Angus Trim Type XIIIb.3 Arming Sword Review & Test Cutting ft.  

Absolutely. The experience of visiting Gus is probably worth more than the sword itself, and this is an amazing sword!

One of the best weekend I've had since I got into swords!

Many thanks! You are always so kind!

Thank YOU for watching! Gus always outputs swords in incredibly handling!

Thank you and glad to be of help! The Balaur Arms Templar sword is going to be the deal of a lifetime. The craftsmanship and the handling/performance rival that of high-end swords that sells for 3-4 times the price. They usually re-stock every 3 months or so at Kult of Athena. It's a smart move to back order, as they might sell out the moment they come back in-stock. Hopefully you will have a great time with the sword!

Thank you! I remember seeing your description of it being easily worth that of swords 3 times the price, and the fact LK Chen made it ( was going to buy the Flying Phoenix but wanted more of a cutter than a stabber). Its my first sword, and i would be honored to have it even displayed in my house👌 your review, Dlatrex and Matthew Johnsons’ were very informative. You respond to comments very quickly and thoughtfully, a sign of great quality. Enjoy this beautiful Atrim, my next addition has to be the atrim XIIIA ❤️ 🗡️

A sword made directly by Angus Trim would be an heirloom quality acquisition! You can never go wrong with Gus!

@@FortuneFavoursTheBoldUpdate: New Sword Day! Kindjal arrived this morning, less than 2 weeks overall and it feels amazing! I easily thrust through a 2 Liter 7-up bottle, and it was left stuck on the blade like a piece of paper 😊 for a 17 3/4 blade, it was even singing in the air with proper edge alignment! I purchased the devils edge Damascus variant, it could last a lifetime with proper care. After emailing KoA this last Saturday, they immediately sent it out, and even shipped the Templar Sword! Might make a few videos later on ;)

@@Matt-df8kd glad to hear that! Hope you thoroughly enjoy the sword.

Absolutely true!

Thank you, Masaru! Indeed in the late Edo period, many sword owners traded their family heirloom away as it was erroneously deemed as representing antiquated ideals, which was a grave mistake. Swordmaking in itself is a form of art, and thankfully, starting from the late Showa period, advocates from organizations such as The Society for Preservation of Japanese Art Swords promoted the traditional tatara making process of tamahagane and supply only to the remaining swordsmiths in Japan, which were few in number in the 70s, but since then the popularity of Japanese sword has picked up dramatically due to the proliferation of pop culture, video games and the Internet. I think today a healthy number of shinsakuto are made each year in the mostly traditional method in Japan, although the facilities are inarguably still better than merely 1-2 centuries ago. I think that breathes an air of relief as traditional Japanese swordmaking gets to be preserved as a form of art as many other craftsmanship such as kimono making.

Thank you, Andy! If you have the opportunity I recommend visiting Gus’ workshop on the strongest term, or maybe at a convention (but due to the nature of conventions you might not get as much time to chat with Gus personally as you would at his workshop), and pick up a few swords from him. It’s pure magic. The way they handle as just insane. And yeah type XIIIb is under-represented on the reproduction market, Albion doesn’t even have one for their Next-Gen line, and every other subtype has multiple models. One would have to go to the Museum-Line to pick up the Tritonia, which is a massive single-hander that’s easily a two-hander in size. It’s impressive and imposing but I’m afraid that it’s just not the favorite single-hander to handle. Gus solved that problem by having more than a dozen different models for type XIIIb and they all handle quite differently yet each one handles like a dream in its own way.

Ahh well that’s the schpiel anyway.

Good call. Atrim swords are magic in the hand. I 100% recommend them to anyone who’s in a sound financial situation and enjoy handle swords in any way. Type XIIIb, Xa, and XVIII are certainly some of Gus’ favorite subtypes for single-handed swords.

You must make the pilgrimage to the Holy Land of North American sword making, brother. Each one of us must.

Thank you! Any fellow sword friend would absolutely enjoy the Atrim experience at his workshop.

@@FortuneFavoursTheBold also Heroes of might and magic soundtrack! I see you're a man of culture

@@TarpShooter The Ocean theme of HoMM3 fits Gus' work perfectly well, especially for someone based in Pacific Northwest.

I just got it today so it’s coming soon!

It's the best sword to complete my Oakeshott Collection!

Yes indeed. Type XIIIb is a strong candidate for competition cutting, unless the tournament incorporates thrusting challenges, which have been done in recent years. You wouldn't think steel sourcing is a problem, but many makers have reported in the past few years that they've had issues getting hold of steel from suppliers they used to work with. Supply chain issues I suppose. But also, Chinese steels are just way too competitive in terms of cost. Their quality isn't necessarily the issue, but the consistency of the chemical composition affects the heat treatment.

@@FortuneFavoursTheBold "Their quality isn't necessarily the issue, but the consistency of the chemical composition affects the heat treatment." Well, consistency is quality. We were making good steel and swords since the Roman times, but that was 1 / Large Number. Being able to do that consistently and trusting the end result is what allowed us to make thinner and thrust centric blades (kinda my point in the evolution of the blade types). So foreign steel is to blame, but not in the sense of foreign is inherently bad, but in the sense that a lot of the responsibility towards the end customer is lost at the border (i.e. overly long international supply chains that obscure responsibility to be more exact). And in 99% of cases this is fine (why commerce works the way it does), unless you want to do things like bending the steel while keeping it strong (i.e. fine control of tempering process), as with blades. And let's be honest, we are into a hobby, cost is a thing, we are not NASA to test every material we use (if even they are doing that). Btw, yes, I've heard others manufactures complain about steel issues in the last year or so (in US and in Europe), which is why hearing we have steel issues is so infuriating to me. Uncertainty affects small manufacturers, but I bet even Windlass, the largest sword manufacturer in the word, is a small entity when it comes to steel.

