OX AND HEIFER

[Scott M. Rodell]

... seems to me that this piece is also ... of a very good quality, ... quite rare for a niuwedao. Am I right, or is it just a good polish?

No. The polish brought out what was there, but, in fact, most Chinese swords are of very good quality. Look at it this way, making a poor quality sword would be like making a poor quality rifle. There is a certain, small range of quality that is acceptable, anything less & the weapon will break quickly. These swords were all purchased by some one who expected to need it to fight for their lives, if you were in that situation, what quality would you buy?

Where quality can suffer is in the finish & decoration. And there, we often see Ox Tail dao that are on the crude side, but this isn't limited to this blade form.

[Olivier D.]

... seems to me that this piece is also ... of a very good quality, ... quite rare for a niuwedao. Am I right, or is it just a good polish?

No. The polish brought out what was there, but, in fact, most Chinese swords are of very good quality. Look at it this way, making a poor quality sword would be like making a poor quality rifle. There is a certain, small range of quality that is acceptable, anything less & the weapon will break quickly. These swords were all purchased by some one who expected to need it to fight for their lives, if you were in that situation, what quality would you buy?

Where quality can suffer is in the finish & decoration. And there, we often see Ox Tail dao that are on the crude side, but this isn't limited to this blade form.

Yes, sure, a good quality sword is certainly a good quality life guarantee .
But as I was thninking Ox Tail Dao was sometimes of a poorest quality than more ancient blades (Qing military liuyedao or even yanmadao), I was expecting to see much less blades of such a quality for Ox Tail sabers. I'm just very pleased

Thank you for answering