1. Valor 9
2. Martial Arts > Practice Swords
3. SKU VL-270009
4. UPC: 648566221707

Editorial Review :

- Sword Tai Chi Wood 36" by Valor, model 9, UPC 648566221707, in Martial Arts Practice Swords, Weight = 0.76 lbs.

Customer Review :

Good beginner sword - highly recommended

I am very pleased with this product. It's lightweight and attractive enough for a novice practitioner of Tai Chi like me.

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Awesome. Great buy!

I bought these sword so that I could have representations for a sword fight in a drama. This product met and exceeded my needs. The product arrived 1 day before it was scheduled. The seller was both prompt and courteous.

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Great Sword

The sword is sturdy and good quality, especially for the price. Shipping was phenomenal. Easily Recommended.

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Exactly right for an unusual task

I use this product for medieval horsemanship demonstrations. I do use it for striking light objects, and although that is heavier work than it is designed for, it does fine. However, if you should happen to make a mistake and end up falling from your horse on top of one of these swords, it will break harmlessly - I was not injured when this happened despite falling directly on it from five feet up. It is just right for what I do.

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1. Length is 40 inches
2. Two piece handguard included
3. hardwood red oak

Editorial Review :

Beautifully crafted to resemble a real samurai sword, this hardwood red oak sword is great for practicing techniques without the danger of using a sharp sword. Length is 40 inches. Two piece handguard included

Customer Review :

Good for solo practice

First of all, I want to say that boken are not meant for sparring. If you want to spar, then buy shinai instead. These are for solo practice, to build strength and technique. For that purpose, their quality is pretty good.

The two that I received had slightly different weights, so they're not exactly interchangeable. The slight difference in weight can mess with your perception of your strength and you won't get the right feel if you interchange between them. Use one for proper practice, and the other as a spare or something.

The tsuba, however, are useless pieces of trash. They don't properly fit, and you're better off without them. It's not like you need them anyway.

The grip is completely wooden, so just be aware of that.

Overall, I recommend this product because it's inexpensive and gets the job done. If you really want to improve your skills, I suggest trying out a suburito.

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Review

Great quality, very strong wood, perfect shape and weight... I will keep buying these for practice

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BAD PRICE FOR SHIPPING!

Ok, i didn't even buy the product, but the shipping is 10$!! Your not getting 2 for 1, your paying the same price!

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Worth the money...

I have an 11 year old son who is facinated with Japanese culture and weaponry (who isn't?). I bought these for him to get a feel for Bokken and to possibly get him some higher end models when he gets used to using these. When I received them, they were more sturdy than I'd expected them to be. These bokken are very solid. I was basically expecting to receive a couple of "sticks", to be honest, but I was impressed with how these bokken look and feel.

For the money, I would say that these are a very good buy. Especially if you are buying them for a child or young teen. I could see where they could possibly be cracked or broken of used in intense practice, but I think they would definitely hold up to some light sparring and technique practice.



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fun for a week...

these were pretty fun for the week i had them...but they broke near the tip...

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More reviews...

1. You get 2 Bokken swords - The safe way to spar with friends
2. 40" Overall Length Wooden Katana Samurai Practice Sword
3. Substitutes for a real blade in several martial arts training
4. Black Finish, Made of Red Oak, includes removable hand guard
5. Low Price

Editorial Review :

The Bokken is a training sword, used as a relatively safe and inexpensive substitute for a real blade in several martial arts. This 40" Bokken is an ideal practice sword to safely practice your sword skills while protecting your self and partners. Constructed from hardwood and includes removable two piece hand guard. Great for training!

Customer Review :

Err...

These were the worst to train with.. I had trained with them on the first day I recieved them.. THEY BROKE!!!

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A brief comment

These black wooden bokens are okay but I prefer the ones with the natural wood grain still visible and with a light colored stain. Also, the "purple oak" ones that seem to be common from Brazil these days don't seem to be as sturdy as the Japanese white oak, although they're okay too. I say "purple" because they look like they're stained as a gimmick, but it's hard to tell unless you're a good woodworker (which I'm not).