You are correct in your statement but that's not really what I was saying, so let me clarify about this. What I meant about inconsistency isn't that sometimes the steels are of good quality, and other times the steels are subpar. The inconsistency is the slight differences in chemical composition, which means that the steel presented as the same type one can get from a supplier might NOT be one type of steel or from the same mill at all. So one can speculate that (without expensive lab tests we can never have the concrete evidence to prove this) what's being sold as 5160 spring steel by an American steel mill in the Current Year might be what's labeled as MN65 in China, or C60 in Russia. In itself, each of these steels is NOT bad IF and ONLY IF heat treated following the manufacturer's guidelines, because their chemical composition differs from AISI 5160 slightly yet still quite similar, but since the people use these steels don't know their exact composition and heat treat guideline, using heat treatment prescribed for 5160 might cause warping or other problems, but not necessarily. The problem is with the suppliers of steel, not really the source mills, or the blade makers--if that makes sense.

@@FortuneFavoursTheBold I understood your point, we are in agreement: they are not steels of the same composition, which matters in the tempering process, even if they have the same overall properties. But that's what I'm saying about consistency being an issue (and yes, historically, the consistency was due to different reasons, due to steel overall quality; that's maybe where I went wrong in my post). Iron is quite a complex material (by accident, I saw a scientific talk on this a decade ago that stuck with me). It has a series of metastable states that can be access via the variation of temperature (a small stable valley on top of a hill; you need to climb the hill to go down the small valley on top; and there are multiple of these hills of different heights)... not all are useful, and some are more useful than others (because they radiate blue, red, yellow, purple glows when hot, so blacksmiths were able to use them intuitively as a tale of the state that can be achieved before we knew physics). But the metastable states are close to each other, and they can even overlap, which complicates moving from one state to another, and why how you reduce temperature matters in deciding in which state you stabilise in (i.e. properties you end up with). Add in impurities (i.e. everything else that's not iron atoms in the steel), and we shift things around depending on the type of impurities (and there are a few phase transitions that separates steel from cast iron and so on). So that's the problem with the control depending on impurities. At this point, from what I know, we have not mapped all the metastable states, but we do know quite a lot. So the fact that we somehow ignore all this in present day commercial practices (because some overall indicators are the same) is perplexing to me after we have spent a good time trying to understand steel. In industry and construction, I suspect that people care about tensile strength and mechanical properties and not so much about the heating control we associate with tempering. Since the finer points associated with standards are probably lost between international markets (US, EU, Japan, China, Russia have their own type of steels), we are in the situation we are now. And we shouldn't be. We can do better (which is why I'm irritated by this). It is unreasonable to expect end users to do a chemical analysis of steels, that's why we have standards. But traders have put low standards in place to facilitate trade (in trade accords and the like), so that's why I say that responsibility is lost at the border (or lost in translation of national standards if you like).

The problem isn't so much that the standards are lost. The heat treatment guideline for each type of steel is there, but they need to be disclosed to the customers (who are the blade makers in this case), so they can follow them. What's shady is that different steels of foreign origin are presented and sold as a commonly known steel in the US--partially to avoid any stigma of using spooky foreign steels, because the middlemen deem their compositions to be "close enough", and the results of the rigorous industrial-grade heat treatment tells us otherwise.

I'm leaving the majority of them to my family. Some I might entrust them to donate to certain collections at museum. I have thought about being bury of my favorite sword, but then it deem it a waste. The best kind legacy is what you pass onto the next generation.

My swords are pretty much gonna go to my friends and GF. I figure they can keep whichever ones they like most and have them as pieces to remember me by. I have also instructed them to bury me with my favorite. I love the idea of an archaeologist randomly stumbling upon my grave a few hundred years from now and thinking I'm some medieval noble. Then being very confused when they date the sword and my body 😂

@@UnsheathedSwordReviews It will trigger some intense debate in the archeological community.

I’m glad that you think so, too.

All of Gus' swords handle like dreams, in their own unique ways. Some will speak to a given swordsman more than others. And this particular one speaks to me. It's a wonderfully fast slicer yet still has authority that can be easily dished out without a lot of output of force or commitment.

Haha, I’m well aware.

For most of us, these were direct purchases from Gus himself. You can contact him on Facebook, which is linked in the description of this video. Sometimes you find second-handed ones that are basically brand new or used but resharpened in which case they might be sharper.

@@FortuneFavoursTheBold Cheers!

It’s heat blued so it’s fairly durable. However, it only provides limited rust resistance for steel fittings. If you neglect oiling the steel parts they will still rust over time, albeit at a reduced rate.

@@FortuneFavoursTheBold I see, thanks! I don't have experience with heat blued parts (I thought it was the usual chemical one).

@FiliiMartis it looks more natural than a chemical one. Historically bluing was often done with heat, too. It also has a chrome hue, which looks great under the right lighting.

Exactly right!

That is the typical British Columbia. English Bay and Howe Sound.

@@strydyrhellzrydyr1345 haha, Debra and Kiana are wonderful!

Thanks!

Hahaha, absolutely true. It will make you feel like a sword master.