Shadley Cuts

Huawei were one of the first ebay companies I ran into doing semi custom work at a fairly affordable price. I mean there were and still are plenty of alternatives, but of all the sellers out there, Huawei seem to produce the best blades for the money you pay. A client and now a friend (henceforth referred to as Stefano) wanted a the tsuka for a sword from this company rewrapped and I agreed to do it. The thing is, I was up against some pretty good work to be fair, althouth it wasn't the best wrap I had seen by a long stretch, it used Hishigami in the maki and was tight enough to not worry about it slipping around like you do with a lot of ebay sellers. Having hishigami in a production sword is becoming an increasingly rare affair and so it's nice to see one of them going that extra yard to make sure that the product they put out is genuinely safe to use.

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I've seen people attempt to cut these tubes and fail and so I thought I'd give it a go to see what it was that was stopping them from making the cut. I've worked it out now of course. Given that these things are very difficult to secure, you can only get so far through the target before the imparted energy from the cut starts to move the target and then of course youve lost the majority of the force of your cut as the target moves with the sword. This and the fact that the moving tube changes the angle of the tube and the sword along with it, edge alignment with the moving angle simply stops the cut dead. You'll see ;)

Is this challenging? Abso-bloody-lutely. Will it wreck your sword? There is a possibility of mild edge damage so be careful. If youre using 1045, it will bend. So dont. Use 1060 or some other 'spring' type steel. anyway, enjoy my fails ;)

There's not a lot of info out there or explanations on how to effectively wield a two handed sword with one hand. The Katana is a two handed weapon despite what you've seen in films and pop culture. I mean it can be wielded with one hand but it becomes a lot more tricky because of the length of the tsuka and the weight distribution of the blade.

 I've carried on for what seems like a million articles both here and on the Samurai University site espousing the benefits of suburi and te no uchi but with one handed techniques you have to forget all of this. The only thing you can concentrate on is that the grip of your one hand is correct, There's no 'wringing' of the tsuka because you don't have the other hand to twist against. All of this makes for a very awkward feeling I've found when you first start out and I myself am indeed just starting with one handed.

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