Samurai Swords

Until I saw this on PBS NOVA, I never knew how much work went into making Japanese swords. I actually didn’t even know that they still made them. It was pretty amazing. It took 3 days straight with a bunch of people (without sleeping) to make the steel for the swords. The real good pieces were sent to sword smiths, and others were to be used for kitchen knives (which is somewhat ironic, given that no one will ever actually use the swords for their intended purpose, whereas the kitchen knives will be used for real.) The sword smith with his team of people spent days pounding on the steel. It was then shipped again to be polished for 10 days straight.

I kept thinking that they would have to charge like $100,000 for each sword to make financial sense. I wonder how much they go for. I couldn’t find any prices for brand new swords, but I found this nice gallery.