Nice video and nice post

im a lvl 68 warrior, and with my sword of dark destruction i can cut through that sword like...butter and stuff

And handled some of the most powerful swords ever made, don't think that you're some fictional character that can defeat a samurai. Sword of Dark Destruction, you really are a loser aren't you, there's no sword more beautiful, elegant, and durable that a Katana, not some strange weapon from Dungens and Dragons or someting.

lol?

A thankyou.

They failed every time when they fought against other country with swords. They did sucessfully invade other countries with guns. Now they try to prove their swords is better than guns.
How funny that it!!

That' was indeed long and educational. ^^ But you still have to admit that has to be a strong metal.

I understood everything you said, but others won't. I have a tip for you: don't even try to talk to them

The point of this clip is to show the strength of the sword and not the strength of the sword "against" the gun... fact being the this perticular sword can cut a fired bullet in half is a hell of a good example...

now ofcaorse, the second half of it would be the person using the sword, but thats subject to the conditions...

they are very floppy, and that strengths their cutting edge alot as well(so dont think that because they're super thin they are weak). But your comment was a good explanation of what the hell was going on. btw, it's Japanese T.V! (i hope(at the risk of looking like a fool)), it doesn't need to make sense!

Well said and good way of saying things :)

I like it

But you missed a point. According to Japanese history, or so I have been told, the Samuri blade has to exactly match the Samuri's expectations, or else they start all over again. Because of this, all Samuri blades are perfectly balanced.

Sword makers worked hard at their craft through most of its history, but for the most part, a sword was a sword. If all of the ones made had to be great, why do so many mediocre ones exist? Some were fantastic, most were decent, a lot were mediocre, and some were just downright dismal. Japanese refined their craft a lot, but there are logistics and pragmatic concerns to deal with. Casting swords in this kind of perfectionist light is just another way of painting Japanese as somehow exotic or special, something novel for "occidentals" to read about. We do that even with modern stuff, just to promote ideologies separating the "occidentals" from the "orientals".

Well, actually the Japanese katana is forged differently than other swords, Eastern (i.e. Chinese or Korean) and Western. The way a Japanese sword is made is by taking a sheet of metal and folding it when red hot, then cooling it alternately in water or oil, then repeating the process many times until the thickness of the blade is correctly attained. This folding method, as opposed to the shaping and pounding of other bladed weapons, creates a very hard blade, with hardness exponentially increasing with each fold. This is because with each fold, you are doubling up the layers built up before, so by the end, you have a blade equivalent (if i remember the number of folds correctly) of over a million layers of metal. Essentially a very hard blade. However, forging the blade was a complicated process, and as a result, faults can easily occur, such as fissures, cracks and chips, and even probably faults which are invisible to the eye. A complicated process lends itself to some sort of failure, according to Murphy's Law. And lastly it must be noted that the metal sword fell out of favor, and was replaced by the wooden sword in duels, because the wooden sword was found to be capable of destroying the metal katana. (It was said to bend inferior swords, and shatter superior ones)

Additional layers does not make the sword stronger. Further, the sword was not cooled in water until the yakiire stage, unless you include the stages where the tamahage is hardened and shattered into little pieces (which required cooling in water).

The steel's "folding" produced a few thousand of what we'd call "layers" but those layers served only to distribute trace elements in the steel so that it is more consistent and controllable in the heat-treatment process. Further, "layers" are lost in slag and heat scale, and not all "layers" are structurally stable. The billet is then shaped via forging into a blade shape (sunobe). Cracks and chips are not introduced via forging unless the steel is red-short, which tamahagane and most other old-world steels are not.

As for the wooden sword nonsense...it was popularized by Miyamoto Musashi and is usually cited due to his arrogance (confidence) in swordsmanship. The wooden sword (bokuto) *never* made the steel sword obsolete, and it was never adopted as a serious weapon in any major school of swordsmanship. Jodo practitioners and the like always like to claim that a wooden jo (stick) can seriously damage a sword (bending good ones and breaking inferior ones), but the goal isn't to damage the opponent's weapon--it's to damage the opponent. Further, a well-made sword withstands those stresses pretty well.

