Hanwei Practical Plus XL

Sunday 10 June 2018 at 04:55 Posted by Shadley Hax 0 Comments


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 Hanwei. It's just Hanwei. Theres no getting away from that, however, because of the blade it actually works very well. The main aesthetic with this blade is the width of the motohaba. That is to say, its flipping wide. 

On the right you can see the untouched blade, the new tsuba, the untouched tsuka cores and the new red ito. All these are going to go together to give this sword a new lease of life. 

I took the time to get my Hanwei practical out for a comparison shot. (below right) Mine is either the first or second generation of the official Hanwei Practical Katana. That means that all the fittings are fine, theres no plastic habaki or koiguchi or whatever, but it's an old generation of an old sword albeit one theyre still selling as it's reliable and tough.

Hanwei Musashi XL - 15" of tsuka

Friday 8 June 2018 at 06:48 Posted by Shadley Hax 0 Comments

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 of the tsuka to the width of blade ratio is really aesthetically very nice.

I took this on alongside a repolish and etch of a wakizashi. This blade also got repolished and reetched at the same time and the results I felt were really very nice.

On the right is a sneak preview of the finished sword.

I'm not sure what this blade would be like to cut with for me personally as my experience has been less Ryu oriented and more freestyle or backyard cutting and my choice of tsuka went very quickly relatively speaking from the longer 12" or thereabouts to as close to 9" as I could comfortably get with the blade length of the sword in question.

Repolishing and reetching a hanwei wakizashi

Thursday 7 June 2018 at 12:51 Posted by Shadley Hax 0 Comments

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 etched hamon was completely gone and it was my job to try and bring out the natural one that was there. I decided that being as it was a hanwei and I have had some experience with the steels they use, I would go with Lemon juice. 
To anyone who hasn't done balde etching before, this no doubt sounds very basic, slightly unnerving and utter nonsense... but bear with me, my story gets better.. ;)

Wakizashi (st-nihonto) with gorgeous saya.

at 07:00 Posted by Shadley Hax 0 Comments

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 all came together well and that saya! I adore that saya and sageo combo. I wish I had taken more pics of it to be honest. This blade is like a razor also. It's seen some action on the 1x30 obviously and the polish on it is etched on the ji and very polsihed on the ha as a result but it doesn't detract from the aesthetics which is nice.

Wakizashi in Imogata

Wednesday 6 June 2018 at 14:33 Posted by Shadley Hax 0 Comments

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 different.

up til now, we've been using rayskin panels for the tsuka. This one is going to have a full wrap of samegawa. That is to say, the entire wooden core will be sleeved in the best part of the rayskin. Not only that, we will be able to display the emperor nodes of the skin in between the wrap itself.

The efficacy of properly applied percussive maintenance

Monday 4 June 2018 at 06:22 Posted by Shadley Hax 0 Comments

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 something thats either antique, hand crafted, not yours or can';t be replaced, err on the side of caution and modify the other side of the fitting. In this particular example, that would be the top of the tsuka.

However, if the fitting is an alloy, cheap repro, production line, easily replaceable or is yours and youre feeling lucky, sometimes a little 'adjustment' is all thats required.

Exhibit A)

Hanwei Raptor Wakizashi in Shobu Zukuri

at 06:09 Posted by Shadley Hax 0 Comments


I received this new wakizashi from the client and now good friend, well wrapped in a 'will not get me nicked' box, all hidden away in bubble wrap and boxing material. the picture above is the cheat picture to show you what came of it all.... but for the work log.. carry on reading ;)

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