Shadley Cuts

Well bloody hell, I went and did it. It took a long while to be able to exhibit the sort of control over the blade that I needed in order to complete this but I managed it. The quick looping movements but with straight sanpping slices that you need for returning cuts are anything but instinctive but with practice, anything is possible.

This was all done with my newest sword, the review for which you can find here as well as the samurai workshop site. It's an amazingly responsive sword, far superior to my other blades and it seriously helped with this part of the curriculum. It's supposed to be a fairly heavy sword but I've found it a lot more manageable than even my hanwei practical katana and definitely on a par with my old lightning fast unokubi zukuri.

I've learned a lot with this particular section of training, such as the amount of force that you really need in order to cut a bottle isn't that much, it's the speed of the blade as it hits the target that matters. Once you've pierced the flesh of the bottle, the rest should slice easily enough as long as your edge alignment is spot on, but hey, enough natter, heres the video.