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It is close to what I wanted but I'm practically never satisfied with anything so it's a constant battle. Over the weekend I progressed through the stones but realized I had missed scratches from the Kaisei-do and used the Chu Nagura in thr wrong direction, which allowed thr scratches from the Kaisei to remain hidden until I made it to the Koma Nagura. Well I was impatient and decided to power through anyway, leaving the scratches for now before going back in stones and polishing again. I did a quick Hadori to see how it would look. Not too bad. Pictures are orienting pretty dumb lately but whatever. Chu Naguras Koma Uchigumori-Hato Uchigumori-Jito Then I did a quick hadori which involves fingerstones and nugui. This darkens the Ji and whitens the Ha. These are the most apparent scratches left over by the Kaisei, but there are others on the blade. I mistake in polishing and costing many hours.

Finally got my bench cleared off and back on some knives. This one was fun, but glad to see it done. My oldest grandson turned six this weekend and I promised to make him a box for his treasures, so I decided to make this one as "piratey" as possible. I planed down a very old oak board from my grandfather's barn loft for the wood. I did an eleven piece top and then used a leather pad and 80 grit to make the top round. I was about to buy some sheet brass when I remembered an old rectangular planter I used to quench in, but I managed to open a crack in it and threw it in my scrap bin. I cut it up and fabricated all of my hardware out of it: I made the handle rings from 3/16 rod and brazed the joint shut. I decided to finish the wood in iron acetate (steel wool dissolved in white vinegar). It worried me that it looked kinda dull when it dried, but a couple coats of Danish Oil made it pop. Etched a copper name plate for it and called it done: We'll see how it holds up. These boys are tough on equipment. Here's the man of the hour mid-celebration. Notice the careful placement of the Red Rider in case of bears and such.

I made a new knife vise to hold the blades for finishing the handles as neither can be accomadated in the one I do all my other knives in. A couple of pieces of 2 inch channel screwed into a block of 3x1/2, strips of leather and a couple of blocks for the clamp and it works very well. I can easily work on all aspects of the handle so it is a very real helpfor these style and length of knives. .

Legacy scratches are the bane of my existence, and the polisher’s reason for the saying “the slower you go, the faster you’ll get done”. Dan

