The royal armoury at Leeds is a spectacular modernisation in contrast with the royal armoury at the Tower of London. Built in a monolithic style the building has a feeling of post modern Zen in which many of the oriental weapons and armour in particular seem quite at home. Built in a functional style on the expansive dockside development at Leeds there is a huge interest in this project with the day of our visit coinciding with a busy bank holiday the public's appetite for military paraphernalia is not diminished by the adverse publicity of recent campaigns record numbers at the Farnborough Air Show and busy days at the Armoury reveal the public's fascination once again with the military.
Much of the Leeds arsenal is made up of hand-to-hand combat armour and weaponry. This reminds us of a time when a working army was less like a day job and much more 'hands on'. The brutality implied by the 5 large floors of weapons on show is made all the more real when considering this is an historical museum, not a reconstruction. The weapons on display here, whilst some undoubtedly were for show, the majority were working tools of war at one time or another. Many will have seen battle and perhaps even have fallen there. This is much more than a collection of keepsakes. The apparatus of war on show were not so much bequeathed to the armoury as master's of their own destiny prized from the cold dead hands of their careful owners. In some way, the pieces on show here have chosen to be here for us to look at and

regard once again with awe. This is a collection with 'previous' or 'form'.
Many of the non-mechanised displays comprise of cutting blades of various descriptions. The display I am writing about includes the samurai collection and it is this area that I will be discussing in this article. I hold personally certificates of proficiency in the use of such objects and have trained for most of my life with their replicas and training counterparts and would like to discuss in this article the fundamentals of the Samurai's most prized possession his 'katana' or long sword.
The metallurgy of such objects were of obvious interest to me as an undergraduate in the department of metallurgy and materials science learning about the hardening process of carburized steels. Even at that time learning about the technological achievements of producing such a fine weapon without the complex knowledge of the binary systems and eutectic states of steel were a highly respected subject. The skill in forming such a weapon is in itself a marvel and a discipline in its own right. The repeated folding, hammering, forming of the blade is a much documented subject and worthy of its own treatment. Instead here I will be discussing its final appearance and unusually its use in anger, of which I consider myself to be in the rare position of having had some very limited experience. I believe one can only speak from limited experience of using such weapons 'live' because their overuse tends only to lead to serious harm. To have attacked with a 'live' samurai sword the