I've offered a bit of elementary metallurgical information that explains the hardening of steel and how Japanese swords are made. I get a bit of flak for posting so much info, but I'm only trying to offer some good info to counter a lot of the misinformation that floats around about swords and swordmaking.

think knights in that, it was the Knights, mostly noblemen, who had the good stuff. and the everybody else had what was left over.

there were many mediocre ones, you are correct there but the Samurai themselves did not accept mediocre on any level. Each Samurai had a special Katana, built to his specificiations and anything less was not accepted. why then did the mediocre weapons out number the exceptional ones? because not every villager was Samurai and the Samurai were not the only customers of the the craftsman, they simply had the money, and need, for exceptional weaponry and were, more often than not, the nobles of the area. think Knights. they were not simply peasants and could afford high quality weapons.

I think you've grossly oversimplified the Japanese traditions of swordmaking and use. In turn, I'll grossly oversimplify too.

Samurai were only an "elite" class during the tokugawa period, in particular the later tokugawa period, which is only a tiny chunk of Japanese history relative to the longevity of sword arts. Prior to the Tokugawa, the only really differentiations between "warrior" and "non-warrior" were ownership of weapons and the inclination to fight.

During the tokugawa period, the elitism of samurai class and the elevation of the sword grew. Samurai did not carry high-end swords, as there are still many documented weapon failures from even the later period at the peak of "sword worship". Swords from "proud" samurai families are often of mediocre quality.

Yes, cheap consumer stuff before and after the various weapon restrictions during the Tokugawa were often the lower grade simply based on finances. However, you grossly and inaccurately simplify that samurai were keen connoisseurs and only accepted the best. They often took what they could get, which was often less than great.

The higher the status, the more likely you were to get a sword from a famous smith. However, not all samurai were noble rich upperclassmen (nor did they all serve the rich or powerful), even in the Tokugawa. There was no point I can think of where all or even the majority of samurai were outfitted with high-end swords.

If you're going to oversimplify the culture, at least put it into a historical context so that the class dynamics of the time can be taken into account.

absolutely, it was a gross simplication, but then again, i don't know that much to begin with. just what i had learned from one of my ju-jitsu masters and some stuff i had read after getting my interest tickled, which wasnt much. it was a gross simplification but driving a point none-the-less. apparently my understanding was wrong. thanks for the correction, i am just glad that someone with a bit more knowledge chimed in.

please, is there any reading you could suggest?

book, there was a chapter about how the japanese rejected the opportunity to adopt guns and replace swords b/c of complicated cultural and esthetics reasons.

nice post, but I am pretty sure most know it wasnt to show that a sword was better than a gun, Just demonstrating how damn fine a piece of work those japanese swords are. REally wish they would have shown a close-up of where the bullet hit, I bet that tempered edge took it like it was nothing, another good one is the sword nersus water cutter, quite amazing when they show it cut thought 80lb dumbells and then go across the samurai sword without even dulling it.

The problem is that people think this attests to the greatness of the Japanese sword. This bullet splitting thing has been done with axe heads and other blades for quite some time.

Elementary physics will predict this outcome, as well as the outcome of the water jet and larger machine gun tests; unless the sword is so poorly made that it can't withstand rudimentary cutting anyway (cutting of course being the purpose of the sword in the first place).

Get a reasonably heavy duty knife like one from Busse or a Himalayan Imports and do the same test, they'll have basically the same result. You will also get the same result if you do it with one of the inexpensive Hanwei martial arts swords. You MIGHT even be able to perform this test with a cheap but sharp 420 stainless sword from a knife catalog. I am still somewhat baffled why people are so amazed at the results of these tests.

