If you are a Martial Artist and you need a katana to practice in your dojo or at home, there’s a big chance you will have certain criteria it need to match.
Most Iaidoka are looking for an iaito. In other words it need to be light, not sharp and available in various blade sizes. In that case you need to go to our Iaito Section.
Most of the blades are available in 4 sizes (measured from tsuba to tip) :
In case you want to give them a personal touch , we can offer you :
If you want an Iaito that really fits your exact needs and specifications, we still have our custom sword service. Keep in mind that the delivery time there is about 8-10weeks.
Some styles of Sword Arts prefer a live blade because every now and then , tameshigiri tests are performed in the dojo or they just like to have the weight and feel of a ‘real’ one. If you are still looking for a light weight blade (900 gram) there is the Shinto Katana and the 3 Monkey Katana.
Both of them are very light and able to do some tatami tameshigiri. When looking for a katana with a long tsuka (38,5 cm), the Musashi katana and the Golden Oriole katana (34 cm tsuka) are light weight katans too that can handle some cutting.
The only negative point here for practitioners is that these Paul Chen swords comes in a ‘one size fits all’ so no choice for you to choose the length of the blade.
If a 1000 gram sword is still ok for you, you might consider our new Zhui Feng Monosteel Swords which are specially designed for the practitioners !
Of course, our custom sword service can solve all of your problems if you don’t mind to wait a little bit 😮
When performing a lot of cutting and or heavy cutting exercises at your dojo, the previous Paul Chen swords are not a good option. Those swords are too light and not constructed to absorb heavy blows.
The Zhui Feng swords however are just fine for the job, but we do recommend that you are choosing a blade without hi when heavy targets such as bamboo are your main targets.
If you want to go with a Paul Chen sword we can recommend you these swords. Keep in mind that a non hi version is probably the one you like to choose when bamboo and other hard targets are on the menu :
Lot of people tend to think that folded blades are superior in quality but the matter of fact is that they are absolutely not. If you’re doing a lot of cutting I would advise you to not go for a folded katana and rather safe the cash to buy something nice for your girlfriend/wife or whoever you love 🙂