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Old 07-15-2007, 11:24 PM   #36
Keith Larman
Dojo: AIA, Los Angeles, CA
Location: California
Join Date: Apr 2005
Posts: 1,604
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Re: Need some advice to order a katana

Quote:
Jennifer Smith wrote: View Post
Wow! You guys are great at working out this problem. It is refreshing to hear problems being solved so cleanly and quality craftmanship held to the level of respect that is deserved.

I am glad you 'hijacked' the thread for this.

js
Jennifer,

Thanks for the kind words. For me the issue is that I "do" custom swords and nihonto full time as my career. So when I started helping out with QC and new sword design at Bugei I was pretty adamant about how I wanted things done. The reality is that it isn't any secret I'm doing the QC and I really don't want my reputation to end up resting on issues that come up there. I'd rather have my reputation rest on my work on custom swords or in the world of the nihonto, but in doing the work for Bugei I've managed to put that out on the line there as well. So I tend to keep my eyes open for issues that customers may have. There is a great, huge fuzzy area when we're talking about production swords -- there are reasons why they cost around $1k vs. 5K vs. 10K. I know we can't make everyone happy -- there are those who expect 10k swords for 1k. But everyone's dollar is important to them so we work hard to make sure they get what they want. Not everyone will always be happy. We can't adjust expectation to reality every time.

I must admit I get a bit frustrated to see criticism about things I've not seen or heard about. We can't help if we never hear about it. And these are complex objects involving quite a range of crafts. And as they say, "stuff" happens. Lord knows I'm human and I miss things sometimes too. I get tired looking over that many swords. I do my best but I'm sure things slip through the cracks.

But we are sincere about it. And we hope the customers will let us know about issues otherwise we simply can't address them...

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