Also, bullets are generally made out of lead, which is a fairly soft material.

but it is still amazing to see the water cutter cut through a steel plate over 4 times thicker than the sword then not do anything to the sword made out of the same material, I guess those blacksmiths just know how to fold their steel really well. ( And I suppose with some of the swords having over 200,000 folds just the sheer amount of folds is what does it, but it must take a skilled artist to make a sword like that) Pardon me if I sound retarded though, I know almost nothing about metallurgy.

FAR from it!

Japanese 'smiths were *NEVER* that ambitious, or at very least were actually human!

That astronomical figure is the number of *LAYERS NOT* the number of times it's folded. It's a simple matter of geometric progression...

Oh and most of this facts were pretty much gleaned from Sword Forum International (SFI). You'd be far better off going there for your sword facts, not anime or movies!

when I said folds I meant layers, it would still take a skilled craftsman to make a sword with 200,000 layers, Like I said I dont know anything about metallurgy nor am I that interested right now so I probably wont be visiting your little sword forum. Let me guess, you do melee don't you?
I said pardon me if I sounded retarded, but I guess you were like bingo! I found someone saying something wrong about something I know about time to make myself look like a big man. Get a life, nerd

SFI has some good information though it has its share of misinformation and definitely its share of arrogance. I used to visit and contribute there some years back, but I tend to avoid places like that now. Definitely a useful site for bringing together enthusiasts though, and good info ("good" is based on the forum trends though, so beware) can be pretty easily turned up.

Even wikipedia has decent information on swords these days (ignore the section about lamination though), so the persistence of misinformation is a little baffling. Good basic info is definitely much more "out there" than it was 5-10 years ago, so people should try to take advantage of it, rather than regurgitating the same old myths.

The water jet didn't harm the sword because the sword edge is a wedge of hardened steel. It's not "special" in any way; a hardened knife blade with a similar cross-section will do the same thing.

Nothing to do with layers, nothing to do with forging. A hard edge and a reasonably thick convex cross-section are all you need to withstand the "tests" done in these videos. Simple physics and nothing beyond that.

what a "blade with a similar cross-section" is if not layers made when forged? Hardening the steel is a forging process, as is the layering, and wouldn't go through the trouble if it didn't make it stronger.

By cross section I referred to geometry, not composition. However, composition still takes a role.

I was also referring to the test with the water jet. Tamahagane was forge-welded on itself because it NEEDED it to be usable really. It's an integral part of the process, not an extra process used to improve it. Any knife with a similar edge geometry will "beat" the water-jet.

People somehow seem to think of welded steel as a kind of ferrous "plywood". It is not. There is no hard resin holding the thin pieces of metal together, it is the metal holding itself together. If anything, the weld potentially weaker than the base material. Take for instance a block of steel. Now take 2 pieces of steel half the size of the big block and glue them together. Is it stronger than the big block? Solder them together, is it stronger? weld them together, is it stronger? As you improve the bonding method, you come closer to 1:1 strength compared to single piece. It does not increase strength.

As I explained elsewhere, steel was forge-welded for relative homogenization of chemical composition and to eliminate the many impurities introduced through the tatara process. It strengthened the steel only in that it made it closer to an ideal single piece of steel (a modern-produced steel of equivalent chemical composition would be mechanically "stronger" simply because it doesn't need to go through the processes tamahagane does).

It was needed for the material, but doing it with a modern-produced steel for instance would not gain any benefit except in aesthetics.

I like this post, my post might not be nearly as informitive but I'd like to add to his arrow and the bucket example.
I remember seeing a video about police in England who needed to get new bullet proof vests due to the fact that most violent acts in England were with knives rather then bullets, due to the illegality of fire arms in England. Now these for the most part were just ordinary kitchen knives but due to the physical limitations of normal Kevlar body armor which would stop a bullet, it just didn’t prevent a knife from going right through it. So they had to get metal plates built into their vests as well.

very educating and interesting, nice 2 see some1 with brains apart from all the crap ppl post on this site

thank you... i wasnt even aware people figured the sword would lose haha

Hey thanks alot on the education of a sword! I think that was a great comment you made. But you are right, physics takes over when its an experiment such as this. Im sure that it was a brand new, multi-level folding of the metal possibly with machine help, and the fact it was a small pistol shooting it.

