Shadley Cuts

God that sounds posh doesn't it. 'Tsukamaki Services'. Very official and stuff.   But it's true. I'm now in a p...

This has been one of the simplest and yet demanding jobs in a while. It only took an afternoon and a morning to get to the point where I c...

A beautiful sword from an unlikely place A lot of chinese companies get bashed for mass producing swords of dubious quality, an...

Please note:  P&P PayPal friends and family or add 4%.  UK mainland only If you found this then its likely you did so on facebook...

The hanwei practical plus XL is a beast of a blade. I mean, its long sure, but it's not amazingly long. the tsuka, is of course Hanw...

Wow! This tsuka is massive. I fully expected it to be unwieldy but not only is it actually a lot better balanced than I though, the width ...

The blade of this waki wasn't damaged in any way really, a couple of scuffs but that was it, however the typical frosted proprietary et...

First off, before we even get started, this is gonna be a shorter blog entry, I think I ended up enjoying this one a little too much. It al...

As you can see from the picture on the left, this is another wakizashi but this time we're going to be doing something slightly differ...

Sometimes you get fittings that don't live up to the assumed notions of doing exactly that. My advice is really simple. If you have some...

I received this new wakizashi from the client and now good friend, well wrapped in a 'will not get me nicked' box, all hidden aw...

As long as you dont count the ko-kat I did, which was actually suriage (shortening) of a longer katana length sword that had broken, thi...

My most recent kitchen accessory. I made a saya for my Sabatier brand kitchen knife. Theyre not the best knives, but they are a notch o...

As you know, I've been rebuilding this wakizashi. The different thickness of the tsuba has caused a couple of issues, but these are al...

This ones an interesting one. The blade is differentially hardened, folded steel but not cheaply folded like Damascus but very subtle and th...

Hope you all enjoy. I find myself creating this post from hospital after a particular horrific bout of depression, seizure and a very recent...

The Finished sword... but.... Ok, so this sword is a random folded katana from ebay. Now I know what youre all thinking, that basic...

Ok. This is the bit that I've been dreading. This isnt a cosmetic habaki to demarcate the tsuka from the hamachi, this is to actually ho...

Here I am,s at in hospital for a lung infection that looks bad and Im blogging about this kwaiken style knife Ive just started. I often forg...

As you may have worked out by now, I love repurposing steel. The idea of taking something that is actually made of a material that is decent...

Sometimes things go smoothly, sometimes they don't. This work log is about the latter. First however, lets take a look at the sword b...

To quote American McGee's Alice and more specifically, the cat;  ' Every adventure requires a first step. Trite, but true, even h...

So, it turns out you can patina brass fairly easily. I basically experimented as I am getting terribly bored with the cheap brass hardware t...

Well, I'm no Togishi, however I have certainly polished more than my fair share of both my creations like the kitchen knife and tanto, a...

As I've mentioned before, this O-Tanto was gifted to me by a friend and I decided to change the look and feel of it quite radically and ...

A while ago, a good friend of mine donated 2 swords to me. This O-Tanto is one of those swords. For those that don't know, the "O...

OK, so this is probably one of the shortest articles I've written but it needs to be said so I'll keep it short and sweet as I sai...

I have wanted this sword since the moment I first saw it, in fact it was going to be my first sword but I was like, almost 80 quid shor...

This is what can be accomplished detail wise, with recycled cast steel and a decent and planned ferric chloride bath. The pooling of the ...

Ok, so this sword is a random folded katana from ebay. Now I know what youre all thinking, that basically means it could be any old shit ri...

Sometimes tanto were mounted without the wrap, favouring a full clean wrap with rayskin. In these cases, it is necessary to directly attac...

I like to document the process of any important rewrap, not so much because its pretty, but because I like to be able to look back on thing...

When I was last up north, both Leon and I decided to get rid of some of the bottles that had been building up courtesy of my friend Simon. T...

It's been almost two years since I last swung a sword and so I was keen to get back into it. As you can see however, the lack of practic...

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 a...

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 fro...

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 ha...

I've been meaning to do this for quite a while but of course finding cardboard tubes like this is difficult. For this reason, when the o...

I've wanted one of these for quite a while but you know what money is like? hehe. Well A friend ended up sending me one because he...

Ok, so my stuff tends to be all related to the Japanese sword, its use and maintenance but every now and then something else comes along tha...

I wrote about the upwards diagonal open cut a while back in an article I did for the Samurai University. That article has since reached 20,0...

I recently wrote on a subject called nukitsuke, or in laymans terms, drawing and cutting with the sword in one smooth motion. It's diffi...

As part of my mini series on training dual wielding, here is a short video on two important subjects. The oft-misunderstood Suburi and of co...

Since I started writing for the Samurai Workshop I feel I have been neglecting this blog which is a pity but the sort of things that I woul...

I've been looking at the new X curriculum with a mixture of wonder, fear and dread :p But since actually giving it a go i've found i...

Yes, This is my entry for the first part of the X-Tameshigiri curriculum. I've made all the cutting patterns required and as usual I...

I have recently been asked to join another group called X-Tameshigiri. It's similar to the Freestyle Cutters and has members from that g...

Now I'm not suggesting we all go "Abbot-style" and refine our cuts so that they are the barest minimum, containing the smalles...

I said I'd redo these cuts but all in one session. It shows that I didn't just fluke them the last time and it's practice. I am ...

After I finished the bottle curriculum, as much as I wanted to do another video that showed all the cuts being done one after the other, I a...

Yeh, well I didn't expect this to happen, but a) a friend of mine bought me a load more bottles to cut which helps no end so thank you, ...

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...

Please note that although I've posted this review to my blog, it was written by me originally, specifically for the newly opened Samurai...

My new sword turned up a while back. I posted to youtube but forget to link it on my blog. Everything else aside, This is the unboxing, for ...

The blog I was talking about a while ago has actually started to happen. I now write regular articles for it on the subjects of sword cus...

Finally! It's been a long project because finances have been rubbish but I eventually got there. This is the finished project, a Hanwei ...

These are what I'm going to be using for the menuki on the raptor. Here they are elastic banded into place so I could see how they would...

It's been a while since my last update on the tsuka for my Hanwei raptor and the reason is that I've just had so much on I've ha...

I've been asked to write articles for a well established website by a friend of mine. I've just started and due almost entirely to m...

Someone I met on Facebook was nice enough to send me some leather. It's rough and unprepared at the moment and will require work to get ...

It's been a slow ride this one but I'm trying my best to change a sword, in particular a heavy cutter that people have described as ...

Some successes, some fails. Then I ran out of bottles. Ive got a long way to go here, all my cuts feel a little forced as I havent been able...

Theres one problem with the Hanwei Raptor (I have the shobu zukuri version) and thats the tsuka. Its very big. Very big. its also tree trunk...

I eventually started back on the bottle curriculum and took my next step along it. :) I wont bore you with words, here's the video. ...

Ok, so its been a little while since I received my 'koto katana' and I'd like to say a few words on how its holding up. So far...