Hey everyone! I want to acknowledge right away that what I'm doing here is questionable and very much non-traditional. In truth, I'm not quite ready for the challenge of a traditional blade made in a traditional way, but I hope to get there someday. This project aims at taking what I learned from a wakizashi I made last year and attempting to 1) not make the same mistakes again (only new ones are allowed!), 2) improve on the technique I've been learning and developing for this particular style of blade, while 3) also aiming for a greater challenge. This katana's construction will be similar, with a twisted wrought iron cladding, because I ultimately want those blades to be a pair. I began with a billet made of 7 layers of wrought iron (1/2" each) and 8 layers of O1 (1/8" each), for a total of 3" by 1.5" by 4.5". This will eventually be used for the outer layers of a san mai. I welded these, then drew the billet out to about 30" by 3/4" square, before hacking it in two and twisting each half (CW/CCW), then flattening them to about 16" by 1/2" by 1". I surface ground one side of each and started working on a second billet for the blade's core. This one will have one central layer of 1095 (7" by 2" by 3/8") for the edge, surrounded by two layers of 15n20 (7” by 2” by 1/4” each). I welded the billet and drew it out to the same width and approximately the same length as the cladding billets, then ground both sides and prepared for the final weld. This resulted in a 26" by 1" by 3/4" bar stock: At this point, and if my math was correct, I still had a *lot* of extra material. Since I wanted to make sure that my core was centered before continuing, I ground one side of the billet and etched it. Everything looked good. To help with my future profiling, I ground two 45-degree angles (see photo below), which I will flatten in the next forging step. Doing so will slightly upset the core on the side that will become the edge, giving it a better chance to line up with the final grind over the blade's entire length. My goal here was to lower the chances that any of the 15n20 would end up dipping into the edge in the final etch. Although that steel will harden too, it is only meant as a cosmetic/contrasting layer to separate the core from the cladding, and perhaps in a misguided way, to take the visual role of a traditional hamon. I don’t want it on the edge. I squared the billet and drew it out to the target width and height of my pre-sunobe stock: 1" by 3/8". This totaled 32", quite a bit more than I needed. To guide the forging of my sunobe, I drew much inspiration from a video from “Old Pueblo Forge”. In the past, for tanto and wakizashi-sized blades, I have pretty much winged this stage. This is the largest billet I have ever dealt with, so I felt I needed a little more care. I measured increasingly shorter sections, each of which will be of equal length once the sunobe is forged. The marks are fairly shallow (made with about 4 short strokes of the corner of a hand file) and will completely disappear as I forge each section to the same length, and to its respective target thicknesses. Ultimately, this ended up removing all of the guesswork, and the lack of fumbling around trying to get the shape right probably saved the centering of my core. I was glad I took the time to think this through. The near and far sections in the above photo are extra material. Despite the (massive amount of) forge scales, the several end-welds that were generously cut off, and the egregious grinding on the edge side, I still had about 8" extra on my final bar stock (now 24" by 1" by 3/8"). I’ll definitely adjust my quantities when I do this again, but for now, this feels very satisfactory. And this is my sunobe, on a dry wooden root, because “art”: At this point, the nagasa is 24.5". I’m aiming for a final 26.5" nagasa and 9" nakago (this will be on the short end of the range for a katana, but it is meant to be appropriate for me, I'm also on the shorter end ) I cut the tip at an angle, using the bandsaw to keep the layers alone. I of course could not resist looking at the end grain. You can see the slight edge upset at the top: The blade cross-section isn’t quite right in this diagram since I hadn’t yet beveled the blade, but that gives an idea of where this is going. I’ll be leaving the edge quite thick (a good 4mm, or 5/32") to preserve some of the core thickness that the edge upset gave me. On the other hand, I’ll be aiming to be close to the final thickness on the spine: I want each side of the blade to cross as much of the centerlines of the cladding as possible for maximum pattern activity. Those will be things to keep in mind at profiling time. Obviously, the twists aren’t laid out symmetrically. I’m OK with that. If previous similar blades are any indication, my beveling will introduce plenty of randomness in the final pattern anyway. I’m definitely not aiming for a perfectly symmetrically clad blade. Last forging steps. I “flipped the tip“ and started forging the bevels. This will be a hira zukuri blade, so beveling was a fairly simple process, just more of it than I had done before in one go. Here's a photo as I was getting started (the final tip ended up thinner than this, as I thought this was a bit too “bulky” for hira zukuri). And this is the beveled blade, after an overnight bath in vinegar: After a rough cleanup: And after a dirty etch to check my san mai geometry: I was really pleased because this showed that the core was still centered enough that I didn’t need to take any drastic measures. Success! (so far...) It was time for profiling: And finally, heat-treating. The temperatures I'm using are focused on the 1095 steel that’s on the edge (as opposed to the 15n20 and O1, which are cosmetic). I did a normalization at 1575F and used the heat to pre-curve the blade since I’m going to quench in oil. I did 3 descending heats/stress relief cycles after that, then quenched at 1475F, with little to no soaking time (just enough to make sure the oven temperature had stabilized). Going in! What went well: 1) no flashing (8x40 tank of parks 50 at ambient temp) and 2) the blade had pretty much zero warpage, only a minimal amount on the tang, which was fixed in seconds. My past experience dealing with this kind of wrought iron san mai construction made me expect a potentially severe warp. None of that happened, and I was very pleased. What went badly: this is me realizing I had just lost most of the pre-curve to the oil quench (look at my eyebrows, they're saying "wait, wha?"): There’s a thread about that in the “Metallurgy and other enigmas” board. Long story short, I was misinformed, and though no clay would mean no sori from the oil quench, negative or otherwise. I wasn’t sure where to go from here, and I kept mulling over this... I took the time to clean up the blade and do a quick etch before finally deciding that I was not fond of the Kanbun era style. Don’t get me wrong, it certainly has its charm, but I wanted this katana’s lines to be somewhat in harmony with the wakizashi it is meant to be paired with, and that ain’t it. So I went back to HT square 1, reset the pre-curve, giving it enough to compensate for the prior loss as well as the next. I re-normalized, relieved the stress again, and quenched a second time. I was much happier with the result. This is after a quick cleanup and a few corrections to the profile on the tang and the tip: Given that I didn’t differentially harden the blade, I didn’t want the edge screaming hard, so I aimed for 57-58HRC with two 2h 550F tempering cycles (begging the question as to why I am using 1095...). My understanding is that this may still be a bit high for a non-DH blade, but the shallow hardening of 1095 combined with the still fairly thick iron jacket might actually have allowed me to keep the edge harder. I lack experience here, I’m afraid (please do set me straight!). I’ve done some more cleanup of the profile since then, on the tip, spine, edge, and nakago, to help the lines flow a little better. I still have a couple of spots of decarb left here and there, a little bit of thinning of the tip to do, and I’ll eventually file-finish and engrave the nakago before doing the final etch. So there’s still quite a bit of work to do, but the blade is pretty much at final shape and dimension: nagasa: 66.1cm (26"), sori: 1.5cm, moto-kasane: 0.7cm, saki-kasane: 0.49cm, motohaba: 3.1cm, sakihaba: 2.1cm, overall weight: 658g This isn't the final polish and etch, but here’s a sneak peek: Next to its little sister: I'll be starting on the fittings, and I'll update this thread as I make further progress. Cheers!

