YTread Logo
YTread Logo

Biggest KATANA misconceptions DEBUNKED

Apr 23, 2020
This episode of Chatty Versity has been brought to you by my new chainmail print t-shirts and pants, as well as all-over print hoodies and new Shadow Versity t-shirts, which are tunics with hybrid chainmail prints, they're a falafel amazing, perfect and just show your medieval style. Excited to grab a long sleeve t-shirt or a short sleeve t-shirt that just came out here because it's amazing, it's a historically accurate riveted mail print with high detail made from real, it came out on its own and it's amazing, so if you're interested in grab you one set, there is a link in the description below.
biggest katana misconceptions debunked
Greetings, I'm Chad and I've covered the

katana

in many videos on my channel trying to rule out

misconceptions

but also establish what our eight strengths are versus our weaknesses and the

katana

usually comes up where I casually wander into a lot of different video topics and then I have my entire series of large katanas, but I realized that I don't have a single video that addresses all the

misconceptions

in a concise way, which is what I'm doing in this video. Now, and if you want to go deeper, I have a five-part katana series that covers academic studies on the metallurgical analysis of katanas and all that, which is the proof that establishes all the things I'm going to share here.
biggest katana misconceptions debunked

More Interesting Facts About,

biggest katana misconceptions debunked...

Now I will try to explain these points that I am going through as best as I can and as concisely as possible because you already know me. I never go off on random tangents, but I do my best anyway and hope to make this video. as a kind of reference point that can be used to point out that this is the truth about the katana, so let me say from the beginning that the katana is one of my favorite swords, okay, I love this, a button. I want things to be understood in their correct context and although I love the katana, I hate that people misunderstand it and also put the katana on the pedestal to make it seem like it's better than all the swords in the world, it's not right.
biggest katana misconceptions debunked
The katana is not a magic sword, it is the best land in the world, it is excellent at what it is supposed to do, when put in the correct context of what the katana is made for, what it excels at, it is excellent, that does not mean it is The best thing I want to cut the katana is a beastly cutter is the best cutter in the world well I mean it depends on what makes a good cut okay if you made a sword that was ridiculously heavy and you just needed to put it down. or what cuts something well there, you can say it's the best color in the world, but it would be unruly and you won't be able to use it.
biggest katana misconceptions debunked
Okay, a sword needs to strike a specific balance to be a really good sword. A katana does hit. a decent balance, but there are other swords that can cut better than that, okay, there are other swords that are better, there are all swords that surpass it, certain other things that only the katana you don't know, EXO, it can push, but it's not The best push in the world, okay in terms of how new the bull is and how easy it is to redirect the sword towards other guys who are much more agile and okay, so the first thing we need is to understand and heurize Etana He's not a magical guy. and it's not the best sword in the world, it's a great sword for cutting and what it's supposed to do is pretty rubbish against armor, okay, and in a one on one gem, if you're fighting someone with another sword, it has a deficiency . of hair protection, all I had, but that is the first mistake that arises is that it is not magic, it is not the best sword in the world, the following points I will develop more, but I will just quickly say that steel is not the The best steel in the world is worth the katana.
It is not the sharpest sword in the world. It is not the strongest sword in the world. It is not the lightest order in the world. It is not the sword that absorbs the most blows in the world and this slight curve does not increase the cutting capacity. All of these things I just mentioned are things that I have heard scholars try and claim about the katana and that it is better in these qualities than any other sword. All of those things are wrong and I'm I'm going to explain why I'll start with metal and this is one of the most misunderstood things about the katana and it's usually the cause or reason that people give for why it's stronger, sharper, Lysa and all these things and everything comes back. that was bent 2000 times because that made it incredibly strong in people who say that if you bend steel two thousand times, it inherently makes it better, stronger, sharper, I just honestly have no idea about blacksmithing or metallurgy and I used to say that.
It was the 40s, like when I was a teenager. Everything that was. I was fooled by these documentaries and even pop culture. That's because it's the folding that doesn't work. Folding steel is only necessary if the steel you are starting with has impurities. If the steel you are starting with has the correct carbon content, is the correct grade of steel, and has no impurities, bending that steel will make it worse. When you forge something, you inherently lose carbon content due to the oxygen surrounding all of this manufacturing. all the heating all the scale the scale is the steel that rusts and the oxygen bonds with it, it releases well and when you bend it not only do you have the possibility of trapping scale in the folds, you are carburizing the steel and the more you fold it Steel that already has the correct carbon content, the more carbon it will lose, meaning it could be converted back to iron, so bending steel doesn't inherently improve it.
