Hanbon Forge Custom Katana
Hey, I wanted to show around my first Katana. As new practitioner I hope to soon be ready to put it to the test in tameshigriri.
The Tsuka with tsuba, fuchi, seppa and Habaki is about 32cm long, the nagasa (1095) is 79.5cm long, with a pretty average Sori, making the whole sword a pretty decent 112cm long. The thickness is also average or a bit thinner.
The Tsuka was described as perfect by one and as too short by the other one of my sensei.
The Hamon is according to the previous owner, who also configured it a Choji, and the blade geometry looks to me like Unokubi-Zukri with a double Hi, one full and one half length of the blade.
The kissaki looks like a Chu kissaki without Boshi though I am not that deep into Sword mechanics yet.
It was custom designed by the man I bought it from for 500€ and I think he did a marvellous job. The blade sings really nicely when swinging. In my opinion it feels really agile and light thanks to the zukri choice and relative thin-ness. It’s definitely not something to use lightly in tameshigiri, I suppose it’s easy to bend/break with really bad technique.
The saya is pretty tight. The Katana locks nicely and it doesn’t wobble a lot on its own if not forced. Personally I am not a big fan of the saya design, but I can see why one would pick it over more expensive variants. Often the configurators don’t have that much of a selection and this one is somewhat decent while not looking massively boring or flashy.
Also forgive the rudimentary knot on the saya. It’s being used for training regularly and I am simply too lazy to bind a proper knot every two days.
Things I want to change or have already changed are Sageo (the original is plain black, that’s now on my Bokken), the tsuba I would like to be in line with the Kashira and Menuki as a Nami (wave) pattern.