types of metals

when looking at the details of a katana the most important thing to find out is the kind of metal the blade is made of. Lets go from bad to good in this one.
Stainless Steel: The worst kind of metal you could go for when it comes to katana's is stainless steal and i mean it, DO NOT GET THIS STUFF! you never want stainless steel if you want a good sword. It may be stainless this metal is not that strong and you would not want to do any heavy hitting with it. If you want an ok looking display piece then that's fine but when you want a usable sword then stainless steel is junk. The other thing is that most of the time stainless steal swords do not come full tang, yes this stuff is fine for cooking but its not good for battle. It might even break if hit against something hard enough.
Carbon Steel:Now a good metal that the majority of people want is carbon steal! why is this better then stainless steal? Well because it is much much stronger and actually looks nicer, but with all good things in life, it comes at a small price. Carbon steel has a tendency to rust so along with it, you need to clean and oil the sword everytime you use it or if you just leave it on the wall and never touch then once every 2 to 4 weeks. So long term short, its much stronger and looks better

Damascus Steel: a Damascus steel katana is high quality sword. its generally stronger then carbon steel and it looks amazing. the blade literally has a grain to it. when making a sword like this it takes a lot of folds in the steel to give it this elegant wavy look. each line is fold and its like layers of a tree. there are so many and the detail has a very nice sense of beauty to it. Damascus may not need oiling because it does not generally rust a lot but the katana at a bigger price the oil and that is cash! a good carbon steel can be from 60 to 100. A damascus katana starts at nearly 200! It may be more pricy then one would want but trust it is well worth the price. For the one in the image, go to
http://www.trueswords.com and for 4096 folds of steel you get your money's worth. So when it comes to this kind of steel, i would give it 5/5 even though its not the best but it is the best for the average person that has a limited budget.
Tamahagane: Ok so you cannot get any better then this when it comes to the kind of metal and how its made. Other kinds of steel can be machined or factory made besides damascus steel but no, this takes along time to make and a ton of work. I will put up a post on how this is made because of how much effort goes into making these but trust me when i say these are the best of the best. These are made the "traditional way" as in the way it was made before modern technology. These were made for the samurai and were built to last forever. This has so thousands beyond thousands of folds, each sword literally starts out as a block of metal and is pounded down, then folded, then pounded, and the process keeps going till it ends up as a work of brilliance  Only true master sword smiths from japan make these and it really shows in the price being able to reach 30,000 dollars!......you know when you have the some of the best swords around when it cost more then the average car! the whole process is a work of art that can not be replicated or faked. its as authentic as it gets and nothing beats it!