What it does. It can remove impurities. How do you bend steel? Removes impurities well. This is one if you have non-metallic inclusions in this steel, they have a lower melting temperature than this deal itself, so when you heat this type of block of steel to the point where it doesn't liquefy, the steels and the fiber They look red hot. Well, the non-metallic inclusions have liquefied and when you hammer them and bend them and hammer them, you can squeeze those little pockets of liquid non-metallic inclusions out of the steel and the more you do it, the more you bend it and the more you squeeze it out. to the point that we can get them out of the steel itself, it doesn't remove all the impurities, in fact by bending the steel this way it is impossible to remove all those impurities, you can get rid of the larger pockets of impurities and a decent amount so that it helps purify the steel and then the impurities that you can't get rid of because it's impossible to remove all those impurities with this method, you homogenize those impurities evenly throughout the steel, which means that when you hammer it into a long blade now it means that There is no large pocket of impurities that would cause a fatal point where the blade will break.
Everything is uniform, which means that you can be very sure that the strength of the sword at this point is as strong as the sword at this point. The next thing is that the katana folding method was not folded 2000 times, you can reach up to 2000 layers, but you only need like 20 folds to get there, think about it, one fold you have two layers, two folds, you have four layers, three folds . you have eight layers, four folds, you have 16 32 64, go up well so you can reach the glorious 2000 layers, but not two thousand times, so Kay, if you fold steel two thousand times, you will probably turn it into iron and ruin it, So why do they fold it well?
It's because, like I said, the steel they start with has a lot of impurities and the method is fine. The actual bending method is an ingenious method to be able to take this lower quality steel and it is lower quality. Now people say the tamahagane that a Claridge's steel can have is glorious, no, it's just high carbon, okay, and especially with the technology above, it might be difficult to make higher carbon steel when you work, you didn't understand the perfect processes, but the Tatara did. You are great, you know, a foundry thing that makes Tamahagane Tatara in its most basic state, a great blooming furnace and blooming steel has been known in many cultures for thousands of years before the medieval period, even okay, It's still okay, that's how they started melting.
Iron in the classical period, even with the Romans, is fine, flower forges have been known for a long time. The difference between the Tatara and other flower ovens is that it is big, it is a big flower oven, but that is another thing that proves what I. I'm talking, okay, it's the metal, the big piece of slab of metal that you take out of the Tatara, that's not all tamahagane, they actually have to look at it, break off chunks of steel that has the right carbon content, why ? Because just with any other nonsense, this is all about preliminary furnaces, it doesn't completely liquefy the iron and if the iron doesn't completely liquefy, that means the carbon content can't diffuse evenly through the iron to get perfectly uniform steel. and high quality.
As a result, the steel you are going to get will have a lot of non-metallic inclusions and the carbon content will not spread evenly, and so what do they do when they have this big chunk of Tatara metal? They break it up and look for the pieces of steel that are shiny a little more silvery because the more silvery it is the more carbon content it has and then they really look for what's good in tamahagane which is steel that has the right carbon content, break it down into pieces and keep them together. That's why tamahagane a is always in small pieces and you need to flatten them and put them in this kind of thing to forge and weld them.
Okay, if it was a you know, the turret. made of good quality steel, they wouldn't need to do that. I would already get a good quality uniform disc with no non-metallic inclusions, so pure steel or the right carbon content wouldn't immediately need a binder. to get rid of the impurities and then you can just beat it until you get the length you want. There are many types of steel that are actually better than tamahagane or the steel that katana is traditionally made from because it is a better technology. Crucible steel is fine if you put it. steel in some sort of Cray clay crucible, put it in a Ford that cooks at the right temperature so much that it can actually liquefy the iron, it will diffuse the carbon into it evenly and you'll get a higher quality steel as a result of the right carbon content out from the door if you put this crucible in a furnace that can get hot enough to the point where it will completely liquefy the iron, the impurities will naturally float to the surface, okay, these are pieces of glass silicon and just the other thing is, in general, all these bits of rock soil and everything that melt and rise to the surface, float on top and then the carbon completely diffuses evenly when the result is a pocket that diffuses uniformly in the disk and is gets a lot.
