never held a "actual" katana meaning some made by a Japanese swordsmith. However it is not uncommon for young hillbillies around here to get the cheap stainless steel ones. The chopping ability of them is extremely high meaning that a common 2x4 for example is at most 5 hits and I have seen them cut in three.

You're talking about TH blades here, I'm talking about DH blades. The problem with chopping (or cutting for that matter) with a DH blade, is that you need to be successful in one hit. If the cut fails, all remaining energy is likely to be transformed into lateral stress. Now there are cases when the blade stalls without bending (usually because you control and stop the cut at the right moment, realizing that the cut will fail anyway). But, as a rule, a botched full force cut will bend a DH blade, that's why 3 full force chops is a no no,

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CliffStamp
Back to frank reality, the main reason that cutting with a katana on wood is likely to damage it is the same reason why I could easily bend Joe Calton's large chopper I have, and many other blades I have used of the same style (including many Japanese ones) - they are shallow edge quenched. This means that the bulk of the steel is very soft and the blade as a whole is very weak as essentially the strength comes from the edge and that could only be 1/8" thick or less which is hardened, in extreme cases I have seen them as low as 1/32" thick which is hardened and those are so easy to bend I saw a adolescent bend a 1/4" short blade like taffy because again only a tiny amount of it is actually hardened.

I actually agree fully with you here. From what I have seen (several sections of blades) there is some hard martensite, some tempered martensite, but most of it is pearlite. Now, it seems that this design was adapted for the Japanese, that is, it was good enough not to require changing for the way they were using their swords. Is that the best possible design? Well, frankly, I don't understand the use of pearlite in a sword, it's neither hard nor tough, just dead weight. But I naver really had the courage to ask this question on the sword forum because all the traditional/JSA crowd would have set their ninjas on me. Many talk about shock absorption, but I haven't been able to make a physical model for myself where the "shock absorption" capabilities of the pearlite core will actually help the martensitic edge.

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CliffStamp
Now this isn't an argument that edge quenching is directly inferior, there are a lot of reasons why it has benefits and it can still make a very strong blade if the edge quench is high and the spine isn't left fully dead soft.

Exactly, the one guy that had the courage to talk against bainite on the SFI expressed the same idea, that the best option for a blade should be a full martensitic blade but tempered at different hardnesses on the edge vs. on the spine. I can't see any problem with that, excepting the fact that there's no hamon () but he voiced his ideas in a;low key, it seemed to contradict everybody else's agenda...

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wnease
I can't recall where I read it but in addition to cutting dead bodies, hanging bags of coins (extreme unsupported edge cutting) were also some times used as test targets... far cry from the art-sword period mat-cutters nowadays

I think the testing swords on dead bodies is pretty well established, although far from systematic.
As for cutting through people, I guess it's quite easier than one would imagine. Meat/flesh is among the easiest things to cut so you're mostly left with hacking thorough the bones which more tricky but still doable with a cheap cleaver... Japanese've never been big on armors.
Also the swords probably chipped a bit but euro swords did too.
I think those swords went for speed/agility/extreme slicing, and considering materials they had they had to make compromises.

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Bogdan M.

No serious company says that about their swords.

If they are not argued to be meant for combat then there is no contention that cutting wood could be abusive, it just depends on what they are intended to actually be used to do. If they are intended to be used by highly skilled practitioners in mat cutting then it is not unlikely that a regular guy could damage the blade cutting at a 2x4. But again, no one makes that argument.

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I hinted earlier that we may scientifically unequipped to talk about combat situations with Japanese swords...

They still had to obey the same physical laws as everything else.

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The way your opponent is positioned at the moment of impact has very little influence on the alignment of the cut

I was talking about the alignment of the blade to the target. The position of the body will change what part of it you cut and at the angle of the blade to target.

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if the impact is on the torso or leg, the speed of the moving torso is negligible compared to the speed of the blade.

It isn't the relative speed as a magnitude which is of consequence, it is the directional aspect which can change compressive to lateral force.

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You learn to ....

Yes, I have heard all of that before, and it may be the case that in an life and death situation you could act so calm and never over stress the sword, maybe the entire population of Japanese swordsmen could. However I severely doubt it and even if you could it doesn't even resolve the problem because the environment around you isn't going to allow it anyway.

