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The quietest launch?

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There has been little fan fare or build up – indeed, it would probably be fair to say that there has been something of a shroud of mystery about exactly when the next batch of the custom katana would be available to order.. (after all, the last official date provided was August last year!)..

But theres been good reason for it – because in the background we have been tinkering away to delivery what we think now is the PERFECT system – and we can now offer you the option to purchase the custom katana at ANY time, all year round!

Thats right – no more mad panic.

No need to rush your purchase, and no way to ever miss out again!

Sounds too good to be true? Well, it certainly has us excited – now people can budget and save sensibly for their design, knowing they can order anytime and behind the scenes your order will become part of a sophisticated Just in time delivery and production system we have developed with the Black Dragon forge over the years – and now set it all up so that we can provide a slow and steady supply of customized Japanese style blades when YOU want them, not when a frantic window of opportunity opens and closes within a few weeks…

So relax – no rush. You can order again – anytime, and over the next few weeks will be will doing a few cosmetic upgrades to the images, etc – but otherwise, the custom Katana 3.0 is not only back, its here to stay…!

A pretty exciting announcement, but no hyperbole necessary – its a quiet launch because we prefer you take your time thinking about your design than rush it. It really is a lot of fun..

– Paul

New SBG Designs

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Hi everyone,

Just a very quick update – we have just finished adding 3 brand new, never seen before products to the store from our very own SBG Black Dragon Forge, makers of the SBG custom Katana since 2008..

Like all the blades the forge makes for us, each sword is made from differentially hardened T10 tool steel with a natural, unenhanced hamon. But as you can see from the brief introductory pictures below, that is about the ONLY thing these three designs have in common.

THE KAGETORAKEN

Features: Iron fittings, reinforced black rattan wrapped saya. Designed to be a frequent use dojo workhorse.

THE RED BELLY BLACK SNAKES

Named after a deadly snake native to Australia, this set of two blades are some of the most unique you are likely to stumble across – with double fullered blades, snake themed copper fittings and mottled habaki, if you are tired of the run of the mill designs then you need to check these out.

THE HOBGOBLIN KOGARASU NAGAMAKI NINJATO

This is a true Ninjato – designed to be unpredictable and cause confusion to an opponent with its unfamiliar angles of attack and with a mystical “Bakemono” (Japanese Hobgoblin) theme..

More pics and info can be found at our dedicated “SBG Black Dragon Forge” blog here or click the link below to see them all in one place at the store:

I hope you enjoy checking them out as much as I did designing them! Stock is limited so if you see a design you like we strongly recommend that you snatch it up while you can.

– Paul Southren

Update and introduction to the Black Dragon Forge

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Hi everyone,

Looks like an update is WELL overdue – but with some major product releases and a revolutionary and VERY exciting change just about to occur, I will try to compress 9 months worth of updates into a couple of paragraphs and some pics!

Naturally batch 22 was made, the swords came in – and they were, as we expected, quite lovely.

Unfortunately, batch 23 – which was originally scheduled to open in August/September was put on hold in preparation for phase II of a planned, site wide upgrade and expansion – and so naturally people have been wanting to know when WILL the next batch open, especially as batch 22 met and exceeded our expectations, guaranteeing the future of the project for the foreseeable future.

The answer, in another post – this blog is about to get VERY busy…

ABOUT THE “Black Dragon Forge”

Since 2008 SBG, our Canadian Agent and a micro forge in China who specialized in high end and top quality blades have collaborated together to produce the custom katana that we all know and love and who the blog is all about in the first place.

But at a certain point in our history, we decided to get some stock made of a design combination whose basic theme appeared more than once in EVERY batch, the so called Black Dragon design – and the Black Dragon Katana became the first in a series of swords that were later to be known as the SBG designs series.

Here is the Katana in question:

And now, as we are about to release even more designs to this line and need a better brand identity than “those guys who make the custom katana” a proper name was needed, and the Black Dragon Forge was born – and the blog updated with the new look accordingly…

 

STAY TUNED

As I hinted at earlier in this post, this blog is about to get BUSY. Indeed, I am sitting on a huge amount of news that I need to get out to you guys but will break it down into more easily digestible posts – so stay tuned, some major and exciting developments and announcements are imminent!!!

– Paul

Oops, we meant the 6th – not the 4th (plus quick update)…

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Hi everyone!

I just realized that the stores vacation this year has been advertised as going from the 23rd of Dec to the 4th of Jan..

Sat the 4th, not ideal to commence shipping on and not correct.. The date we had meant to publish was of course Monday the 6th of January and NOT Saturday the 4th as mistakenly advertised..

Anyway, I hope people can be patient with us just a little longer..

In all honesty, we avoid holding Christmas sales per se the last 2 weeks are the WORST for damages, problems, lost items, mix ups and all the major carriers get overheated, overstressed and all in all – its a REALLY bad time to ship vulnerable to breakage and/or non regular shaped parcels – like swords – and it not ending up something like this…

So please be patient with us until the team get back in the saddle on MONDAY the 6th.. We have quite a backlog to tackle and we need to allow a little time for everyone to settle back down from holiday mode and generally get the motor running and get a handle on the backlog, so please rest assured we will do our best to get ack to any loose ends or emails from the holiday period as quickly as we can..

WHILE WE ARE BLOGGING – QUICK UPDATE TIME..

Its going to a pretty big year for SBG as a whole. Indeed regular or semi-regular site and store visitors may well have noticed a series of rolling improvements occuring to the store since around the 15th of December, and even a cursory look at some older images of the store cached by google shows that behind the scenes at the store, there have been major
 changes to both the way it looks and fundamentally operates..

I will save more detailed explanations of what has changed and what is omgoing in another post, but in the meantime just wanted to correct the store opening typo thing and suggest that if you have not visited the store or a few days you might be somewhat surprised at some of the things showing up as the secure update continues to roll out..

To whet your appetite, we have a lot of very cool swords in stock and ready to ship right now that have or will become available to purchase over the course of the next week or so in a new section of the website called appropriately enough..

New Products..

While I think the products designated for this list are exciting, I struggled with how to sum up “new products” in the themed ackground and header.. Actually, it looks terrible – but I am fairly new to using photoshop in any serious way so while I like some of the designs, its my least favorite..

Favorite new theme – SBG Black Dragon Forge!

 I have been doing all the photoshopping nonsense over the last few weeks and am happy with the way most turned out, but this is my fav.

The fire is all from a picture of the actual forge where the SBG custom katana and later some limited edition runs of popular designs have been made since the beginning..

The Black Dragon was our most popular sword – and leading with a small batch of just under 40 swords listed for sale only a few hours previous, – well, we think the “SBG Black Dragon Forge” just sounds cool and fits for us in some way.. But I dont know..

The actual page that is currently hosting this stock of lackdragons is also the page whose top graphic I KNOW is just, well – I was just trying to drum up excitement as the theme in picture form and got, er, this..


                                                                                      
It is ridiculous I know.

My Canadian agent friend who has also been a major part of the whole success of these very popular and well received swords said of the hatching dragon in the image that maybe I really have been living in Kawaii obsesssed Japan for too long..

But I dont kmow, how can I really capture how exciting and cool this page will be

And I dont know, its I thought amusing at first, but when you have a botique run of the Black Dragon Katana appear for sale along with the last release of the last few Jian of Marquis Yi on one page as a WARM UP – this is as good as anything else..

But anyway, thats all for now – will post again soon as there is quite a lot going on and even more generally in store around the place in the next few months for you, so until then – watch this space!!!

NEW ADDITIONS AT THE SBG SWORD STORE