As a result, pure steel of better quality and guess what is this technology that existed in the medieval period. Okay, not everywhere during the medieval period because what people need, I'm saying, both in medieval times and in Europe and in medieval Japan, is that there was good and bad quality, but everyone always takes the better quality katanas, do you know how many poor quality katanas there were, that just bent easily, couldn't hold an edge that didn't have the proper carbon content and we're closer to iron? and steel there was a lot more than people think, sword quality historically was always on a spectrum and the best Smith quality is fine, the best Smiths could make the best quality ones and charge more, but there are a lot of bad ones. well, and people like to compare the best quality katana with the worst quality European swords, but Noah, okay, if you want to compare the best with the best, you compare the best quality katana with the best quality European swords and When you do it. that you're looking at swords that were made from crucible steel that actually made better steel.
That said, although the differences in quality are very small, in all honesty, in terms of actual strength and durability, it has a much bigger impact. As for the strength and durability of a sword, it is not necessarily the steel, as long as the steel is decent, and the steel that is obtained, the resulting steel that is obtained from the process of folding a katana, is decent and the The same thing happens even with glass. seals like the differences between a good crucible steel and the steel that again the katana both are quite good and I would say that the crucible steel is not good, naturally, it is better because it has less impurities and is more uniform and all those things, except the differences between crucible steel and katana, you know, traditional folded steel is so small in regular use that you will barely notice it, okay, you will barely notice those differences in strength with your look, if you could the best, the best , okay, although I think crucible steel is better, you wouldn't really notice the difference, what causes a much bigger difference in its handling and mechanical properties is the quenching stage, okay, the quenching and tempering stage, now the quenching and tempering stage is very important because that actually gives the katana not only its iconic curve but also its iconic hump is the Hammond Hammond line, which is the wavy pattern you see on katanas, okay because the Tanners They traditionally use them when they are traditionally manufactured, as is done by differential hardening, whereThey will make the edge harder than the back.
This contrasts with most European methods of forging swords in the quenching and tempering stage of the year where they have a mono hardness. It is not differential, it is anyway uniform, which is Better, there are pros and cons of both, but one has a huge advantage over the other, which I will explain to you but before I do I want to address some of the others. Next, misconceptions arise that the katana is the sharpest sword in the world and This is related to quenching and tempering because the katana is quenched in such a way that the edge is much harder, they put a thin layer of clay on the thicker edge on the back and sew the edge hardens faster on the back. back, which makes the edge the crystal structure, the martensite edge metallurgical crystal structure, then they have a pearlite which is another crystal structure that is not as hard as martensite, a type of pearlite. jacket with an almost ferrite or iron core, as ferrite can sometimes have cementite lines, making it an inferior quality of pearlite steel, but most traditionally made katanas have three types of crystalline structure, now As a result you have a steel with very hard edges that are harder, okay, they can hold their edges longer, it doesn't mean they are intrinsically sharper, they just stay sharper longer.
You can sharpen a shitty iron to be as sharp as a katana, it will just dull faster, that's the difference now with the misconceptions about katana strength and shock absorption because this is directly affected by the differential hardening that I mentioned before, people assume that because the back edge of the katana is not as hard as the actual edge, that somehow makes it a shock absorber and therefore resistant to chipping, denting and breaking , that's completely wrong actually because the edge is so hard that it's actually more prone to cracking, okay, the harder something gets the more likely the beads are to crack rather than just warp and that's not okay, so that's the first mistake. to break and then people assume that it will be resistant to bending, which is also completely incorrect.
What differential hardening will do and I'll get closer to the camera if you have a harder edge and a softer back is when you get a crack or something that impacts them because remember the edge is much harder on a katana than the others. parts of the sword when a crack occurs and reaches the part of the blade that is softer and there is a very soft inner core in most katanas that is closer. to ferrite and then this type of outer side jacket here is a pearlite type of initial steel, so the crack will go in and stop well, if all of this, this whole sheet was as hard as the edge, that crack will go through and stop will break and so what it generally does, I'm generally not saying that standalones can't fit into you, they absolutely can, but in general, having differential hardening, Katara will tend to bend rather than fit, that's the answer, the The problem is that they don't flex, okay?
They are not springs and to get a spring the entire sword has to be as hard as what the katana says is usually martensite but then it has to be tempered which relieves some of the tension and gives the sword elasticity now that kind of steel is what you will find in the best quality European medieval swords: elasticity, look at the elasticity of my sword and as much more elastic at the tip, it is made to do that because it is a practical, okay, it is purely possible because of the type . The steel that this sword is made of is martensite that has been properly tempted to give it the elastic quality.
