Hunter Katana

The Hunter Katana is built on the Hanwei L6 / Bainite blade in the Shinogi Zukuri style, and featuring superb koshirae, the Hunter is a very desirable and functional piece. The subdued green silk ito and green striped lacquered saya compliment the blackened tsuba with golden accents, featuring a raptor stalking his next prey. Bainite is a structure of high-carbon steel that combines great strength with excellent flexibility and shock absorption characteristics. It has been known as an exemplary Katana blade component for a number of years but its use has been restricted to a few top-class master smiths, due to the difficulties involved in performing the exacting heat treatment procedures necessary for the production of a Bainite blade body in combination with the very hard Martensite Yakiba (edge section) required for Katana blades. Hanwei has now mastered this difficult process, using billets of L6 tool steel (a very tough high-carbon low-alloy steel) as a starting point. Blades are forged and shaped in the normal way, then carefully heat treated to achieve the required Bainite and Martensite structures before final polishing.