Did I find the right sword?

Posted by: Anonymous

Did I find the right sword? - 12/20/04 04:25 PM

Alright well im a beginner at this as you could tell in my message before but I went to the site tozando.com and found the Standard Iaito wich is around 225. Is that a good price for that kind of sword? I mean will that problably last me some while?Thanks alot
Posted by: Charles Mahan

Re: Did I find the right sword? - 12/20/04 08:15 PM

Depends a lot on how often you intend to train. The harder you train the quicker a cheaper iaito is gonna wear out. Our dojo used to use some of those, and we had difficulty with the handle wraps getting loose after a year or two. Add to that a really awful balance and they just weren't up to snuff. Admittedly that was like 7 years ago. They may very well have changed since then.

We purchase most of our swords from http://www.swordstore.com and have for years. Nothing but good things to say. I've heard good things about the better swords from Tozando, but the extreme low end doesn't seem to have many fans.

You can also trust http://www.e-bogu.com and http://www.bugei.com by all accounts.

I'd strongly recommend asking your instructor as different styles have different preferences for various things like balance, length, type of tip on the blade, etc.