Now, if I did this, if I flexed the katana as much as I am flexing this sword, it would stay that way, it would bend. and stay bowed, this is the truth about the katana, okay, it is that they are not as durable as other swords, but they are generally much stronger, so look how easy it is to flex this saw to flex the katana at the same level. I would need to apply a lot more force so it is more resistant to bending it is more rigid the reason it is more rigid is because the stick is facing upwards do you see the difference in thickness in these sores?
I'll try to spin something else if I can't see it as a city, uh, the tip is three almost four thousand at the tip compared to this, which is about one and a half to two thousand thick at the tip, okay, I'll do it. feel, resistant to bending, able to flex, the problem is when the katana eventually flexes although it takes more force to flex when it does that will stay will stay Bend katanas Bend they don't flex back unless you get a modest you many reproductions of modern katanas are not made in the traditional way they are made this way with spring steel because spring steel is ultimately more durable so almost out of necessity katanas must be thicker to resist any bending because when it bends, that's where you get into trouble, so to make it into a functional balanced sword, you need to do a couple of things, the blade needs to be a little shorter because you will have a very thick blade in the tip, if you have it as long as a long sword, it will be too top heavy, let's say.
Do you see here the differences in length between the katana and the long sword, quite different in length, too top heavy if you made a song, having said that there are katanas that are almost as long as a longer sword and they are beastly helicopters , so they are not? completely non-functional. I think they will generally have a slightly thinner tip, but they won't be as nimble as a longsword and it's an interesting trade-off because this longsword, if it were sharp, wouldn't have as much bite. If you cut with the tip like you can with a katana, look, this is one of the adventures that the katana gets.
It's always a bit of a trade-off, since a katana is thick at the top like this, its cuts are devastating even when you hit. at the top end and although the katana is shorter than the long sword, it's okay to get a good effective shaft with this long sword, you will need a swing. Someone is not right here on the blade, but with the katana you can do it. It gets a good cut right at the tip and you don't always need to aim lower on the blade, so in that sense the katana still has a decently good cutting range, but where the longsword really excels is in a thrusting course, okay and that said. that if you try to cut someone you're just out of range, but the long side because it's longer is in range, well you could still cut someone's throat, so even though the long sword isn't as good, we're cutting on the Tip, it can still cut well so it's always a decent balance between the two and remember that the katana is not a horrible sword like I said at the beginning.
I'm just trying to dispel misconceptions, but one of its great strengths is this cutting ability and it is achieved because it is thick, very rigid and resistant to vibration, because one of the weaknesses of a long sword in any sword that have thinner blades is that they are much more prone to vibration and if you hit something with incorrect edge alignment it could vibrate and bounce, or since the katana is particularly resistant to that because it is thicker, I have now addressed the strength general of the katana and the myth that it absorbs impacts because differential hardening is not. blocked absorbent because it's thick but yes it won't flex back so now let's address one of the other myths is that the curve helps with shear ratio and the answer is no it has a big curve ok it can't that I like. barely in a straight line, now you can get cutting ratio advantages if a sword has a more prominent curve, as you know, say how tall was the entire family of Pawar shamshir scimitar type swords, those are correct and very curved, okay, then of course you can do why. draw cards, but the kind of slash you can do with a katana, you can do it with a long sword, you can hit and draw when you're punching and you can also do thrust cuts just as easily and remember the Bailey katana has a curve that It's barely even a straight line, so the drawing motion you can get between a straight sword and a katana doesn't change much.
I tested this with a 3D model in my katana series and the extra cutting ratio is so much PIP it's not even worth it. Mentioning a complete reason why the katana has a bend is actually because of the differential hardening process. Well, because the back is thicker than the edge, there is more steel that wants to contract when you turn off the actual blade, so the blade is first pulled back and curved. forward because this cools down faster because the back cools down more slowly then you pull it and then the katana gets its natural curve so it's purely because of the differential concealment but the thing is you could still make a straight katana with differential hardening if you were to start with a reverse. curve, this is actually demonstrated in one of Alex Steel's videos where he was trying to do a rapier and I was trying to do it straight and I was always curving to one side because I think I forgot what he did with that one specifically.