In some ways I prefer the suede-covered Kashima Shinryu style straight, suede-covered shinai for this sort of training than the boken, as you can still break a bone with a boken, but a shinai is much safer, and the Kashima Shinryu ones are even covered with suede. But they're straight and not curved, which is different from what most people are used to, but what the hell. Just goes to show you how involved just getting a good training sword or boken is these days.

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well made bokkens

the bokken themselves are nice the tsuba that come with them are plastic and don't fit well,if you do decide to use them it's nothing a little glue won't take care of.

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there ok

i have to agree with the last review, i prefer the non colerd ones to, i have been useing the same bokin for about 2 years now and have got into alot of fights with it ( with my freand that is 24 years old). it finally cracked after awile but i still use it

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1. Overall Length: 30.00"
2. Blade Length: 18.50"
3. Blade Material: Polypropylene
4. Handle Material: Polypropylene

Editorial Review :

Authentic Kashi wood Bokkens are still used today, but are becoming quite costly. They also have the disadvantages, being made of wood, that they may rot, crack split or splinter. Cold Steel’s solution to these dilemmas was to design a synthetic substitute, low in price and impervious to the elements.Our Bokken and our new Wakazashi Bokken are made of the heaviest grade polypropylene available and closely duplicate a real Katana and Wakazashi in length, size, weight and feel. While they’re not quite as rigid as wood, they have the advantages of being virtually unbreakable and remarkably stiff and cut resistant.

Customer Review :

The Best for Your Buck

Once I bought my first set of these Bokken, I knew that there was no turning back to old traditional wood and bamboo practice swords. Wood breaks easy...but these things a virtually unbreakable...i have literally beat it on a steal pole and had zero damage to the bokken. It has very easily allowed my students and I to go full force/ full contact while training and not have to worry about if the bokken will break and perhaps hurt someone. Great product, recommend it 100%.

Rating :

Great For Sparing

they don't break, when me and the other students train with the old wood bokkens we find that they are yes great, but when i brought my cold steel bokken in and tried it out after i had gotten it i took not to the fact of they are flexible on contact, the grip can be ruffed up more with sandpaper if you like a ruff grip that is. i found with this bokken over my wood bokken that it was lighter then i thought it would be more like a live blade but less like a wood bokken, in my personal opinion of it not great great for endurance drills so that your arm muscles use the weight of the wood in both the cut and the ready stances to build up for a live blade and the faster cut with the live blade from using the wood bokken, but as i said this is very minor difference that most that buy this as there first bokken will not know. i still have and use my wood bokkens for drills and solo training, but when it comes down to sparing i use this do to the fact of i have had a Japanese White Oak bokken shatter on me that was a $50 dollar bokken, and everyone thinks that price is everything... i will NEVER give anything 5 out of 5 to be honest, nothing is perfect, but this is really really close to a VERY good all around bokken.

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Even better than I had hoped!

I am very pleased with the quality of this training bokken. Good weight, excellent tsuba that fits quite tightly. Takes and gives a strike with ease. I much prefer it to the wooden ones I have.

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it broke but...

i had this bokken for 3 weeks before it broke as a martial artist the first thing i wanted to do was "test" its durability to know its limits before i used it. the first thing i did was spar. I gave my friend a real sword and i used this cold steel boken. i have to say i was suprised that it didn't get cut in half, the real sword broke after the 5th sparing session and i was pleased at the way the sword handled during hard training. it's very cut resistant and i broke 9 cinder blocks with this bokken. so think about it. the reason why it broke was because the 10th cinderblock that i hit....i hit with the top part of the bokken right below the tip, the cinder block crumbled and the bokken snaped in half. I was using a technique called high horse. it delevers an impact 2X the body weight of the user. i wiegh 250 pounds so thats 500 pounds of direct impact on a small surface area plus the power i can deliver with the swing itself, which is an additional 500 pounds of pressure. all in all this weapon is great!

