Refinished Short Sword

This is my very first successful sword that got me started making and producing practical designs for practice swords and other weapons. It is my short sword; I have fought valiantly with this since the day that I finished it. Its been going strong fir almost 2 years now. It is a great sword and has gotten me out of many tight situations, and has even won me a couple of battles during a few of my sparing matches. Just to tell you how tough and durable this sword is, I've even managed to break a couple of swords with this sword; one was a factory made Katana and the other was one of my home built Katanas.

There was some drawbacks to my sword. Fir one, constant fighting, combat, use, and abuse had taken its toll on my sword. After fighting with it fir a while, my sword ended up with a dented, chipped, and scratched up blade and hilt; at one point in time even the actual original tip to the sword's blade broke off as you can see in the before image above. And the whole sword started to get a pretty dirty look and feel to it. Another thing is that I found the handle to be a bit cumbersome than it to be more a help to have at the original 9 and half inch length. The reasoning behind the sword having such a long handle fir such a short blade was that it would provide the perfect balance fir my blade and would also enable me to 2 hand wield the sword. I found that I almost never 2 hand wielded my sword and that the only time that I would use it was fir when I was using the sword and shield fighting stance or if I was using it as a back up weapon in case my main weapon such as my spear happened to fail on me (which it has on me in the past). When sword is on stand-by mode as my secondary or main backup, I normally had it in the sheathed position at my waist, the problem was that the extra long handle would get in the way while I fought with my spear.

So my solution to all of my problems with this sword was to finally take and cut 3 and half inches off of the handle wile simultaneously sanding, cleaning, refurbishing the rest of the sword. I cut the handle and I was able to get most of the flaws and damage sanded of this sword and now its unrecognizable, it looks almost like an entirely different new sword. It handles pretty well too. I will continue to fight with again with my sword until I can fight with it no more.