Made a different pattern on one side, I wanted like a Hamon line or something and I'm sorry the rapier stays straight, you need to do a reverse bend, turn it off and let the cooldown straighten out, straighten it again and you. I can see, look, that's a serious curve and then above the tip like it's a crazy curve, completely unacceptable, it's still bending. I think the gap continues to increase as it cools down. Awesome, right, right, we put a curve opposite to the way it warped like it did in its final part of the cooldown it's still just as curved I wonder if this time it will straighten out though things crossed over well, let's take a look at this thing but it's straightened No, so they kept me down okay and I'm sorry people Who did it big?
I could have done it without the curve if they wanted, it would be a lot more work, so because of the curve, I mean, it looks good and it has one advantage: it certainly doesn't hurt your shear ratio, so there's no point in doing all the I work to straighten it and there is an advantage and that is that the curve makes it a kind of automatic correction in the alignment of its edges and it is simply demonstrated by this if I hold the katana like this and put it down. roll look how it rolls look it will go straight and I'm sorry if you hit something with a katana and the alignment of your edges is wrong and naturally when you hit because of the curve it wants to line up correctly with the edges and then pass and then , because it is also resistant to vibration, that enhances the effect even more, so the katana is actually easier to cut than other swords, that makes it better than cutting, you know, in some cases, okay, It doesn't mean it has the ability to cut things that other swords can't and don't have these properties because all you need to do is hit with good edge alignment and it will go through, which means the katana is easier to cut and Therefore, it is easy to make good cuts. but that doesn't mean it can always cut things than other swords that are good at cutting but have more flexibility and aren't curved or unable to make those swords be able to cover the same thing you just did. be good at that, okay, get a good alignment of the edges and then you can do it so that the katana in that sense is easier to cut and that is one of its advantages.
Okay, cool, you know, kind of a mechanical advantage to its design. it's still a good sword okay I'm just trying to debunk the bull trap and also give it credit where it's due because there are a few other things that make the katana good at what it does and I want to address them right now because I basically addressed all of them misconceptions okay, it's not sharper, it's not stronger, it doesn't mean it's weaker, it's pretty much the same with certain strengths, weaknesses, although it doesn't flex, that's a problem, it's not wider, it's not made of better steel on average and Other swords and the curve don't help its cutting ratio, but it's still good at cutting and I've already addressed some of the reasons why it's stiff, forgiving of cutting, has a sort of automatic thing on the edge. the alignment goes right into it and the other thing is the fact that it now has a single edge, why is making it a single edge any good?
It's not inherently because it has a single edge, it's taking advantage of one of the things you can take. advantage of a single edge and that is the length of the edge bevel, what do I mean? I'm specifically referring to the length you have between the end of the edge and the end of the bevel itself, so I look at this from the tip runs to about that's the actual length of the edge bevel, now compare it to double bladed swords , it's okay, because you need two edge bevels on the sword, the length of these edge bevels is much shorter than thekatana, so the katana has a longer edge bevel, that means It can have a smaller edge, like a narrower and thinner edge.
What do I mean? A type that has a beveled edge like that will cut much worse than one that has something like that. This is a natural advantage that any single-edged sword can take advantage of. advantage that you don't need to know how to shorten the beveled edge to fit another edge on the back end so you can make the beveled edge go all the way, okay make it longer and each sword has a secondary bevel so When We're looking at a sheet, well, this is the beveled edge. Now the secondary edge bevel is the final type of point where it goes into the blade, so you got the normal beveled edge and then right at the tip it curves. a little steeper to the end of the sword, every sword will have that no matter how narrow it may be, but for the design and age of the katana the secondary edge bevel is much shallower than you would have to do on a sword that has a shorter edge bevel and so again, because it has a very small secondary bevel, the edge angle could be much finer, it doesn't mean it can be sharper, but you can get that advantage and still be very robust, for example. againcomparison of long sword or any double bladed sword, okay, if you want the beveled edge to be very narrow, guess what it must be because the beveled edge is not that long, it must be thinner in that sense because the narrower , you make that edge, okay, this is half of the sword.
We're looking narrower. Make it thinner the sword should be and the thinner the sword the more flexibility it will have and that means if the edge alignment is not with you. It may bounce right off the target, but with a well-edged sword, you can get away with having that narrow edge because this bevel is longer and as a result you still have a thick blade, making it very resistant to vibration and bouncing off the targets, so there we go, these have been the main misconceptions about the katana and you know, I think we covered them all, if I missed any, share them in the comments below.
I look forward to reading them, I hope you enjoyed them, and of course I look forward to seeing you. in the next video so until then goodbye

If you have any copyright issue, please Contact