I Conceptual Idea For Dai-Katanna's

[Kodama]

Sigh... i just typed a large post and then i decided to click on the third link you posted, then everything i typed was gone :eek:

Anyway, Katana are very well suited for thrusting, and not all katana have the same amount of curvature.
For example, katana of the kanbun period have very little curve, here is a good example: http://www.aoi-art.com/sword/katana/05231.html It's nearly straight and it's easy to thrust with a blade like this one.
When i said that the jian is one of the bad types, i was referring to it's mediocre disign, not how well the old jian are forged when compared to any badly made mass produced dao of later periods.
In fact, i was thinking about the tang dao when i compared it to other swords (i probably should have been a bit more clear about that).

Thanks for the internet links, the first one is very interesting, and the third shows something about the percentage of tin used in the blades, thanks again :goodjob:
I have seen the youtube video before but it's just not impressive, many types of swords can do that, the real test comes with harder materials.
It's funny how many people say that cutting a mat is like cutting through flesh and bone, i have seen many types of sword fail to cut through bone (with flesh) when they did cut through the mat as shown on the video.
I have recently seen a documentary on tv (maybe it was on the national geographic channel) about asian weapons including the jian and katana being tested on a human torso made of ballistic gell, have you seen that show?
The weapons involved are all modern, but it was funny to see the results of the test, a floppy dao had a very bad cutting result

About the exported Japanese swords, this happened during the muromachi period, over 100.000 swords were exported to China, i would call that a huge amount of swords :yes:

About western and middle eastern swords (pattern welded or otherwise), i am very familliar with them, i have some antiques =)
And yeah, some of them are very good.

About the "lesser" samurai, they did have very decent armor.
For example: the yukinoshita-do (also known as sendai-do) that the date clan used for all it's warriors is bullet proof, here is an example of yukinoshita do with bullet dents: http://www.toraba.com/gusoku-0701-0492.htm
However, you are completely right about the ashigaru, they could not afford any armor at all... that's why they got loan armor provided by their lord
And the cuirasses the ashigaru used were of a decent and life saving quality, as i said before, the ashigaru weapons are not very good.
The swords and other weapons of the lesser saurai are often of normal quality, but bad and good swords are not unheard of.

The sword picture i showed is an O-dachi, although it also goes by other names.
"O" means bigg, dachi = tachi, so it makes sense that it reminds you of tachi, but tachi are shorter.

Intranetusa, if you wish to talk about swords without getting off topic, we have a Nihonto thread somewhere in the off topic section of the Akavir forums, feel free to continue the conversation there if you want to, you can also talk about Chinese weapons there.

ON TOPIC: here are some more Odachi: http://japantrip.tripod.com/nodachi/odachi_gallery.html

[Intranetusa]

Posted a response in the off topic section.

It's interesting to see that the katanas & dai-katans in TES3 were essentially one sided straight swords, without the curivature of most actual katanas.

the Hoju blade tip looks crisp. :goodjob: