Saotome Kiku Duo

The Saotome Kiku Duo matched pair offers both a Saotome Kiku Premium Iaito, and a 100% matching Shinken with 12stage polish! This pair allows you to have a perfectly matched pair of swords, one blunt for practice, and the other fully sharpened Shinken!

This katana is a strong member of our Premium grade Iaito product line. It offers notable improvements over the Budget grade iaito, mostly in the fittings, and detail. A rock solid sword, featuring both our top quality High Carbon Steel blade, as well as 100% traditional Iron fittings, this sword is sure not to dissapoint!

The Saotome Kiku tsuba is based on a common antique design of the Saotome style of tsuba from the late Muromachi period. It is made around a "wagon wheel" motif. This style is very popular, and incorporates designs with many different number of spokes.

Featuring our high carbon steel blade, designed for optimal balance, and handling, this sword offers a more traditional alternative to the many zinc aluminum alloy blades available. Our steel blades have been designed from the ground up, to offer perfect balance for regular Iaido use, reducing the risk of repetitive motion injury from the more common heavy (or poorly balanced) low cost steel swords available.

The fittings on this sword are all made of 100% Iron. These fittings are more traditional, and will offer a superior balance due to the higher weight (pulling the balance closer to the tsuka). In addition Iron fittings are much more durable, and while not reccomended, could even sustain a direct strike (for example if you dropped the sword by accident) with minimal damage. The quality of our Iron fittings is far superior to that of our Alloy line, but they come at a higher cost, which is why we keep the alloy fittings to our Budget series of swords.