What About Practice Swords?
While practice swords aren’t really the type that would attract collectors of sword replicas, they do make great replicas of the real thing. This is because a practice swords are meant to be exact copies of the real thing you are practicing to use, otherwise, it would defeat the purpose of learning how to use a katana or any other sword using a practice sword.
Practice swords are most likely needed by those who are practicing Iado or the Japanese traditional martial art of using the sword. The art basically revolves around learning how to use the sword from drawing it from its scabbard, delivering strikes and cuts in the proper form, removing blood from the blade, and putting it back in its scabbard in a smooth and controlled manner.
Students of Iado are called as Iato. Some of them start off using a wooden sword, but it is usually recommended to use practice swords, which have blades with unsharpened edges, like other students would do. Practice swords are generally lighter and therefore not meant for any kind of real contact. The only downside to practice swords is that they might be restricted in some parts of Japan by the same law prohibiting the production and possession of swords in some parts of the state.
Because of this, the practices in different dojos for Iato vary with respect to the sword that they use for training. Some dojos will train the student to use the Iato first and make sure that he or she has mastered the skill consistent enough to safely use a sharpened sword, either a nihonto or shinken. There are some schools which take extreme rules. On the one hand, there are those that allow students to use the actual swords immediately. On the other hand, there are those that prohibit the use of these swords at any point in the training of the Iato.
Aside from that, practice swords are also ideal for reenactments in case you need a sword as a prop. They are basically safe and easy to use and are not as expensive as the fully sharpened swords.