Phew, things have been crazy busy with batches 30 and 31. Most people in batch 30 and some in batch 31 have already been contacted once we have confirmed that their sword came in and was error and flaw free (try saying flaw free three times fast without making a mistake!).
Speaking of mistakes, in batch 30, I made a couple of exceptions for individual customers – something that I normally don’t do because in the past it messes up the system we have refined over the years – and as such, the error rate on customizations shot up to the highest level I have seen in years. Granted, it was a bigger batch than normal – but there were around 5 or 6 individually wrong customizations (i.e. everything as ordered except wrong ito color, or wrong saya color, etc). So frustrating for everyone when this happens, but our Canada team caught each one before shipping and we have already talked to all the customers effected who are getting priority remakes – in the meantime, we will offer the wrongly customized swords as scatch and dents and one off’s.
In the spirit of full disclosure, here are some of our batch 30 blunders..
Doh, customizations were correct except the ito – should have been purple.. A decent looking sword though, and excellent quality. Priority Remake being done for the customer.
Saya was right, but the ito should have been red on this one..! Argh.. Priority renmake, I don’t know if this a crash hot color combination, if we sell as a scratch and dent it will be a low price.. Priority remake in progress at the forge for the customer.
Customizations were perfect on this one, but white using two pieces of rayskin is standard at this price point, the customer agreed it ruined the appearance – especially on a leather wrap. So its being remade as we speak at the forge, sans rayskin gap (rayskin is super expensive, so they use every strip rather than throw it away. Understandable, and ok for the LITES maybe, but not 3.0 Katana)
Otherwise though, the majority of batch 30 should all be shipped out by this weekend – and some of batch 31. We still have a handful of swords that did not clear customs that we are still working on and those Aikuchi Tanto that should be leaving the forge this week, so don’t worry – while we are super busy managing it all, rest assured that we are on the case and no one has been forgotten and no orders lost. We have a pretty good system of tracking everything these days, and the overall quality just keeps on getting better and better..
As long as I don’t allow any more exceptions that is! (we will have to look at some option for fully customized swords that is OUTSIDE the batches so it doesn’t effect them. But for now, please don’t ask for any options that fall outside of what we offer as standard – it has a nasty flow on effect that messes up the system we have developed over the years and hits orders batch wide).
In other custom Katana news, batch 32 is well underway, as are the priority remakes seen above, and there are only 12 more days before batch 33 closes, so as usual we are super busy. But the new Canadian sorting and inspecting team are doing a great job, they go over each sword with a fine toothcomb checking for defects or customization errors – so while it slows things down a bit, the end result is a sword with an unheard of level of QC at this price point. Hard to do, but worth it when we hear from a delighted customer who gets so much more than they expected..
Got to get back to it all – looking forward to getting these straggler batches 30 and 31 all sorted out for everyone. I think you will find, they are worth the wait..
– Paul
