Are the damascus swords on katanafire.com any good?

According to the directory of good sword vendors katanafire.com sell good quality swords. On katanafire, all of the swords from their higher end lines are Damascus. These sell starting at around $200 to about $500. However, there's a bunch of stuff on here saying that Damascus swords around this price are really bad. So are these any good then?

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Depends on what you mean by 'good'
by: Paul

Thanks for your question, it is a good one and I understand how sometimes it can be hard to tell where the line between 'good' Damascus swords starts.

Price is indeed a good indication, and generally speaking, the more you spend the better and more reliable the quality gets. Anything less than $300 and you may be looking at an expensive decorative sword. So in general - the problems inherent with folded steel blades made on the cheap start to go away above $300.

Personally I feel that properly functional folded/Damascus steel Katana only really start to kick in at a higher level - such as the Kesshi Katana by the Imperial Forge, reviewed on our site here

Have a look at this review and by the end of it you should have a pretty good idea of what to expect with Damascus steel (I am not suggesting you should buy one of these, but definitely refer to it as a kind of benchmark and to see the limitations inherent with folded steel).

Hope this helps.

- Paul

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