Chenness Cutlery "Shura" Test

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I am purposefully not going to say much about the look of this sword. There are reviews out there that tell you more than I can. If you really want to see one then take a look here. Suffice it to say that it is impressively made. The finish is good and the sword is very attractive. That out of the way let's get on with the real thing.

The purpose of this review is to see quite how sturdy the blade of this sword reall is. Chenness claim that this is through hardened 9260 steel, which, if heat-treated properly can make an extremely resilient piece of steel. Obviously if it is heat-treated badly it will be no better than a stainless steel wall hanger. The important question is which is it?

I started the day by cutting a few 2 litre bottles filled with water mainly to get my eye in and to see how the sword feels when swinging. As you would expect from any decent sword it had no trouble dealing with these. I wiped the water from the blade and moved onto a cardboard tube. Five smooth cuts later I examined the blade.

Not a scratch. I expected it to cut without much of a problem but I did expect the finish to suffer a little from the cardboard. Not a mark.

The easy stuff out of the way I moved onto something that should provide a little more resistance.

Wooden batons. 1 inch by 1/2 inch to be precise. I cut through five without really feeling it and checked out the blade. Scratches! At Last!

I gave the blade a wipe over and then realised I had wiped the scratches off. I gave it a quick polish and yep... you guessed it. Back to it's lovely finish.

Having realised that this sword was going to perform pretty well I decided to step up the cutting material one more time. The choice this time was a hazel sapling approximately 1 1/2 inches across. The cut went cleanly through. The blade remained unmarked.

 

Ok. Now I was beginning to get frustrated. So far this sword had resisted any attempt on my part to make my mark (pun intended). Now it was time to step things up. The next target was a board of plywood. Just over half an inch deep. I cut three times, each going approximately three inches into the wood.

 

Having learned my lesson I decide to give the blade a polish before checking for scratches. There was one! For the first time something had actually damaged this sword. It was only one scratch and not a big one but it felt a huge triumph.

Now I knew I was going to win. I set up a length of 2x4 and attempted three times to cut it. I didn't manage, in fact I didn't make much of an impression on the wood at all. I guess this was as a result of my poor technique as the sword suffered nothing but a few light scratches that would easily clean off with a little elbow grease.

 

Now onto armour. I wrapped the hazel sapling from earlier in butted maile and cut into it twice. On both cuts the maile burst and the sword cut into the wood below.

 

The blade did suffer this time. Not as much as you would imagine but there was some definite chipping and deformation of the edge

I don't have enough plate armour to be able to afford to slice it up so the next target was an old steel gate post. Two cuts, both bit into the corner of the metal causing a significant amount of damage.

 

Both cuts caused damage to the edge of the blade, but not as much as I would have expected.

This damage did at least allow me to see the grain where the chips had come out. As you would expect from a well heat-treated blade the grain was small. Tiny in fact. Another sign of the high quality of this blade. Having reached the point where the blade was suffering more damage than the cutting targets I moved inside to the vice.

I clamped the kissaki in the vice and pulled the tsuka until the blade was at approximately 45 degrees.

The sword straightened instantly back to its true alignment and so I decided to try 90 degrees.

Again the sword returned to true without any problems. At this point I decided to stop for the day. The sword had exceeded my every expectation and I was loathe to push it any further. It shows that not only is this a beautiful sword but the heat-treatment is nothing short of brilliant. It cuts supremely well and even after all the abuse it was subjected to suffered no damage that would not polish out without a trace. Tomorrow I may take it back to the forge to see quite how much damage I have to dish out to finally break this sword.

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