Category Archives: Store Product Info and Musings

It has been many years since the sword industry has been robust enough to offer something a bit different than a new Katana, medieval Longsword or even a new medieval arming sword. Almost all other designs simply do not sell well enough for the industry to take a risk..

But Kingston Arms are giving it a red hot go with a new Renaissance Side Sword design based on an Original German sword that ticks all the boxes.

• It is sharp – and makes for a great cut and thrust design
• It is robust – 5160 Spring Steel blade with the overall durability Kingston Arms have become famous for
• It is beautiful – from the partially fullered blade to the complex swept hilt design
• And it is economical – at $369 – though even more affordable at SBG for just $289.99 and includes FREE SHIPPING!

Truly a stunning, fast and responsive design – this is a must for every sword collector who is sick of seeing the same old same old..

Click for more information

Now if you will excuse me, it is time to get back to my so called vacation.. 🙂

P.S. In addition to this new sword by Kingston Arms, Cas Iberia have restocked a lot of the popular Hanwei Forge Swords by Paul Chen, including one of my favorite cutters due to its speed, low price and extremely keen edge, the $189.99 Chinese Gongfu Dao.. Check out everything that is available in the Hanwei section here – we list all the items that are in stock first and everything out of stock towards the bottom, so no need to scoll all the way down the page unless you really, really want to..

While I am officially on holidays, there really is no rest for the wicked.. 😉

And with a couple of new additions that I could not help but to update the site and store with that did not quite arrive in time for Christmas as originally expected, I could not resist to add them to our selection of tsuba for the Ryujin Custom Katana series..

Both new designs are more on the traditional and subtle side that the options previously available – widening the appeal of this custom series – the first, a classic Japanese themed bamboo tsuba with real golden gilding appropriately called the ‘Golden Bamboo tsuba’

One side has a plum leaf theme with a sparse plum tree and the other a chrysanthemum and thick golden bamboo shoot giving the tsuba its distinctive appearance and its name.

In Japanese culture, bamboo represents strength, as the roots are so strong as to hold the earth together even in an earthquake, but also has a meaning of prosperity and purity/honesty.

The second is a much plainer design, the Black Crane.

The Crane is a common motif of Japanese, Korean and Chinese culture and in mythology was believed to live for over 1000 years. As such, it symbolizes a long and successful, prosperous life, which in the turbulent life of a Samurai would most definitely be desirable traits!

There is plenty of these in stock, so no problems fulfilling orders for them for at least the next month or so, at which time a general restock is also expected as we have run out of a few of the custom options, but they will all be replenished very soon.

I mentioned it a little over a week ago in my post ‘less products? Well, yes..’ but now the transition that I touched on is complete.

Until about a week ago we had a few swords in stock that were NOT sharpened in any way, notably those by Darksword Armory and a few training blunts by Kingston Arms and Hanwei. But as we often get asked the same questions, and many people seemed confused about what was sharp and what was not, we decided to remove EVERY sword that was unsharpened, so now every blade comes sharp by default.

In the case of Darksword Armory, we also reorganized our listings – focusing entirely on their fantasy sword lines, as very few other companies make decent battle ready fantasy swords, and it is something that I feel Darksword is quite unique in.

But as we also had a lot of confusion about Darksword products, I have decided that we will ONLY offer a sharpened version, and only offer the ones with the upgraded scabbards with integrated sword belts and suspension systems.

As to the sharpening itself, it has got a LOT better after many complaints over the years and is the main reason why we stopped offering it. But now, every sword is given a paper cutting test before it is shipped out – so this was also part of the reason why we were confident to be able to offer sharpened versions again.

And we are also delighted to be able to bring back one of their most POPULAR fantasy swords, the stunning Lord of the Rings inspired Anduril Sword!

Click here for more information

As part of the store tidy up and re-organization, we also changed the navigation to make things easier to find, collapsed a few categories of swords into broader ones (such as we moved all the Viking swords into the European/Medieval section – after all the medieval period is generally defined as a thousand years between the 5th and 15th centuries) and hopefully just made the site easier to use and understand, especially for first time visitors.

As a final note, if you have not wrapped up your Christmas sword shopping yer I STRONGLY recommend you do it as soon as possible. The closer we get to Christmas, the more chaotic shipping becomes, and the higher the chance that someone, somewhere will screw up an order and there may not be time to correct it before the grand unveiling.

That’s it for now, talk to you all again soon!

– Paul

After nearly 6 months of being out of stock, they are finally back just in time for Christmas!

I am talking of course about the European Sword line by Ronin Katana – a line of fully functional, ready to cut straight out of the box medieval and Viking swords that have earned the respect of many in the HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts) community and backyard cutters alike.

Amazingly tough, well balanced and sharp – they are back and looking better than ever. But not only are originals restocked, we are delighted to introduce the Crusader – a two handed Longsword inspired by and decicated to the latter period Knights Templar.

Click here for more info

Since supply cannot keep up with demand, and especially right now with less than a month to go before Christmas hits, now is the best time to get these while they are still here.

Truly amazing value – they really should be priced MUCH higher than what they are selling for. And with price pressure mounting on the industry, and with a huge build in discount – well, need I say more?

See the whole series here

Just a quick general update on the store – for the last couple of days rather than adding new products to the store, I have been going over our current selection with a fine tooth comb to find and remove products that either I have found that are not as good as we first thought, and to do away with our selection of armor, training swords, and blunts..

There are several reasons for this.

One is that most of our site visitors tend to be like me – they are not really re-enactors and don’t seriously plan to train in HEMA or the Japanese Sword Arts, they just want a really cool sword at a good price that they can occasionally cut stuff up with – be it water filled bottles, cardboard shipping tubes, tatami mats, bamboo – you name it. And we have found that after getting the same question time and time again – namely, ‘are your swords sharp, full, tang, etc’ it made sense to concentrate on only swords that fit this criterion.

The transition is not yet 100% complete, but as we never really sold very many bucklers, armor, training swords and gear, etc – and they ended up getting a bit neglected and not properly monitored for stock like we do our main sword lines – to keep it simple we decided to remove such products entirely and concentrate on what we do best.

Battle ready, sharpened swords like the originals.

This way, we can give a clearer answer in the future – yes, all of our swords are sharp, battle ready, full tang, and well tempered.

Also, while I am providing a generalized update, some of you may have noticed that we recently upgraded the store and the main site with SSL security. While our payment processors have always been 100% secure, and this upgrade was not really necessary – the extra level of protection now makes our sites some of the most secure around, and helps to reassure everyone that your information is more secure than ever before.