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[TheDarkStar]

Does it have a handle and a blade? If so it's a katana. Cutlass? No, katana. Claymore? No katana. Fencing sabre? No, katana. Lightsaber, no - it's also a katana. Cooking knife? Also a katana.

_{I have no idea what actually defines a katana other than it being a kind of Japanese sword.}

[Kot]

Japanese curved, single-edged sword, >60cm long blade, two-handed grip, and a bunch of other distinctive features like the handguard.
Really, if it looks like a katana then it's proably a katana of some sorts.

[Rolepgeek]

If you cannot hold it without wobbling back and forth trying to keep yourself from getting cut, it's probably a no-dachi, aka samurai claymore.

[Tack]

If it's made from two seperate pieces of metal? I don't think any other swords do that.

[Kot]

If it's made from two seperate pieces of metal? I don't think any other swords do that.

What?

[Tack]

IIRC Katanas are made from two different types of steel. The hard steel forms the edge, and the soft steel forms the back. They weld them together before quenching.

[Kot]

Isin't that like... the basic technique of swordmaking? Like, any slightly sophisticated sword is going to be softer in middle and harder at the edges.

[Arx]

Normally tempered in one piece, not welded.

[Rolepgeek]

For Japanese blades, it's also the way it was cooled that produced that effect. (Tempering is differential heating, not differential cooling)

[TheBiggerFish]

Ooh, big thread I haven't PTWed yet.

[Amperzand]

Yep. High quality blades (Basically everywhere, mind you, not just Japan) have different tempers in the edge and spine.

There's also Damascus, but that's different, and also not exclusive to anything much aside from the actual town of Damascus apparently having some interesting impurities in their iron for a few centuries.

[Max™]

Don't be so rough on katanas though, the meme is funny and it's true they weren't wonder weapons and that majority of them were dog shit, but some of them, the expensive ones, were actually pretty good. I am not arguing that it was actually used as main weapon, but there is only so many ways you can fuck up a sharp metal stick and I refuse to belive they were as bad or as good as memes make them out to be. The truth is proably somewhere in between.

No, the truth is they're good for slicing peasants and drawing on a charging Mongolian, that's where it ends. You take a weapon that's used as a shite sidearm, forget how to make it in three dark ages, stick with the same design for 1300 years and what have you got? A shit inflexible sword whose purpose is romanticism and policing

Course, with modern metallurgy you can do some neat stuff. I like the stupid tough tool steels myself. Though I doubt you'll find someone doing that with one of the pretty L6 swords. Nothing magical or mystical or superior about the katana though, it's a toy in this day and age, and those same steels will produce crazy durable blades in any shape you like. Key words being "shape you like", if you like them, cool, if not, cool. All I wanted growing up was a stick I couldn't break, closest I got for years was a fiberglass pickaxe handle that I carved a grip into, until I saw the polypropylene bokkens (which also come in waster form!), still want one of the pretty hickory ones but $20 vs $120 is a significant difference for something I'm going to use for smashing brush out of the way.

[Tack]

Pretty sure you'd have more fun with a machete.

[Max™]

They are fun, but you don't understand: I have found the best stick, the one which breaks all other sticks. This was literally a dream as a child, reinforced each time I found a good stick which ended up breaking later on. Was I a weird kid? Probably, but the scuffs and scrapes and whatnot on that hunk of black plastic make me happier than hacking through brush with a machete has, not to mention: I can break a machete, short of getting tools and deliberately trying to saw through this bokken I don't know how to break it.

[Tack]

True. I grew up at cattleyards where the ol-fashioned length of poly-pipe was a staple. We managed to break a few, but considering the density differences I could see that bokken being a pretty tough nut.

But at the same time, I had more fun with a cane machete going gung-ho on cacti.

Then, the Internet happened.