Hanwei L6 Bainite Celestial Katana

The celestial bodies pull at the water’s edge and create the tide, the ebb and flow of waves that bring time and balance to our world. As the samurai warrior must give and take with the ever-flowing tides of life, the Celestial Katana reflects all the harmonious aspects of the heavens and the sea.

A beautiful 27 5/8” L6 blade featuring a straight hamon line symbolizing placidity. The kashira and tsuba juxtaposes the hamon with a depiction of turbulent sea with waves crashing against the rocks. The tsuka features black cotton sageo over white same with multi-finish planetary menuki. The saya sparkles with a beautiful silver flake with a gloss polish with a buffalo horn kojiri, kurikata and koiguchi adorned with a navy and white sageo.

Bainite is a structure of high-carbon steel that combines great strength with excellent flexibility and shock absorption characteristics. It has been known as an exemplary Katana blade component for a number of years but its use has been restricted to a few top-class master smiths, due to the difficulties involved in performing the exacting heat treatment procedures necessary for the production of a Bainite blade body in combination with the very hard Martensite Yakiba (edge section) required for Katana blades. 

Hanwei has now mastered this difficult process, using billets of L-6 tool steel (a very tough high-carbon low-alloy steel) as a starting point. Blades are forged and shaped in the normal way, then carefully heat treated to achieve the required Bainite and Martensite structures before final polishing.

How to Use