Hanwei Cutting Jian?

[J HepworthYoung]

My HCJ arrived yesterday.
It was nice to finally run through some basic cuts with it.
Not actually test cuts, just some Michuan basic moves.

I did cut a 3/4 inch rose bush stem with it and slashed a cardboard box for a washing machine.
The rose cut was very clean and the edges of the cardboard cut had very little tearing.

The edge geometry and the handling are choice.

Being a perfectionist the lines on the grind could be cleaner. Not faulting the design here, it is just that the central ridge of the blade is off center by almost a centimeter(7-8mm for about 1/4 of the blade length on one side of the blade. This really affects the vibrations and resonance of handling and I worry that the lack of balance might create unequal stresses in the blade with hard target cuts or during high speed passes through soft targets.

I wonder how much the grind can be non-symmetrical before the sword becomes failure prone?

Also the general tilt and angles of the fittings are slightly sloppy, but do seem very sturdy.

Considering it is a production model and not a custom work, the faults in the manufacture of the sword are acceptable. After all it is a low end model designed for functional purpose so doesn't need to be made to meticulous standards.

My sword arrived with the Taiji Notebook for Martial Artists.
I like the book far more than the sword! And I do like the sword.

***
I just looked that the lines again, basically the center line of the spine is perfect on one side of the blade, right down the middle, but on the other side, when the blade face up, the entire center line is actually off center and to the right. Because of the taper it is off center by about 7mm near the handle and near the tip it is only about 2mm off center.

This shape is clearly a stock removal/grind issue and not the result of a forging process. Hopefully it is cosmetic, but as I mentioned, this off center grinding does affect the way the blade resonates and vibrates.
So while I love the design, I find the manufacture to be consistent for the less expensive Hanwei swords, my Adam Hsu jian has very similar grind issues, though the lines are cleaner on the Hsu Jian the fittings came with the same sloppy angles and the sword is far less sturdy. Sighting down the blade also shows the Hsu Jian to have a rougher profile, despite the smooth polish on the blade.

I've never seen a Hanwei sword that was not a low end model. If the more expensive models are the same workmanship with just folded steel laminate blades and more expensive metals for the fittings, then I'll pass.
However I did not but my sword to be pretty, so if these flaws are just cosmetic then I got my moneys worth. Frankly I have not cut any sturdy thing with a blade that was ground like this and I am actually a bit afraid to. I think that the blade will twist under kinetic stress and don't want to find the point this twisting results in shrapnel.

[J HepworthYoung]

SANY0212.JPG (75.29 KiB) Viewed 226 times

This is the sword.

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[Scott M. Rodell]

Back from Australia, between seminars, I need to trim my little bamboo grove a bit while I'm home...

[Scott M. Rodell]

Got to say, bamboo is such a great target material. You can use all the different parts of a stalk for different cuts, right down to low,leg level, liao cuts, one right after the other.

Here's a low liao to a 2" diameter old growth bamboo stalk with my Hanwei Cutting JIan...

[Scott M. Rodell]

Friday evening I was up in New Jersey for another Chinese Swordsmanship Seminar at Ziran Martial Arts (http://www.ztaichi.com/) & got together with the students for a pre-seminar test cutting practice. Most were first timers or very green & were using Hanwei Cutting Jian literally just out of the box. I was quite please to see how well they cut (both the students & jian).

These Hanwei jian are not as sharp as most one the market, that is they are not ground to a flat diamond cross section to a 6000 grit finish, but they still cut very well. Thinking about this on the drive home, I was reminded of something Paul Champagne once told me when we were discussing sharpness & cutting efficiency*, he said, "You could sharpen an iron bar with a file & it would cut mats..." The more cutting I do, the more I find myself questioning much of what we thought about blade sharpness in relationship to cutting. It is not that a very sharp blade doesn't have its place & doesn't help when it comes to specific aspects of cutting effectively, such as getting a good bite on the target, but overall, experience is showing that blades do not have to be extremely sharp to do the job.

*see the thread: Edge Sharpness Vs. Application http://forum.grtc.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=327

Here's a student practicing a thrust with the Hanwei Cutting Jian...