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Submitted by: Roberto Rodriguez - Strongblade

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Hello, My name is Roberto Rodriguez and I'm a managing partner at Strongblade. I really like this site and the work that's being done here. I wanted to clear up a few items about our site if I could. First, I'd like to say that we offer just about every class of sword, from Stainless Steel wallhanger to Performance Series Cas Hanwei Katanas. We are dealers for CAS, Windlass, Frost and a number of other vendors, and we make some of our own swords as well. The sword we make have typically been non-tempered, historically accurate high carbon steel swords. I tend to disagree with you on the point that they are not 'real' swords. We've had thousands of customers who were extremely happy with non-tmepered swords. Many of these eventually trade up to higher quality swords. Now, about the rat tail thing... No one wants to listen to this, but most great swords have 'rat-tail" style tangs. The true definition of a "full-tang" is one in which the tang actually forms the grip itself, like on a steak knife, or some katanas, or the sword you see in the movie "Stardust" held by Tristan. Rat-tail means that the tang tapers into the grip and then thrads ontot he pommel. Many people confuse rat-tail with a welded rat tail, which is a horrible way to make a sword. The welded rat tail is just an extra piece of metal that gets joined to the sword at the shoulder and breaks very easily. That said, we are releasing a new line of tempered swords made by Strongblade. We'll have four new ones by December of 2007 and another 5 by June of 2008. They will be very affordable and will be heat tempered for those who want it. Otherwise, please feel free to buy some of our Windlass or Cas swords if you want a higher end, higher priced sword. Thanks very much for listening!

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Submitted by: Paul Southren

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Hi Roberto, Thanks for dropping by. I think that the terminology rat tail tang is a bit misleading by what you are referring to. A rat tail tang is generally thought of to mean one of the welded things - as thin as a rats tail... What you are referring to is simply a threaded tang, in other words a properly tapering tang that you will see on Darksword Armoury, Angus Trim, Windlass Steelcrafts, etc swords. You might want to change that terminology as it tends to get some people thinking the wrong thing. :-) Hope this helps anyway and look forward to see some of the new tempered swords in the future (your site looks great by the way). - Paul

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Submitted by: b&g Miron

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below is a direct quote from strongblade.com..........we don't think we agree........and we don't think tangs should be "lumped" together..........we own 10 katana & probably 10 or 15 tanto(we like tanto, i guess) and NONE of them have threads on them or in them anywhere, the tangs go almost the full length of the tsukas & we never had a problem disassembling any that we have worked with......is he talking about european style swords or something?.....we went to the site as well & well, my granny used to say "if you can't say anything nice" & we think you know the rest.....................and now, the quote ""Another thing to look for when considering the blade is the tang. The tang is the tapered rear-end of the blade that the hilt wraps around. The tang usually tapers into a fairly thin strip of metal, and can either stop halfway through the hilt or continue all the way up to the pommel. A tang that stops halfway is called, for very complicated reasons too technical to get into here, a "half-tang." These types of tangs are generally a very bad thing to have in a sword, as any real pressure applied on the grip can cause the hilt to break. An exception to this is in the katana family, where half-tangs are often used with no threat of hilt breakage. Half tangs are sometimes welded to another piece of metal that travels from the midpoint of the hilt up to the pommel. Sometimes this piece is actually a part of the pommel. Either way, this is usually a recipe for heartache. A "full-tang" or "Rat-tail tang" is a tang that goes completely through the hilt and attaches to the pommel, usually via a threaded end. Technically speaking, the term "full-tang" actually refers to a tang that is itself the hilt, with the grip built directly onto it. But for this article, we'll lump full-tangs and rat-tail tangs together. Anyway, true "full-tangs" aren't really as good for swords since you can't take the hilt off and inspect/oil the tang (which is a good thing to do from time to time). The "rat-tail tang" is usually the standard on a typical sword""...........we think this guy is mixing marketing tripe for what he sells and a bastardization of the actual facts of standard high quality blade construction............and everyone, remember, this is our opinion & we are getting old and if we have offended anyone...........bite us.......we hope this was helpful.

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