It has been many, many months in the making. Ever since my trip to Pangasinan, the Philippines back in March this year, I have been anticipating this shipment – four of the swords that impressed me most from my visit, now available for the first time and beyond my wildest expectations..
Here is a pic I took of 3 of the 4 swords during my visit to the Forge:
And here is a pic taken just yesterday of the swords ready to ship in all their glory..
As you can see, stock is quite limited as BCI is not a factory churning out hundreds of swords a month, but rather a bit of a ’boutique’ sword forge that specializes in truly hand forged blades that are in a league of their own.
So without any further ado, here are the 4 new swords in all their glory – in stock and ready to ship.
Highly recommended, get in on these while you can as they take so long to make that it will be at LEAST another 5-9 months before they are available again ANYWHERE (we are the only authorized re-seller for these swords, you simply cannot pick them up anywhere else)..
Right now, there is a bit of turmoil for the forges that make traditional Chinese swords for our Forge Direct Project.
Earlier this month, there was a big shakeup of the domestic industry over there. 90% of the time swords made by our Master Smith are for domestic Chinese customers, usually wealthy business owners, who want a Longquan sword for personal and cultural reasons. But this month, the Chinese government effectively hamstrung the traditional Chinese sword market by banning transporting swords domestically in the mail and via any couriers…
It will not be until the end of October before the effects of this are truly known and understood by the traditional Chinese sword making community over there. And indeed, discouraged, our own Master Smith who makes the Forge Direct Chinese line for us has decided to take his annual holidays from now until October – meaning that any orders placed now will not be fulfilled until early to mid December..
This puts us in a bit of a tricky situation – and the easiest solution is to temporarily remove all Forge Direct Chinese Swords from our store until he gets back to the forge. But instead, we made him an offer – if we can work together to provide a massive discount on the Forge Direct Chinese line to make up for the extended wait period and give him a nice boost of orders for when he comes back, well – it would be a win-win for everyone..
So here is the offer – 25% off the entire Forge Direct Chinese line until the 10th of October, after which we will temporarily put a hold on all new orders for Forge Direct Chinese until the effects of this domestic shipping ban are fully understood.
Because the future of this part of the sword market is now very uncertain, we STRONGLY recommend that if you have ever had an interest in historical Chinese swords – NOW is the time to secure one.. How long a forge can survive when 90% of its business has been stripped away overnight is very much in question.. And while I do not have a crystal ball and am not saying that this will be the last time we will ever be able to offer these swords, that future is a distinct possibility..
As stated, the only downside is that work will not commence until the forge re-opens in late October. But the upside is the huge 25% discount – and the possibility that after this promotion – we may not actually be able to offer these swords again.. (like I said, this is not 100% – but it is very possible that if the forge is forced to change direction and make swords purely for export – Chinese swords like these will become almost impossible to procure)…
Just a quick update on the SBG Custom Katana for everyone – Batch 41 finally cleared customs and is en route to the sorting and inspecting team. There has been a bit of an unexpected hiccup – the swords were shipped from the forge in 3 boxes and somehow they all got separated and cleared customs at different times, but the reason for the delay right now is that 2 of the 3 boxes were sent to British Columbia instead of Manitoba, which if you are familiar with Canada is over 1,000 miles in the wrong direction..!
They are being re-routed and should arrive early this week – however the sorting, inspecting and shipping team don’t rush things and ensure each sword is thoroughly inspected for any defects, incorrect customizations and other QC issues before final packing and sending, so it is likely that the swords will not go out into early October.
As soon as possible after we confirm that the swords are all in, we will open up on new orders again for batch 42 – which will be the second and FINAL batch for 2017 (And Batch 43 will be delayed by Chinese New Year, so after batch 42 closes, the next batch may be 4-5 months away).
I will do my best to update everyone here as soon as I get confirmation that all the swords are finally in and the team commences the inspection process. In the meantime, thanks to everyone either waiting on a sword from batch 41 or waiting for batch 42 to open up for their patience.
There probably isn’t much point making a lengthy post about them here as there is only one of each available and I have priced them BELOW COST for a quick sale to get back the money invested in them to date..
So without any fanfare or further ado, the first of the scratch and dent items is a custom pommel version of the $1,000 Haiyantang Zodiac Jian.
A truly stunning beast of a blade with master smith folded 1095 carbon steel, double fullered blade with central ridge-line and top quality brass fittings – it was let down when the polisher must have got distracted and missed a small section of the tip..
Anyone with basic sword sharpening skills should be able to fix this up pretty easily – and for this blemish, we are offering a whopping 30% discount, plus FREE WORLDWIDE SHIPPING..
And the second one is not even a scratch and dent item at all, but was returned because the customer got confused about how to assemble the accompanying steel pole – and by the time we figured out it was just a case of trying the other way to attach it, it had already been returned and refunded. So here it is ready for a quick sale with a 25% discount and is now just $525, saving you $175 and no 4-6 week waiting time..
Both of these items are listed here in the Hot Specials Section – but at these prices will not be there for long. And while you are there, now is the last 48 hours of the Forge Direct Prototype recreation sale – and once finished, they will not be coming back – so plenty of great specials right now, but one way or another, all will be gone within the next 48 hours..
Following hot on the heels of our Ryujin Custom Katana special offer, is the cream of the crop – our Master Smith Forged blades by Forge Direct..
The premise behind this special offer is simple – we are offering HUGE DISCOUNTS on recreations of the original prototypes I designed to test out what the Forge was capable of..
The Swords you see in the review are EXACTLY what you can get with this special price offer – optimally balanced and capable of truly amazing cutting performance on a wide variety of targets at both ends of the spectrum..
Now while the designs are optimized and the themes were pretty carefully thought out – both prototype recreations come with one custom option.
For the sinister looking Prototype 1 Katana, you can opt to leave it as is with the default tsuba or change to one of 4 other designs that I feel allow the option to personalize it a little, but do not hijack the theme or overall feel of this sword.
For the massive O-Katana (which, if you read the review, you will learn is nowhere near as cumbersome as it looks) – you can opt to get the original brown with gold leaf decorated saya or one of 6 other saya designs that work well with the existing color scheme.
Based on normal industry pricing, to recreate these swords would cost $1,549 for the O-Katana and $1,400 for the Katana – but as you know, the everyday sale price is $999.99 and $899,99 respectively – and this is exactly what it would normally cost to have these prototypes remade, as they were both made using listed custom options for both of these designs.
But because sales are slow this time of year, and we can lower prices at the forge by standardizing the production, we are cutting our profits to the absolute lowest price they can go and offer the swords for just $699.99 for the Katana and $849.99 for the O-Katana.
Here they are in all their glory:
Prototype 1 Normally $899.99 special price now $699.99
Prototype 2 The OKatana, normally $999.99 but on special for $849.99
And don’t forget, these discounted prices include:
FREE WORLDWIDE SHIPPING!
The only catch is that we can only offer these swords until the 14th of September, after which time the deal needs to be called off in preparation for Christmas orders – so if you love fully functional and traditional style Katana, you really should check this deal out..
As you can see, stock is quite limited as BCI is not a factory churning out hundreds of swords a month, but rather a bit of a ’boutique’ sword forge that specializes in truly hand forged blades that are in a league of their own.
