The "Tough-As-Hell" Edition is a hard-core training and combat sword and is the 3rd series of our Flagship line of blades. The "Tough-As-Hell" Edition uses a hand-hammered combat-ready carbon spring steel that is both flexible (so the blades will not snap) and strong. When testing edge-vs-edge striking on other steels our 9260 hammered combat steel performed the best. That said: We NEVER recommend any sword for weapon vs weapon training because ALL weapons fail at some point and can cause massive injury. While these are capable blades, NEVER go steel on steel with your swords. No matter what you are hitting - these swords are the toughest of any other production butterfly sword we have found on the open market, and the toughest we have produced.
After the release of our Integral swords we spent 6 additional months gathering feedback from top over 30 sifus and improving the design. The Flagship line of swords released mid-2011 were the result of that work. In addition to those improvements we decided to make swords that were more oriented to hard-core training by changing up the steels and grinds. These are the tougher swords.