Just a quick update for those customers from batch 17 who have been waiting patiently for the boxes to be made, even though they were a day late with it I am pleased to advise that the boxes are FINALLY made and that some tracking numbers will be issued to everyone shortly (though it may be a day or two after Christmas).
Thanks for your patience – I’ll be in touch with everyone individually soon.
– Paul
This is definitely extremely frustrating – the last few batch 17 Katana are stalled due to a very annoying issue..
While most swords have been shipped out, a couple of weeks ago we ran into a problem with the shipping boxes. As you probably know, the swords are shipped within a form fitting styrofoam box shown below:
The problem is that we also need to ship this box with an external cardboard box, but the company that makes them for us ran into a delay and then seemingly got overwhelmed by the general Christmas rush, so the most recent update we have is that the boxes will be ready by the 22nd of December..
To say this is extremely frustrating is an understatement, and while we have shipped or are in the process of shipping several swords that were intended as Christmas presents via Express on our dime to cover it, the last few are still stalled and all we can do is keep pushing this company to hurry up and deliver the boxes..
Anyway, I truly am sorry for this delay – we are doing our best and once all the smoke has cleared I’ll be looking at some ways to try and offer something more tangible than just an apology to everyone who ended up waiting longer than expected.
– Paul
Things have been SOOOO busy the last couple of weeks that while there has been a lot going on, I simply haven’t had time to update it all properly! But as there have been some very newsworthy things going on, an update is defintely due..!
First off, we are now completely out of stock on the Dojo Pro Katana – however even though it will be too late for anyone who wants one of these to give (or indeed receive) as a Christmas present, new stock plus all the new models mentioned in a previous blog update should land sometime around the 15th of December, and if you saw some of these models you’ll know we are all in for a treat..
Cheness Cutlery are also pretty low on stock at the moment, with only a handful of models in stock but their restock should be coming in towards the end of the month (again too late for Christmas darnit! Lol).
But with all this talk of Christmas, plus the fact that we have almost zero stock of anything at the moment (as you may know, the SBG custom Katana orders closed quite some time ago too) we decided to partner up with Hanwei again and offer a truly amazing deal on one of their recently discontinued Raptor models..
As this unique model has been discontinued in favor of more generic designs, this is indeed your LAST chance to own what is effectively the earliest style of ancient Katana – in time for Christmas and at an exceptional price. PLUS it is also available with Ricky Chen’s exclusive sharpening service for an additional $59.95 – taking it to a whole new level at a total price that is STILL well under what it normally sells for (plus free shipping, and a free DVD!).
Check it all out in our Hot specials section here
And for those of you who are interested in something a little more exclusive, along with batch 17 we also received a special order we placed with the forge for some SBG exclusive blades – the first one has leather ito, a rattan wrapped saya and solid bodied, T10 tool steel blade as below:
And the second one is FOLDED T10 tool steel with real hamon, bo-hi, copper fittings with real silver and gold plating, and a battle wrap tsuka as follows:
Both are available on the main page of the store and also listed in the SBG custom section (for obvious reasons) – but you can also read some more about them and see some larger pics over at the dedicated SBG Custom Katana blog (which of course also gives you the most up to date information how things are going with the forging of batch 18 and final deliveries of batch 17).
Still have quite a few emails to get around to so had better wrap this up. Post again soon..!
Paul Southren
Well, the batching process for batch 18 took a little longer than expected..! The amount of correspondence was pretty hard to keep up with (I answer each and every email personally), but apart from a few emails which I am still trying to find the time to answer batch 18 is locked down, the forge have all the instructions and will start work within the next couple of days (there was also a lot of formatting work, cross checking and double checking to make sure that everything is exactly as specified).
Batch 17 is currently around 20% shipped, with another 50% about to update with a tracking number in the next 2-3 days and the last 30% should go out approx 1 week afterwards (rest assured, my agent and I are working overtime to make sure these go out ok).
At the same time we received with batch 17 a very special delivery of ready made swords from the forge. While the timing does indeed stretch our resources to the maximum, I had to get the main ones listed though batch 17 orders get priority shipping (which messes things up for offering these in time for Christmas, but my priority is on servicing EXISTING customers)..
Because of all that is going on at the moment I don’t have much time to post a lot about them here just yet, but they were previewed in the most recent edition of the Sword Buyers Digest so I’ll just add in a couple of quick large size pics (click for the full size pics) and give you the link if you are interested.
You can find both of these listed on the SBG Custom Katana page here
Sorry for the ultra rushed post, there is more going on behind the scenes than you can poke a sword shaped object at!
– Paul
Just a very quick update – batch 18 has just reached the forges maximum production capacity and over the next few days I will be reviewing each order, formatting them and batching them together to send to the forge.
I am still corresponding with some of the customers who ordered within the past couple of days and will be ensuring that all orders are properly addressed before we send them all through to the forge, so if you have an order in at the moment and wish to make any last minute changes before we lock them in NOW is definitely the time to do so.
I’ll post again once everything is batched up and we are good to go – apologies to anyone who missed out on this round, hopefully most people were able to get theirs in quickly enough.
Got to get back to it – if anyone has any questions please email me as usual and I’ll do my best to get back to you as quickly as possible.
Looking forward to bringing these cool designs to life (and there are some VERY cool designs in this batch!).
– Paul
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