Anybody have experience with Cheness product?
Hello there, I am a student of Iaido since 04, and an avid sword lover. I have practiced with a bogubag, higo koshirae style iaito since 06 and I love it, the wrap is still absolutely tight, as is the mekugi, and the blade is still solid as a rock. For a while now I have wanted to expand my sword collection (only the one so far, and it's my iaido workhorse) and I keep seeing these cheness katana all over youtube, forging videos, ridiculous destructive testing, etc.. They really seem to be a half decent blade for the money there asking, the dimensions seem to be reasonably close to the real thing, I would really like to have a folded steel katana with a real hamon, and a nice grain to add to my collection, but theres no way I can justify saving 5k for the real japanese deal, which I'm not even worthy to own anyway, or even the 2k-3k for a steel iaito, which I wouldn't be able to use anyway because I've only been doing this almost 6 years, and don't want to slice my self to ribbons during iai practice. Not to mention my iaito still has plenty of years left on the clock. I just don't know how they can sell a folded steel hand forged blade for so cheap, this has always sent red flags up for me, there stuff is on sale now, almost everything under 300 dollars. My years learning about swords tells me it just isn't possible but from all the video's they have of the forging process and hand polishing it seems to be legitimate. Any thoughts?
Ryan
-Ryan Stroud
"Strength does not come from physical capacity, it comes from an indomitable will"