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wow,this thing is tougher than I thought it would be

I am a custom knife collector/user and actually own a fairly expensive differentially tempered clay hardened sword, but have no sword training or experience so I can't pretend to rate from that angle. I actually just figured it was an interesting thing to buy and it is cheap. Additionally I felt it would be nice to carry on my neighborhood walks with our Maltese puppy, since my neighbors cat was recently killed by a stray pitbull..

First off this thing is fairly flexible,,,side-to-side at least..Not to the point that you can feel it if you swing it, but it flexes fairly easy with your hands and you can easily bend it over your knee,however it does slowly bend itself back pretty straight. It also was a bit lighter than I hoped..The bokken itself seemed perfectly straight and very well finished..It comes with the plastic Tsuba,but I didn't put it on.
The blade has the general beveled shape of a katana, but is very oversized(as any bokken is)

At this point I was a little disappointed with the weight and flex, but for $30 not bad plus I do not plan to spar with it anyway. I figured that I may as well try a quick test to see how easy I could dent the blade since I read other reviews saying it would'nt dent(I didn't believe that, but I was to be suprized)..

I first hit a small crown molding board and obviously no damage..I figured this bokken only cost $30 so I decided to try and damage it. I have an old railroad tie in my back yard.. It is a bit old, but still is pretty darn hard..

It was dark out so I took the swings without checking for damage right away..first off I turned the blade sideways and hit the corner of the tie dead-on pretty hard..I then hit it 4 times on the tie corner with the "blade"..I hit it hard enough that after 4 hits my hands hurt too much to continue...I really hit almost full force and figured that the hard corner of the railroad tied was putting dents in the sword so I quit and walked in the house..

WOW,,there were NO DENTS or sign of any dings at all..The only sign of the impacts was scuff marks on the plastic..literally only scuff marks, no scratches could be felt or seen..NOW I WAS IMPRESSED..I got my flashlight and checked the railroad tie,,THERE WERE DEEP DENTS IN THE CORNER OF THE TIE !

So much for my worries..I now look at this thing in a much different light..It would seriously put a hurt on a person or a vicious dog..plus it does not look like a weapon and even if a cop looked at it it actually looks and flexes like a innocent flexible plastic stick..

It is not a "club" by any means and is light enough that it would not feel to dangerous, but this will no doubt keep the stray pitbull away from our puppy and could probably break ribs..plus it's light weight does'nt get to heavy on long walks.

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More reviews...

1. Traditional Black Boken
2. Wooden Practice Daito
3. 40 inches overall
4. Katana style Sword
5. Practice, Training and Sparring

Editorial Review :

This 40 inch black traditional daito is an ideal practice sword to safely practice your sword skills while protecting your self and partners. Constructed from hardwood and includes two piece handguard. Please note that these practice items can still cause serious injury or death if not used properly. Two piece hand guards may vary in color.

Customer Review :

Good deal

Bought a pair of these for my students too use. They are of good quality and well worth the price. The seller shipped them quickly and in good packaging. Highly recommend this product and this seller to everyone. I will be doing business with this seller for future martial arts equipment. Well done!!!

Rating :

Great for practice

I didn't expect this to come with a laced grip on the hilt, though I don't mind too much. The bottom of the grip slips off every once in a while (nothing glue can't fix). All-in-all, this is a great tool for practicing swordsmanship. Though I haven't tried it in sparring, the sword works quite well for solo drills.

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Excellent for sparring

This practice weapon handles very well and feels comfortable in my hands. Its weight in my hands is very comfortable. And I am able to execute all my movements easily with it.

It is worth the price of purchase.

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Worth every penny

Easily one of the best quality martial arts items I've found. The weight is incredible and the lettering was a nice surprise and excellently carved. Lastly the cording on the grip was exceptional. I would highly recommend this to anyone on the fence about a practice sword to buy.

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Good for 1/10 speed...

With all things considered, i cannot see this boken being made out of descent wood. Within 5 minutes of sparring(3/10 speed), the boken was already splintering, badly. There are also many manufacturing flaws, cracks in the finish as well as the base materiel. Lastly the guard is pretty shoddy. The vibrations made from contact caused the cheaply made plastic to snap in half.

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More reviews...