A sai, orginally is meant to break a sword and be an offensive weapon. If force is going along the blade it is strongest, but it if coming from the side on the flat face, it shall break easily. If a sai caught a section of the sword with a good twist, it would break off.

found it interesting

... there were more posts like these instead of hateful "I'm better thatn oyu so go f*#ck your mother" posts...

Well done!

My kind of post (without the frothing at the mouth as I try to restrain myself and write calmly that is). LOL Just also wanted to say: don't sell yourself short with the 3-feet comment down below, come train in the German Longsword, you'll be swinging 3.5 feet around all the time. Great fun.

Still, I have seen many 16 and 14 guage steel shields and armor in Austria that had nice little round holes in them, punched out through the back, where a bullet took the guy out. Puts it in perspective. But, like you said, nobody ever looked dashing riding off with bullets strapped to their hips (although I did feel a small tingling watching Rambo with the M-60 belts around his shoulder, but that was probably just the hair). LOL

...the "three feet of sharp steel" is a little exaggerated for imaginative effect, it's actually more like two feet of "sharp" steel :D

Why woulda bullet penetrate a sword its impossibel, specially that the sword can vibrate

It's mostly just an art now than an defence. Although if you were to pit a Shinobi against a gun-man, than that might be a different story. Shinobi are very skilled and are good at dodging bullets and other weapons.

ask my Mom a question. Her reply would be "Why don't you ask your Dad? My reply: "I didn't want to know that much about it"

Though "folding" doesn't have much to do with it and they traditionally weren't critically sharp, the sword's edge is convex like a clam shell and a semi-molten piece of mushrooming lead hitting a hardened steel wedge is gonna get split by it. I'll post a little more information shortly.

'folding' has everything to do with the structural integrity of the japanese sword.

Folding was a required process for turning tamahagane into usable steel, as it is very crude and full of impurities out of the tatara process. It doesn't make it special in any way (especially comparing to modern steel production). I guess one could argue that a sunobe of tamahagane that did not get "folded" would be inferior to one that was, due to the inconsistency of the tamahagane billet yielding incredibly chaotic results in yakiire. All I really intend to "shoot down" is the myth that "folding steel" makes it somehow harder, stronger, better than any "normal" steel. It only aids in the distribution of key and trace elements and squirts out some impurities with the flux when the welds are made. Some people have made arguments about compression or grain strength, and these arguments just aren't grounded in reality. A weak weld may limit crack propagation but would yield little other good. Generally performance of a Japanese-style sword is found in the geometry and the heat treatment.

If you could get a decent relatively homogenous, purer form of tamahagane (similar chemical composition, less Mn than standard modern 10xx steels) produced by a modern steel mill, it would be structurally the equal or superior to any "folded" traditional tamahagane billet, though it'd lack the charm and pretty hada. The Japanese did remarkable things with what they had, but there's nothing particularly special about "folding" process other than turning an almost unusable material into a serviceable one.

You beat me to it, but that's pretty much exactly what I was going to say!

With modern steel, folding adds only 3 things: Beauty (fantastic hada!), cost (astronomically! A folded blade cost something like 3 times the cost or even more) and difficulty (it's a complete b!tch to work with so many layers). *PERIOD*

Nothing is added in term of superiority. NOTHING

u have to much spare time u silly boy

that's all i'm saying, the sword would be less functional without than with folding.

eg, logically, they wouldn't do it if it wasn't important.

Read the guy's post.

Folding is still used because the Japanese refuse to use anything other than the traditional. They could do little else to make their tamahagane (iron-rich sand, literally, crap) into a usable steel billet...

right now in japan, Oosumi Shunpei, the greatest man to make katanas ever opened a katana museum in Oota city, and about 26 of his swords are shown on display right now.

