The Armour Archive

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebZp55GViow

I was invited by a Lung Chuan Forge to test their new katana to extreme. So I tried it on cutting pork arms, performing lateral strikes on opponent's weapon, cutting metallic container of volatile adhesive and receiving Chinese style "weapon destructing" strikes from a blunt hanwei rapier.

Looked like a fun test!

Definitely. There maybe more test to this sword later, cutting more metallic stuff. LOL!

Well, there are two things that I would like to see (if I can dare to ask).
1) When we see cutting exercises, we usually see people try to deliver the strongest blow possible, while, in actual combat, the chance to perform such blows are certainly less than the quantity of "smaller" cuts that two fighter could exchange. So, I think it would be very interesting to evaluate how fast but not so powerful blows works, both with the tip of the blade and more slicing blows with the middle and the debole.
2) Another thing that I would consider very interesting is how a blade will perform after being damaged, and after being repaired. In the video you said that the edge was damaged beyond repair in the last seconds, well I think this is a bit drastic, the blade could probably serve again if repaired, yes, there will be some nicks on the edge, but it would be interesting to see if they compromise the overall performance.

Thanks

Cheers

1. We also do practice cutting with smaller, faster cuts in other cases. However, since this event is for testing the sword, thus we were doing the "maximum" (both I and the sword). There are some videos where I was doing the cuts I do.
For example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFtKCX6M6oE
These are moving cuts (running cuts and spinning cuts). You know in sparring we do cuts when our feet are not planted to the ground so this is one of the practices.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pA6uwRRX1NY
This is my single handed leg cut that I did a lot in sparring.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJfcVhHHuXY
This is a 2 handed leg cut.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_h03imwdo30
And this is a small cut.

2. The blade edge was torn. The flap pieces fell off when I tried to put them back in plane of the edge. So leaving a couple 2.5mm x 6mm nick on the blade. For a katana, if I ground off 2.5mm from the edge, the katana is DEAD. The hardened edge (hamon) does not extend much behind 2.5mm from the edge line. And the blade width would be changed too much that it would become a toothpick, for it wasn't broad to start with.

A damaged sword like that can still cut of course, but each cut will add pressure to the apex of the nick and risk creating a stress point to crack the blade, then break it.

Signo wrote:Well, there are two things that I would like to see (if I can dare to ask).
1) When we see cutting exercises, we usually see people try to deliver the strongest blow possible, while, in actual combat, the chance to perform such blows are certainly less than the quantity of "smaller" cuts that two fighter could exchange. So, I think it would be very interesting to evaluate how fast but not so powerful blows works, both with the tip of the blade and more slicing blows with the middle and the debole.
2) Another thing that I would consider very interesting is how a blade will perform after being damaged, and after being repaired. In the video you said that the edge was damaged beyond repair in the last seconds, well I think this is a bit drastic, the blade could probably serve again if repaired, yes, there will be some nicks on the edge, but it would be interesting to see if they compromise the overall performance.

Thanks

Cheers