GWXT Bamboo Samurai Training Sword Hand-Made Training Sword for Iaido Kendo and Japanese Fencing 40" (Nature)

I received this today so I can’t comment fairly on durability, sturdiness, etc etc. What I can comment on is my first impressions of this “sword”.I bought this for two reasons:1: I purchased an el cheapo anime type katana that has a bamboo blade. I was rather surprised as to how well it worked in my practices of iaido, and kendo no kata. Normally I’ve been practicing with a live bladed katana or a heavy Suburito.2: I bought that el cheapo anime katana to keep any mishaps from occurring with my dog. He’s usually very good about “giving me space” when I’m training but he’ll sometimes reposition himself without my knowledge getting within contact range of my blade. I do have a dulled katana I sometimes use but still, the lesser of the two evils is him getting hit with a bamboo blade instead of a steel one.Okidoke…so that anime bamboo bladed katana has one bad flaw in that when changing directions it feels like the “blade” is going to snap. That said, I have to slow down blade swing during directional changes and that ruins the flow.So I ordered this one in the hopes that it’d manage directional changes better for one thing, and it’d be of a better quality than that anime katana since it costed a lot more.The fit and finish are excellent on this! It’s definitely of better quality than that cheapo anime one!Except in two areas.1: The tsuka(handle). Mine has these naturally occurring dark stripes in the wood on both sides of the tsuka. It absolutely clashes with the “non-striped” saya (scabbard).2: The kissaki (blade tip). Mine was ground down to where it looks like a clip point (Bowie style blade shape).For the price of this I wasn’t expecting the blade to look like that. I could (maybe) overlook the drastic difference in appearance between the tsuka and the saya…but that “clip point kissaki”…there’s no excuse for that considering the price. I mean, the el cheapo anime katana bamboo blade was done evenly.Aside from that, the overall fit and finish is done very well! It rattles a bit in the saya but has a nice retention of the sword. I wanted to give this a three, maybe two star rating but in all fairness I think that’d be too much of an “emotional rating”(yes I’m disgusted with the tip of the blade!) as opposed to an intelligent one.If the blade grind was at least straight, and the tsuka wood matched the saya, this is definitely a five star bamboo bladed sword based on fit and finish alone.

Overall much better quality than I expected. Very fun to use practicing kata or just swinging around. Seems sturdy enough - I swing using full force and so far have had no issues. Definitely cannot swing against other bokken!

Excellent quality and craftsmanship

Bought it for my grandson. He loved, Very light. Perfect for learning the steps and swings for maunerability.