Theater third of last year and first several months of this year I have been recovering from shoulder injury. This blade went through a few pauses last year along with several others as I recouped my mobility in my shoulder. This is 1018 over 1.2519 core steel sanmai. This batch I tried a nickle shim between the core and jacket, though I prefer the look of slight carbon migration in my polishes, but always experimenting with the way things expose themselves in a stone polish. I've been a collector and constant student of polishing on Jnats for many years now. For the most part, everything I've been making for several years has been honing my skill in forging and finishing kitchen knives similarly to how they are in Japan. Admittedly, most knives with the exception of what is considered expensive are not finished on stones at all, but rather made to look so, as doing so takes a long time. The degree of evenness to the wide bevel and subsequent polishing varies from company to company, but I've come to learn the fewer people working on the knife, thr more expensive they seem to be. A higher attention to detail in the geometry and polishwork. I attack all of my knives the same way. The wide bevel is free of low spots and polished to awesedo, or finishing stones. Estimated particle sizes 6-8k+, depending on how i feel like the finish to come out. This has a 50/50 hamaguri type grind. Of course different lighting shows different levels of detail.

I got that info from Howard Clark, a friend and collaborator of Dr. Verhoeven, AFTER the ASM version came out. I would think if ASM were that concerned we'd have gotten a cease-and-desist by now. And the first edition was $80. It's sort of like the textbook industry. Get a professor to make a text required reading, charge $400 for it, and put out a new edition every other year with just different enough info that the previous edition can't be used on the supplied testing materials. Then offer $5 for the buyback at the end of the semester, and resell for $400. I truly approve of copyright. I do not approve of gaming the system the way the publishers do. It is totally legal for the author to offer the first draft (or any other modification) for noncommercial use, regardless of the publisher's opinion, provided there are differences in the content. In this case there are. You want the ASM second edition? Pay full price. You want the original? Here you go.

Yep, that's a fine start. Keep[posting as you go along, and people will jump in to offer guidance.

I always go with Rob Frink at Beaumont Metalworks, home of the KMG, just because I've known him for 20 years or so. I've been running a basic three-speed KMG since 2006 or so (when the chassis with platen was $800) and have yet to need to do anything besides replace one set of bearings on the tracking wheel. I am planning to add the new KMG surface grinder attachment... If I had a car to trade I'd get the new KMG-TX with all the bells and whistles, but working for state government means I need to sell a lot of stuff to afford that route. That said, I will repeat that all the big names are excellent machines. Do not cheap out unless you go with the build-it-yourself option. Finally, I still do quite a bit of my finish work with files and sandpaper. I could live without a grinder, they just speed up the process. Sometimes fatally. It's amazing how fast you can screw up at 6500 SFPM!

I opened the can of coffee/lemon juice I mixed up back in November, and it has a small spot of mold starting to form on the lid. When I kept just the coffee in my fridge, it would only last a few weeks to a month before getting moldy. Also, I find the coffee/lemon juice etch before I do a final temper, gives a rainbow of colors on the blade if I temper at 430° or more for a couple hours. Really gives the blades a unique colored look that I haven't seen anywhere else.

You make it sound so unattractive :-) I prefer to think of it as a British military style portable forge.

Having a quench medium that works best at room temperature was a huge draw for me to buy some Parks 50. The other reason is I mostly work with simple eutectic steels like 1084. I do however have a fair amount of 5160, that stuff Admiral was selling as L6 years ago and other odds and ends but I'll make do with canola oil for the time being for those. I can always get some AAA later. It's odd, after so many years of not doing much bladesmithing it's almost like starting over as a beginner. Even with the decision to "try" and stick to a small range of similar steels for now while I try and balance work, life and the craft I still want to buy some of the newer on the market steels. 80CRV2 is similar enough to 1084 right? Reminds me I want to take the "guy walking with his girlfriend but looking over his shoulder at another woman" meme and label the girlfriend 1084 and the other woman as 80CRV2, lol (Wait, has that already been done?)

That’s a neat idea Garry.

An interesting thing I find about Parks 50, is the manufacturer's published working temp. Most folks will tell you to preheat the oil to around 120-130F before quenching. However, the manufacturer recommends using the oil between 75-120F. I am finding that if I use it at room temp (typically around 80F in my shop) I get considerably harder steel out of the quench.

Looking good

Profiled to match:

I took the leap today. I started by cutting a fish mouth in the billet and welding it closed so that the borders meet at the tip. This is the first weld I have ever attempted without supervision of someone who knows what they're doing. I didn't use any kerosene, only flux. I'm happy it actually stuck together a bit, but the weld is still visible from both sides, etched or not. I can't feel any gaps anywhere, but it does get a smidge cloudy towards the inside. Am I just really nervous about my welding abilities, or do I need to start over?

