hey all....i need some info on the o katana from cold steel.....does anyone kno if it has a full tang

I would suggest taking your query over to http://www.swordforum.com

There is a wealth of reviews already in place and a lot of people there who can give you a good assessment of any particular sword from Cold Steel.

Full Tang, no. That's what your kitchen knives have.

3/4 Enclosed tang (like all good blades), yes. However, that's only a small measurement of a good sword.

I do not do business with Cold Steel do to the deceptive marketing presented in their older marketing videoes (I haven't seen "Solid Proof"). This included presenting loosely wound beach mats as full tamashighiri targets (You can't even see the problem unless you pause the video to look at the gaping hole in the center) and crushing a cinderblock with the spine of a sword (nice, until you realize you could do the same with your fist and acting like a crowbar is nothing like what a sword really does).

Cold steel is a cheap, Chinese based company that makes half-decent blades. However, I will not do business with them on principle.

I think you should cut him some slack. He is not the only person to have posted concerns about the integrity of the company in question. It is relevant feedback to your query. If an automaker whom I was considering purchasing a vehicle from had a history of lying about the safety of it's vehicles, I would want to know.

As for you comment about engaging in real sword combat... you should word your posts more carefully. Nobody does that anymore. It was a silly thing to post.

HK, no I haven't ever been in a duel. They are very rare, you know, and the police often frown on the winner. However, that doesn't detract from my ability to judge the quality of steel. That is like saying a person cannot judge whether a gun is good or not unless they have been shot.

And asking about a sword is exactly the same as asking about it's smith. For example, Paul Chen has bad quality control. Angelsword is wonderful but too darn expensive. SwordStore is one of the best places in the world to get a good deal on traditional katana, but they are still quite expensive. Blue Gauntlet has a terrible time tempering their foils, so it may either snap the first time you use it or bounce around like spaghetti. All these are important aspects of their respective companies.

What I gave was an evaluation of the company. The quality of the forging is more important than the design itself (which almost always boils down to personal taste and body size), and bad advertisement is a very important part of evaluating quality.

I find your evaluations rather intriguing Ben, being new and not knowing any of these smith's leads me to ask where you came up with these conclusions? Do you own one or two from each brand or just collected information from forum and real life friends?

A bit of both. I own an Angelsword Rapier and a number of foils from various companies. I've seen enough trash blades coming out of Blue Gauntlet that point I am convinced they have a monkey doing the tempering. One foil snapped it's tip off when I tightened the barrel (it had been used for only a week), and my head epeeist has one so soft that when parried, it sometimes wraps itself around my blade. It's extremely annoying.

The rest of the conclusions, I've come to through friends and various discussions. Paul Chen's (also known as Hanwei) quality control problems are of legendary proportions. It has become better in recent years, but they have a notorious reputation for unreliability.

Also, I'm pretty sure about SwordStore considering they are regulated by the Japanese government but still manage to maintain relatively low prices. They're good.

Swordstore is an American company. Only their Japanese smithed blades fall under Japanese regulations.