In a purely practical sense (durability, value, ergonomics, etc.),

>>32774659
Bad.

>>32774659

True answer- it's been said many times before- the value of a blade is, in part, dependent against what you're fighting against. If you're fighting unarmored soft bodies then yeah any sword is going to cut, but the important thing is when armor comes into play.


Here's the thing about a sword. It's a tool. Just like a hammer, there are different, specific types of hammers for different, specific types of uses.

A katana is no different. It's designed to slash and stab. It's designed to be used by people who have been trained for it their entire lives.

The one edge has certain advantages and certain disadvantages as well.


In terms of practical use,
I mean I wouldn't suggest that you buy one for home defense.

>Durability - Low Tier
They're cheap metal folded one gorrilian times to make up for shit quality.
>Value - Bottom Tier
Overpriced as all hell because of weeaboos.
>Ergonomics - Mid Tier
They're pretty comfy to hold tbdesu. You know, until you get your fucking hands cut off.

Archaic weapons have a rock paper scissors on crack thing going on. Katanas are good against wood armor and cloth. So... pretty much shit.

>>32774682
In a word, yeah they're kind of bad.
Fairly short reach and terrible hand protection. They do cut fairly well and have some ability to thrust ok too, being made by bad tempered manlets they also don't weigh very much and fairly quick.

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bamp

I'm not a weeb and usually I hate the nips but I remember seeing an episode of mail call where they compared a european short sword to a katana against plate armor

The katana could pierce (in a thrusting, stabbing motion not in a slicing, swinging motion) plate armor while the european shortsword could not.

I'm also pretty sure just like any weapon you can get a $100 pos katana made in china that would suck dick or a real authentic high quality hand forged japanese one for ridiculous amounts of money

Honestly in terms of practicality though just go with whatever feels best when you swing it. I personally wouldnt spend money on a sword though, axes are way more practical and less expensive.

>>32777096
sage, heres the video but in all honesty I would take it with a grain of salt
youtube.com/watch?v=EDkoj932YFo

>>32774659
Depends on the scenario.

The katana was designed to overcome the fact that the Japanese didn't have very quality steel. It's exceptionally good at cutting through unarmored foes, and is also decent at thrusting.

However, it's also got very poor durability. Someone using a European longsword, for instance, could just hit it on the side and permanently bend or even break your sword. As a result, it's difficult to guard yourself with, which is why samurai had to spend most of their lives training.

Overall, it's a weapon designed for a specific context that got massively overhyped by weebs.

>>32774659
The guard is pathetic and useless, the blade is fat and mediocre at thrusting because of it, has no pommel, historically made of shit materials, blade is only one-sided disallowing a variety of cuts, and it's edge requires a lot of maintenance to keep sharp which it needs to be.
It's very good at cutting down unarmored and unarmed peasants and shorter variations are good at killing yourself

Katana
>durability
Lol no jap steel sucks. The $50 chink thing you bought at the mall is going to be even worse.

>value
Hey if you want one cuz Asian cartoons go for it but don't think your a ninja. It's going to be shit for anything other than looking at.

>ergos
Bad to shit


There are good edged weapons but a 60s leaf spring out of a old Chevy cut and sharpened with a paracord handle will be light years better than anything fags on /k/ planing on buying. Yes it's heavy but if you worked on you body that would be ok.

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>>32778180
>>32778180
>leaf spring
Is that you, Lanius?

>>32774659

Look, the problem here is that the anti-katana circle jerk is totally pervasive and no virtually no one who talks about swords understands ANYTHING about metallurgy, so the answers you get amount to autistic screeching.

The katana may very well have been shit to use against European swords, I am not qualified to judge, but what I can tell you is that Katanas tended to be quite well made compared to contemporaneous European swords.

First, the idea that Japanese steel is shit is only half right. Japanese steel starts off as shit because the Japanese lacked blast furnaces and thus had to rely on the tatara method of producing steel.

However, the sword forging process--while extremely labour intensive--was perfectly capable of ending up with very good, consistent steel for each part of the blade. Modern day metallurgical testing of katanas has shown that--on good quality swords--the steel was forged into being relatively pure, with its alloying elements evenly distributed and a decent microstructure.

It's also a complete misconception to assume that the katana was shit because it was differentially heat treated (I.e. only the cutting edge was hardened to high hardness). Differential heat treatment is still commonly used today on large blades meant for chopping and works well in maximizing the toughness of the overall blade relative to the hardness of the cutting edge.

The main advantage Japanese sword production had at that time was a heat treatment protocol that enabled much finer grained control over quench speed, and thus the attained hardness and microstructure, than the air or oilsand quenches used by Western sword makers at the time.

Basically, because Japanese sword smiths used clay painted on the blade to control the quench rate and allow water quenching, they could very finely adjustable the quench speed by making the clay thicker or thinner.

>>32774659
>>32779265

In practice this meant that high quality Japanese sword could have cutting edges hardened to the 60 HRC range with good consistentcy in the cutting edge portion. This is quite a bit harder (and more consistent) than most even high quality medieval European swords).

Of course, medieval Japanese swords were designed for slashing through unarmored bodies, and thus a harder edge, the blade profile, and softer core all suited that design intent. This can actually be seen pretty easily today in that you can make a replica of a katana in differentially hardened 5160 or S7 and it makes a very good chopping knife.

>>32774659
in all things that you described the katana is bad in them,it is made from japanese steel so its bad.