But I would agree, if you could do combat cutting with the same control as you did mat cutting and no one around you interfered with any of this - then yes cutting a 2x4 could be abusive to a sword which was designed to be used in combat of that nature. However I severely doubt that is how combat with swords took place in general.

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You're talking about TH blades here, I'm talking about DH blades.

I noted that the reason why traditional katanas bend is because they are edge quenched which leaves them very weak. It isn't something inherent in the design, you can make a katana which doesn't have this issue and it will still cut/handle just the same.

OK, it seems I'm way too slow with my posts

Chad, you're welcome. For your question, I think there are many here in a better position to answer, but since it's asked directly, I definitely agree that modern steels and HT should provide better weapons. The painstaking process of building a katana is just a solution to obtain a decent sword from poor quality materials. The only thing that might be difficult to skip in order to obtain a good weapon is the forging... And that vid is hillarious, thanks, hadn't seen it yet

Wnease, I agree with you completely on the power used in combat being much less that the maximum. Are you a swordmaker? Sorry, I don't know who's under each forum name, maybe I've already seen your work .

Cliff, I think we're still mixing up war swords (koto era swords) with mainly self defense swords (shinto and shinshinto). What we are seeing today are largerly shinshinto swords, more weapons of self defense than of war (duelling with light or no armor on vs. gruelling wars with heavy armor). There is relatively little factual knowledge about koto sword, very few have been preserved perfectly, and, for thiose who have, nobody is willing to make a detailed technical analysis on them as they are national treasures. However, from the accounts of polishers who got to work on them, the heat treatment on these is significantly different than shinto and shinshinto swords, and it is more akin to through hardening (less hardness, more resilience). Moreover, the way these swords were used in war is very different than modern ones.
Many were cavalry swords, a samurai with such a sword (long, heavy, very pointy tip and big curvature) would basically act like a moving sickle. The attacks were just meant to hurt and scatter formations, while the actual serious killing was done by following spearmen formations.
When they weren't cavalry swords, still nobody tried to cut torsos of armored opponents because it was impossible. The swords were mostly used for thrusting to the face, neck and armpits. Also, a very effective target was the wrists, which could be cut without a serious chance of breaking the sword. But again, none of the existing swords for sale right now aren't proper replicas of koto era swords, especially from the HT point of view.

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CliffStamp

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I hinted earlier that we may scientifically unequipped to talk about combat situations with Japanese swords...

They still had to obey the same physical laws as everything else.

Yes but physics is just one part of the problem. The other part of the problem is how things actually happened in a ffight, that's where we lack information. Plus you seem to talk about war, while I pointed out that the swords we see around aren't made for war, so we should be talking about sword fights, not war.

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The way your opponent is positioned at the moment of impact has very little influence on the alignment of the cut

I was talking about the alignment of the blade to the target. The position of the body will change what part of it you cut and at the angle of the blade to target.

Yes but you don't attack where he is, you attack where he will be. It takes more time to explain than it takes your brain to calculate all the extrapolated trajectories so that you hit where you want. That's why, that's how you train, it becomes "instinct".What this guy does here is pretty amazing, but for normal people with the proper training hitting a moving wrist, leg or torso is not that a big deal as you are making it, if they train for that.

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if the impact is on the torso or leg, the speed of the moving torso is negligible compared to the speed of the blade.

It isn't the relative speed as a magnitude which is of consequence, it is the directional aspect which can change compressive to lateral force.

And you will adapt to that, again, you have supercomputer on your shoulders that will help you make the good decision without it even get to the conscious level. It really takes more time to get that into language than it is for a properly trained individual to adapt his motion to the new context.

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Yes, I have heard all of that before, and it may be the case that in an life and death situation you could act so calm and never over stress the sword, maybe the entire population of Japanese swordsmen could. However I severely doubt it and even if you could it doesn't even resolve the problem because the environment around you isn't going to allow it anyway.

You don't need to be completely calm, you just need to be focused. Adrenaline is great for that, it gives you tunnel vision. Background noise, pain, all that fades away and you can see your opponent(s) better. The adrenaline rush is a problem for people who only experience it rarely and who go directly to the next phase (parasympathetic nervous system kicking in, giving shaky hands , all that). For those who train seriously and regularly, that is, experience stressing situations often, like when you practice fight, the adrenaline rush is controlled and is actually quite useful.

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You're talking about TH blades here, I'm talking about DH blades.

I noted that the reason why traditional katanas bend is because they are edge quenched which leaves them very weak. It isn't something inherent in the design, you can make a katana which doesn't have this issue and it will still cut/handle just the same.

Well, we just need a samurai to tell us if there's a problem with this

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Bogdan M.

Plus you seem to talk about war ...

To be clear, I am making a particular argument, if the swords are not being made for that then cutting wood isn't abusive depending on what they are made to do.

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... for normal people with the proper training hitting a moving wrist, leg or torso is not that a big deal as you are making it, if they train for that.

Again, in static conditions of course it isn't, but again I am not talking about that.

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And you will adapt to that, again, you have supercomputer on your shoulders that will help you make the good decision without it even get to the conscious level. It really takes more time to get that into language than it is for a properly trained individual to adapt his motion to the new context.

To clarify, do you actually believe that you can, while moving, cut into a moving target which can react violently and that you can still keep the blade from avoiding lateral loads by actually adjusting the forces you put into the blade to keep the loads in compression during the cut?

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For those who train seriously and regularly, that is, experience stressing situations often, like when you practice fight, the adrenaline rush is controlled and is actually quite useful.

You have been in actual confrontations with armed people who were trying to kill you and you reacted in the manner you are describing?

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Well, we just need a samurai to tell us if there's a problem with this

They can't change the laws of physics.

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CliffStamp

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... for normal people with the proper training hitting a moving wrist, leg or torso is not that a big deal as you are making it, if they train for that.

Again, in static conditions of course it isn't, but again I am not talking about that.

I wasn't talking about static conditions either, the only qualifier I used was "moving".

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And you will adapt to that, again, you have supercomputer on your shoulders that will help you make the good decision without it even get to the conscious level. It really takes more time to get that into language than it is for a properly trained individual to adapt his motion to the new context.

To clarify, do you actually believe that you can, while moving, cut into a moving target which can react violently and that you can still keep the blade from avoiding lateral loads by actually adjusting the forces you put into the blade to keep the loads in compression during the cut?

Yes?

Have you ever played ping-pong? It's impressive how, after a few months of training, your brain is capable of learning to give the good answer to a mechanical problem that it would probably take hours to solve with pen and paper(different paddles have different elastical responses, there are many angles involved, the ball isn't only advancing, it's also spinning, which influences both the way it bounces and its mid air trajectory, the ball also bounces differently when attack angles are very shallow, etc, etc.). Yet your brain is capable of anticipating where the ball will be, what the correct angle and speed of striking should be so that the ball lands approximately where you want it, all that while you are darting around to get to the good position. All that at a ball speed that only gives you only a few visual frames, you don't react only to the trajectory of the ball,I would guess you get most of the information from the movements of your opponent when hitting the ball. It's very fast and very complex, and the computations of your brain never have the time to get to a conscious level, translatable in language, but it does work quite well.

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For those who train seriously and regularly, that is, experience stressing situations often, like when you practice fight, the adrenaline rush is controlled and is actually quite useful.

You have been in actual confrontations with armed people who were trying to kill you and you reacted in the manner you are describing?

I don't think taking the discussion to a personal level is any good. But, in an experience sharing spirit, I was (only once, fortunately) in a situation where there was a very distinct possibility I'd end up dead or in a coma. I was 18 and 8 or 9 thugs rounded on me, none of them had weapons, but most of them were bigger, older and definitely meaner than me. They were the type of guys that would't stop when the other guy was down, on the contrary that was where the soccer kicks and the stomping would begin. My reaction at the moment wasn't just good, it was really spectacular. The moment I realized that if I fall, that would probably be my end, I became really, really calm and detached. I picked up a good spot in the parking, with the back to the wall,, between 2 cars, and I moved there to meet them, all the time I was very focused to not get taken down and to take as many of them with me as possible. That was all I was thinking. In retrospect, I still think there were a decent amount of adrenalin circulating through my body, but in the moment I really felt zen and in complete control of myself.

