Making a Katana, the Dummies Version

Those don't look like 2½" cherry dowels, Danny...

We really have to hand it to some of the self-appointed freelancers out there; especially the people who attempt to write how-tos about something they've never done themselves. Heck, the most... interesting? annoying? irritating? of them all are the ones who have no earthly idea what they're talking about, but forge bravely ahead anyway. We're walking about people like eHow's Danny Donahue, who claimed to have "worked with some of the finest construction talent" somewhere, but failed to ask them for advice about "How to Make a Katana Handle¹" for Healthfully.com.

We're pretty sure that Donahue's exposure to katana had been limited to watching  the occasional "chop-sockey" movie as a kid, which is probably why he reduced the making of the katana itself to a rather simplistic,

"A rotary tool or bench grinder will give you a shaped, sharpened and polished blade for your katana,"

which is an insult to katana everywhere according to our house karateka. Hell, it's an insult to steak knives! But we're here to talk about making the handle, not the blade, a process for which Danny also insulted the weapon. In the first place, almost nothing in his instructions can be found in his sole reference – we suspect he just found a cheesy "how to make a knife" article in a RenFair forum somewhere and modified it.

We say that because of some of the abject bullcrap in his article. For instance, the handle is supposed to be made from a "Cherry wood dowel (2 ½ inches by 18 inches)," a species and size combination that is well-nigh impossible to find, not to mention that the 18-inch length is rather excessive. Then, according to Donohue, you must

1. "Mark the dowel at the location of each hole in the tang..."
2. "...drill through each mark on the dowel with [a] 3/8 inch bit..."
3. "Hold the dowel so that the holes through the wood are at a 90-degree angle to the blade of your band saw. Push the wood gently into the spinning blade [sic] of the saw to cut the dowel into two even pieces."
4. "Place half of the dowel on each side of the tang of the sword..."
5. "...lock the handle in place [with rivets]..."
6. "Smooth and shape the handle with your rotary tool."
7. "Engrave a diamond pattern into both sides of the handle."

A perfectly round handle? Is this idiot kidding? Not to mention that it's about as big around as a soup can: that's a joke, right? We also found it telling that someone who claims to have spent "a lifetime in the construction industry" thinks that a band saw has a "spinning blade." Yeah, sure... Danny, my boy, for having the utter gall to post this crap online, you are clearly deserving of the honor of being our Dumbass of the Day.

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   ehow.com/how_6859802_make-katana-handle.html

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