Hi guys,

First off - welcome to the new SBG Custom Katana blog! This blog was primarily designed to update existing SBG Custom Sword buyers as to the status of their orders, but also to advise when we will be opening up for new orders - as well as information on other SBG custom Katana projects in the works.

Anyway, the meat of this post is to update customers who placed their orders between the 17th of October to the 5th of December 2008 - because as you know we are running behind schedule due to New Years and then CHINESE Lunar New Years Celebrations, plus a whole heap of other delays and complications that we have thankfully sorted out (it hasn't been the easiest project, I can tell you!).

The blades of all of your swords are now well and truly finished, and we are now just waiting on a few components to come in to finalize the mountings in your custom selections. But while we are waiting, I thought you might like to have a quick peek at what has been going on.

First off, the actual forging:



Followed by the filing and shaping of the blade:



And finally, the polishing and sharpening - all done by hand of course:



So now, all we have to do is get them ALL mounted up (some have been done already, but unfortunatley to be able to offer them at the price we did, we have to wait for them all to be completed before shipping) - quality inspected at the forge, and then sent by air to by agent in Canada.

This is pretty much on track with my last email update to you - but again, my apologies it has taken so long - I did not anticipate the disruption the holidays would have on production, or the necessary pause to help to the forge implement a Quality Control system to ensure that each sword had EXACTLY the same components as ordered (no-one has really done this kind of thing before, sometimes being a pioneer is a bit of a headache!).

But hopefully we will have them all mounted up in march and get them moving to my agent in Canada for final sorting and shipping.

Will keep you posted!

Paul Southren