Now, I don't think that's the average reaction you can expect in a combat situation, nor do I think that so much control is needed. But I've been in other critical and stressful situations (like in the middle of a forest fire, or going up the ring to fight other guys in front of a few hundred people), and I think that it's not the prospect of death or getting hurt that are most stressing, is not knowing what to do. that's when the parasympathetic nervous system kicks in and you have all the post adrenalin, inhibitory patterns, the red face, the shaky hands and knees, etc.

Adrenalin in itself is mostly good, it doesn't make you any smarter, but it does prepare you to make the moves that you know well (what we abusively call "reflexes" or "instincts" ) with force speed, and precision. That's why it appeared and stayed during evolution, it helped prepare the primitive man to hunt or to evade his predator better. If it were counterproductive, it would have disappeared long ago.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/03/2014 02:19AM by Bogdan M..

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Bogdan M.

Yes?

In that case, I will concede that if someone can do as you claim you can do, and act as you claim can be acted in combat situations, then the cutting stress on the blades will indeed be very low and thus a normal guy cutting in wood could easily generate far higher stress.

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In regards to being personal, I am trying to understand are you repeating what you have heard, or is this something you believe you can do or is it something you have actually done.

I have no ability to do what you are describing with a blade and it simply isn't possible for me to react as you note, nor could I even begin to figure out how (it actually has to be modeled using chaotic math). My brother used to bounce, is extensively trained in sticks, knives, grappling, boxing and who has worked with very high level people such as boxers who compete (and win) at the national level for Canada. He (and them) display no level of ability even close to what you describe.

But again, I concede, that if that is the level of skill and ability that a katana was actually optimized to work for then yes, cutting a piece of wood with one made in such a manner is abusive for me and everyone I have ever met as that skill/ability simply isn't there.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 07/03/2014 09:49AM by CliffStamp.

Your brother sounds like some people I used to know.

The interesting thing is the ones that were the most sociopathic were very calm in high stress violent situations. I'm sure they found it addictive as they would often search out conflict just for fun. I once witnessed a sparring match between two of these types that ended in a list of injuries from cracked ribs, dislocated joints, and a broken jaw. The fight lasted less than thirty seconds.

The thing to consider is that throughout history when we were involved in conflict it was always (usually) the ones that kept calm that survived. From samurai to knights and gunfighters in the wild west even look at the MMA the fighters are focused and calm. Also consider that warriors who fought hand to hand trained from a very young age and were taught that death was honourable in battle. That was the only way for Viking warriors to get to Valhalla. The same is seen in Japanese culture. Even ritual suicide with a knife was done straight faced with out a wince.

Sometimes math can't explain the ways people act. It certainly can't account for training and culture.

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Mark a

... even look at the MMA the fighters are focused and calm

A MMA fight isn't a conflict to the death, real life isn't a sparring match or even a combat sporting event and in real life in a combat situation you can't simply not fight. In a match you can refuse to fight if you are not where you want to be and you can stop at any time if you get hurt, this alone has a huge affect on what you can do mentally and physically. My brother spars with people all the time with no hesitations, however there are many people he would avoid a fight with at all costs because they are just scary guys and in a fight you are not trying to score points with the judges, stall to ride out a decision, you just distract the other guy and then one of your friends hits him in the head with a 2x4 from behind. I have absolutely no hesitation to interact with my brother but would act very differently around someone who had his skillset and ability but wasn't my brother because the consequences are immediate and severe if a conflict could arise.

Fighters often pull out of fights because they can not get into the mindset to do it, even the top people in MMA, GSP for example openly noted he had to take a lay off because of what was going on in his life, Rousimar Palhares just refused a fight for the same reasons. Fighters will constantly also note they had a detailed game plan and techniques but the first time it went wrong they could not shake the failure and adapt and again this is at the highest level of competition, Junior Dos Santos for example vs Cain II. Junior was open after the fight that he could not adapt to Cain in the fight and was mentally broken after the first clinch when Cain walled him out. The once thought unbeatable soul killer of MMA, Renan Barão, never recovered from the openly hit from T. J. that broke him in the fight. They will also note that minor injuries prevented them from doing what they wanted do.