Osuma Shunpei (better known as Osuma Toshihira), while considered a living national treasure in Japan, is not necessarily the greatest "ever". Frankly, I like the styles of a few "lesser" mukansa (for instance, Yoshihara Yoshihito is an exceptional talented and diversified Mukansa for his age [his brother too]) even more than Toshihira's or even some of my favorites in the Gassan school.

Sword circles tend to have favorites of the past and of the present depending on the aesthetics or history of the schools they prefer. Modern Japanese swords are art objects, and while the makers are interested in making them as functional as possible, their work is not judged by criteria other than technical and aesthetic control.

I don't think you can really say it's superior to any other weapon. Bullets and other modern projectile weapons move too quickly for a swordsman to react and deflect it. That's assuming deflecting it would be successful. And I think it's dubious that a person with a sword can take on a person in a tank.

I'd prefer a naginta in a sword fight, although i have a katana under the bed as we don't allow guns in the UK

"the samurai sword ...is still superior to any weapon we have today. " Uh...yea. That's why the Japanese won the war.

Don't you think you're exaggerating just a little? These sword makers are artists, no doubt. But the best weapon we have today?

Some people undeservedly wrap oriental martial arts and weponry in a cloak of supernatural powers. They believe the movies that show a 5 foot, 98 pound woman take down a 6'5" 300 lb soldier just because she has a blackbelt in Taekwondo. If it was really that deadly wouldn't we see more pure martial arts experts winning the Ultimate Fighting Championships?

You can have your Samauri sword, I'll take an M16.

The Japanese began losing the war before it even started. The US embargo of steel to Japan made victory over Japan an inevitable conclusion; I believe there was no way the Japanese would win the war. Germany was too busy on it's own, and was probably using Japan as just a distraction rather than handing over any actual aid. In forming a force and expanding her territory over Asia and the Pacific, the Japanese spread out their forces too thin. Their equipment at best mediocre throughout the war (even the widely touted Zero, was nothing more than a subpar plane with much of the safety and support systems removed to make a light maneuverable plane), and their tactics were often suicidal (not just kamikazes, but also their snipers (which tied themselves to trees and were pretty much toast after they fired off their shot) and also their medicine and food (mostly rice, which lead to beriberi, and herbal medicines, many with much less effectiveness than modern medicine). Towards the latter years of the war, the technology regressed until the point where the military was considering issuing bows and explosive arrows to the troops because of the lack of steel.

Intelligent analysis.

It just bugs me when people say goofy things like the Katana was the best weapon ever made. Well, it may be the best sword ever made, but not the best weapon.

I agree with you. The Germans only teamed with the Japanese because they had a common enemy. Before Pearl Harbor and the official declaration of war the US sent aid to Great Britan and that ticked off the Germans. We also stopped sending selling and trading supplies to Japan, so they knew their military would suffer greatly without our supply of steel. I feel that if the Nazi's won the war they would have eventually gone after Japan, but thank God that never happened.

i heard that katanas are made from 5 layers of steel... that's why they're so strong and stay sharp.... dunno if it's true. I'm guessing it is

I don't get it. How does splitting a bullet make a sword superior? That's like saying rocks are better weapons than bullets because bullets can't go through rocks.

There is more love of craft today as there ever was. You watch too many movies. 98% of people back then died before they were 40 and could not even read. It is pathetic how some people think in this day and time that we have 'lost' something.

However, it must be noted that Hunter-Gatherer societies work less and live just as long as modern post-industrial societies.

but who would be able to defend themselves with that against a gun retard

of how dangerous, those things are...

The sword can take a bullet yeah. But can that sword kill you from 50 meters away?? Superior? Sorry I can not agree.

how accurate are you at 50 meters?

Great response

Well, if it's a fight from 50 metres you keep the sword. I'll choose the humble gun.

P.S. I'll grope your missus at your funeral.

...through some part of your torso at 50 meters in 8 seconds with my XD-40. That's tested on targets many times. I have friends who compete and are much better. At 25 meters at least 2 will be in your head, guaranteed. But, I also study Iaido (quick-draw Katana), and studied Kendo for a few years, so I can comment there, too.