Shodan Katana
--The second payment is in!!  For 3rd degree Black Belt in AJJ, the candidate get a full diasho,  a smith named Jason Dingledine will be creating the two other blades for me and we will be mounting them in shira-saya.  We have decided to do the wakisashi in forge-folded, and the tanto in sanmai.  Jason has finished forge folding and grinding the blades, be sure when you go to his site you visit the news section to see a pic of my wakisashi and go to his new forum too.  Check out his page: Tiger Claw Forge

Jason has begun my blades, here are some pics of him forge folding them.

As stated on my "A Warriors Affirmation" page, it is tradition in my style of JiuJitsu to receive a katana (Japanese style sword) upon completing the test to become first level black belt (Shodan).  When it came time for me to go get ready for this experience, I wanted a little more than the standard store-bought samurai sword.  It was my desire to have a custom piece of art made, that I will be able to hand down to my children when the day comes.  I began my research on swords on www.swordforum.com, which (at the time) was little more than 3 pages of information and a huge discussion board.  After reading a ton, I finally decided on a sword smith to create my katana.  His name: Randal Graham.  I commissioned Randal to forge a custom katana for me.  His swords are very highly sought after, and and I got in under the wire, before he made a price increase to his blades that would have made him way out of my price range.  A blade such as mine, without the inscription and in plain shira-saya mountings would run over $2000.  After seeing his work, reading everything I could about him, and securing most of the funds for the sword, I sent him the money.  These is something about holding a hand-crafted blade, the look, weight, feel and balance of it is incredible.

Above you can see the original kanji design for the tang rubbing.  Randal completed the engraving and (as per my request) did a rubbing of it.
Click here to see it!