These are the very top people who have spent years training but in an actual armed combat you really can't do that, only engage when you are prefect mentally and physically, stop in the middle of a battle, realize you have an injury, call time out and have the doctor check your wounds or simply refuse to fight because your girlfriend broke up with you and you are in a mess in your tent. How about if you are injured can you still do your perfect cuts then? How about if you just watched your friend get split right in half and part of him lands on you, do you still keep perfectly calm, make sure to modify your endocrine system accordingly and then execute your flawless victory on the next person that walks into the zone of death around you?

As for psychopaths, there are exceptions to anything given the diversity of human nature. I remember when I was young I was friends with a guy who had no moral inclinations at all that I could tell. I watch him one time call over a guy who was swimming and then as casual as you could please kick him full in the fact, blood and teeth went everywhere and he was just as calm as if he had squat a mosquito. Do those people exist, sure, they don't live in the same reality that we do, they don't see other people as real and can even not even see the world around them as real in the sense that we do.

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Again, if that is how people in combat acted - no issue, it is pretty low stress on the swords. If that is what people mean by combat class swords, no issue, they would be abused by a normal dude cutting up wood .



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/03/2014 09:50AM by CliffStamp.

I was speaking to a friend of mine about this last night who trains in this as well as other martial arts and he noted he can't do it, no one he has ever seen can do it and it is even common for the swords to even be damaged in static matt cutting because of lack of ability to keep the sword from experiencing lateral forces. He noted a YT video where a bunch of high level practitioners were demonstrating and there was someone there actually to straighten the swords. But again, maybe all of these guys are just of low skill/ability and are not true masters of the sword.

I asked him about the whole body chopping. He noted that in Mishima's Sword, the author investigates a modern claim of this where during the occupation of Korea and China during the war the Japanese published how a bunch of prisoners were killed them to test their swords. After the war the soldiers were put to trial as war criminals and they claimed the whole thing had never happened. A revered Japanese master of swordmanship was asked and confirmed the soldiers were victims of the jingoist propaganda because it was absurd that one could that without rendering the swords useless long before all the prisoners were killed.

It sounds cool to some but it just sounds silly to me. Imagine if I was discussing with Cashen and we were talking about performance and to actually see / check things we had full presentation bowies made instead of blanks, coupons, etc. . It is too silly to even discuss that people would do that as some kind of standard practice. The curious thing to me is that you don't see these types of claims about other swords, only the Japanese have that kind of claim. If you ask Cashen about the swords he makes you don't get that kind of commentary at all.

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As an aside, all this does show, if it is true, is that real/true japanese katanas are far weaker and less durable than the standard 3Cr13 ones that you can buy for $50 or so because you can hack up 2x4's with them all day long and just as easily cut do mat cutting (which can even be done with blunt western swords) and chop someone to pieces as well, which you can do with a $5 machete as well as many graphic internet sites allow you to verify if you are curious about such things.

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CliffStamp
or simply refuse to fight because your girlfriend broke up with you and you are in a mess in your tent.

There is a lot of funny in your last post Cliff, but this in particular cracks me up.

When I was at the UofO I was buddies with the biggest guy on the Ducks football team. He was a massive, mean, redneck and eventually he went pro. I was also friends with the center of the Ducks basketball team who was 7' tall. I remember when the center met the lineman. The 7' tall basketball center was amazed at how huge the football lineman was... 6'7" 380lbs. Anyway, nobody would mess with the lineman, he was just too big and vicious. One night while drinking at a party, a tiny blond girl started to rip into this giant. She called him all sorts of names and said he wasn't a real athlete, just a big fat pig that real athletes ran around. This guy started to cry, a lot. He just broke down. He couldn't take the beratement. We all thought it was hilarious, although the football player made it clear the next day, that we were never to bring it up again. We never did... in his presence

Sorry for the tangent. Your blurb just reminded me of that story.

Anyway, I don't see how anyone can know how they will react in a life threatening situation until they are faced with one.


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