Finished this knife after 3 years ....forged the blade in 2018. Steel is 15n20, UHB 20 and a slice of O2 ....edge is 1.2419. Handle is G10, Micarta and amboina.

First Bearded Chef after the test blades and it is for the instigator of the design. A grade two piece of Tasmanian blackwood to dress it. Cheers Jonathan for the idea and the feedback during the process. A 12 1/2 inch Cimeter with exhibition Koa makes a good pair for him.

I like that idea a lot Bob, thank you! I'm thinking I'd like to stick with the first form of weld, its much easier in the prep and time realm than stacking bars... I'm not sure which shape I'll keep, I like them both, so I'll have to see which shape is easier regarding the material constraints. I'll also be replacing my HF anvil shaped piece of cast iron within the next week or so, so once I have him all mounted up I'll be out there making an armory of spears until I get this one right! I'll be sure to post a picture of progress

Tendrils look more crystalline now that the steel is clearing up. Again...cementite... Also, for some reason my pic is flipped.

From that 180 grit stone I went to a 220, 320, 600, and then 1000. The 220-1000 are a hard coarse synthetics I originally invested in for kitchen knives, but specifically and especially for yanagiba due to thr shinogi present there. I have coarser natural arato stuck in Japan and shipping currently, but these synths work great as well. From there I moves back to a coarse Iyo-to which could be interpreted as a ~500 grit stone, but it is where I currently begin natural progressions. After thr Iyo-to, I moved onto the Binsui-do. The Binsui is could be interpreted as a 800-1000 grit stone, but is again, a brick of natural stone goodness. Next will be Kaisei-do, though not pictured yet. I honestly haven't really shared my natural stone collection here before, but it has grown quite extensive, and have left spent 5 years in pretty regular and often every day for months on end learning tennen-toishi.

Okay well for me I really want to heat and beat. I want to forge and hammer even if I just start out making nails and bottle openers etc. Ideally I'll start out with basic smithing techniques and then work into blade forging.

Getting there. I have radically reworked the concept of the ram. Also changed the secondary drive wheel for a conventional tire, because it gives far better traction.

Using this stock. Now I generally cut pieces off these bars and melt them in a standard clay crucible with an oxy-acetylene torch. I have some plate molds that make very nice 1/8" (a little fat for surfacing) plates. You melt the metal and pour it into the mold. In tis picture, I have shimmed the mold out an additional 1/16" to get a plate that is roughly 3/16" thick. The mold is opened and the plate is removed. These pics were from a set of Shibuichi spacers on a Bowie. They now look like this The same process was used to create red bronze guard and spacer for this little hunter. Have fun!

Adam, there are two ways to look at hardness in a knife blade. One side of the coin is that the higher the hardness the better it will hold an edge. The other side of the coin is that the lower the hardness, within reason, the easier it will re-sharpen. So you have a choice, a blade that's in the high 50's HRc that you can sharpen on a flat piece of hard sandstone that you found out in the woods if you forget your sharpening stone at home or a blade in the low 60's that will hold an edge longer but will need that hard stone to dress up the edge when it goes dull. Remember all blades will loose their edge with use. Based on the knife's intended purpose and the steel that you choose, you're going to have to choose the compromise that you make. Doug

That's hell of activity and hamon on the blade, remarkable work!

Looking good! As for the layers, if you were to etch a piece of the original stock it would look like that too. Remember wrought iron is a composite material made of thousands of strands of iron and slag. The Byers manual states that well-refined wrought contains around 250,000 strands of iron per square inch in cross section.

The problem with wrought grain direction is that if bent across the grain it will snap. This only gets worse when made into steel. This is why it took 40 years for cut nails to be accepted. The nail-cutting machine was invented around 1790, but since the iron had to be fed into it cross-grained (nobody could roll a sheet of wrought large enough to cut strips with the grain at the time), the nails it made could not be clinched over. They'd just snap off. This meant nobody would buy them for making doors and other things that required a clinched nail. It took until around 1830 (in the US) until they could roll a large enough sheet of wrought to cut so the nail strip was cutting with the grain. Then the nails could be clinched, and the hand wrought nail disappeared very quickly. If you read old books on smithing you will see they greatly emphasize the importance of grain flow and direction for assorted operations in iron, particularly punching versus slitting and drifting holes. Punching was considered poor form on parts the needed strength because it cut the grain, and slitting was only to be done with the grain or the bar would split when you tried to drift it. Basically, wrought iron is a composite material, not a homogenous metal. Think of the grain as the flexible equivalent of wood grain. Make a hammer handle out of, say, ash. If the grain runs the length of the handle, it's strong, flexible, and will do the job. Now make the handle with the grain running shortways across the handle. What is going to happen the first time you use that hammer? This directional weakness is greatly magnified when you carburise the iron because steel is always a bit more brittle than iron, especially when hardened. Get the idea?