April 6th is ‘D-day’

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Hi everyone,

Well, I have confirmed that April the 6th will be ‘D-day’ for last orders on batch 19. And a new timer is up and running to commemmorate it!

If we ‘overheat’ with a sudden stampede of orders I will hit a kill switch too cool it down for a day or two while I continue to talk to everyone via email as I don’t want someone to miss out because they have a lot of questions. So if that happens I’ll post here and explain what will happen (as I refuse to take on more orders than the forge can handle).

Batch 18 hasn’t quite come in to customs yet and may be a few more days before it hits customs, so I’ll post again on this shortly too. Customs usually takes 7 days with our swords and we do have to jump through a few hoops, but we do our best to comply with whatever they need and do not envision any serious delays (it’s just a pain – but my agent is gearing up to process them as quickly as possible without missing anything important during the QC checks).

Incredibly busy right now, but as we want to try and get all orders in to the forge as quickly as possible after the 6th please note that the window to make adjustments to existing orders is closing, so if you want to make a change you will need to let me know ASAP. And as paypal echeques take 3-5 working days to clear, at this point I’m afraid that from the time of this post onwards, echeque orders will be refunded once they clear as we cannot afford to hold up the current batch.

Ok, got to go – I’ll be in touch again soon!

– Paul

Batches 18 and 19 – Where we are up to

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Well, it’s only been a couple of days or so into accepting new commissions for batch 19 and already we are at something like a third of the forges maximum comfortable production capacity (for obvious reasons, we don’t give them more orders than they can correctlty make within the 90 day target timeframe), so if orders progress as they have in previous batches we will start to batch up all the orders on 5th or 6th of April (current guesstimate only).

To make sure that as many people as possible get their orders in before we close off I will soon be putting another ‘countdown’ timer thingy at the top of this page, but this time counting down until orders close..

To help with the heavy workload at the moment my new assistant Karyn Thomas has been helping process the orders as we go and is doing a great job. While Karyn has been trained in every aspect of how to process an order when it comes in and record it’s unique custom combinations in the format we have developed with the forge, she isn’t entirely familiar with every aspect of the product line, so in the meantime I am getting through as many emails as possible, double checking the orders and coordinating batch 18 to come in (which should be just about to reach customs now, I’ll check on it again after this post!).

Anyway, I’ll post again once the countdown timer is on and when we have some more news on the incoming batch 18 – but in the meantime please bear with me if my email response times are a little slow, I do each one personally and am not the best typer in the world (I’m probably hitting backspace at least 50% of the time! Lol).

– Paul

NOW taking new orders!

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Hi everyone!

Just confirming that the timer has counted down and we are NOW officially accepting orders for the SBG Custom Katana series! Yay!

The previous batch to this one is on the way to my agent in Canada and will take a few weeks to arrive, and this batch will take a few weeks to collate and send to the forge – so if you have been waiting for this batch to open NOW is definitely the time to get your order in.

If previous batches are any indication, we will reach the forges maximum production capacity within the next 2 weeks (and even though we do our best, there is ALWAYS some people who miss out simply because we wont ‘bite off more than we can chew’ and order more orders than the forge can comfortably handle) – so there is still a little time to ask questions, consider what customizations you would like or make some changes. But the sooner you get your order secured the better.

I’ll be updating again about the previous batch (18) shortly, so in the meantime, happy designing!

– Paul

Custom Katana and Shipping Module

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Hi everyone!

I’m in a good mood because after 2 weeks of trying to get the new shipping module to work in EVERY situation it should I am pleased to say that it is now 100% operational!

Because SBG has several different shipping rates – for example, across the board free shipping in the USA, some free shipping in Canada and some at $30 per sword, and then international shipping from locations in the USA and Canada, the system had a lot of trouble adapting to our unique shipping cost needs.

But now, you don’t even have to think about it – if an item cannot be shipped to your destination, it won’t let you accidently order it and will display a message telling you as such, otherwise – it just calculates the shipping based on where you are and what you are ordering, just the way it SHOULD be (but anyone who has worked with computers for a bit will know getting a computer to do something the way it SHOULD be is like pulling teeth!).

Anyhow, I’m really glad this is working properly now – and none too soon either. Because the other reason I am in a good mood is because batch 19 of the custom Katana is about to open orders within the next 24 hours!

With new options, new tsuba and lots of people waiting in the wings to get their order in, it’s all very exciting – read about it on our dedicated Custom Katana Blog here

Thanks all! As we are really about to go into “custom Katana mode” please be sure to visit the other blog frequently because it is where all of the real action will be over the next couple of weeks or so.

– Paul

As the clock ticks away…

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…I’ve been busy adding quite a few options in preparation for batch 19. And I must admit, I am pretty excited by what has just been readied..

First off, the blog itself has been restructured slightly – you can sign up to be notified when there is a new post towards the top, there is a search box to the right which will search through both the site and the store for any SBG custom Katana related questions – the countdown to Batch 19 ticks away at the top of the blog, and quite a few other tweaks of one kind or another (better internal linking, a page with bigger pics of all the components, etc).

But the real meat and potatoes added is a brand new page which lists no fewer than 80 new tsubas that we can source for an additional $20! Check them all out here:

Special Order Tsuba List

If that wasn’t enough, due to frequent requests, we have added two new major options to the extras line up – blade and tsuka extensions! (though not both, as to do so creates a sword that sticks out too much from the others and cannot be batched effectively).


Tsuka’s from 12″ to 14″ long for those with big hands or who just prefer a longer handle, from $20 to $30 extra depending on length.


Blades from 30″ to 33″ long (O-Katana) for an additional $20 per inch added.

You can see both options listed at the bottom of the SBG Katana order page here.

Add all of the available options now together and I really have no idea just how many possible combinations there are! But no doubt about it, Batch 19 has more variety than ever before – I really look foward to seeing the designs people come up with!

Ok, well, that’s enough for now – plenty more behind the scenes preparation that needs to be done over the next 4 and 1/2 days to launch, and still several hundred emails to get around to, so sign up to the blog notifcation list to keep abreast of it all! 🙂

– Paul