Emiliano Carrillo

Oh man fantastic work! Your welding is quite good and the character of the material you made is really organic and beautiful. I really am amazed at how well you did on this and am excited to see more! The multibar blades are quite nice also. I would recommend having your bars at around 1/4"-38" for twisting, and keeping it hot and doing your twists in 2 twist per heat increments. A lot of the bloomery material and hearth material I've made likes to fight being twisted but it depends on the level of refinement. As far as your layer count it looks quite good especially for medieval/Viking Age metalworking. I don't really have much to add, you're clearly well on your way

Shimane made tamahagane is largely too uniform and high carbon to create the visual seen on old swords. I got a box of the mixed grade stuff from the sisters as well as some of the higher grade material, and the higher grade stuff was ornery and cracked often, which is something I've never had happen with my own steel. The lower quality material had more character and a better carbon content when finished. I've successfully hardened my own steel at over 1% carbon before without any trouble, being able to straighten cold from the water, and not had any issues. But as soon as I used the shimane tamahagane it would just not behave properly. So I guess just take that with a grain of salt. Most of the smiths I've seen working it, and famously the Yoshihara, tend to work 50% shimane and 50% self made oroshigane into their pieces, and sometimes less shimane steel. I would imagine that the lower quality material will be more interesting the finished and have a higher chance of survival. I spoke with an old master named Kunio Izuka and we discussed the shimane tamahagane at length, and we agreed that the way steel was made in antiquity, with local small batch bloomery production being the norm, was more inline with the differences seen between schools and smiths of different regions, and that it was largely why the modern swords don't have the same look as very old swords do.

Great job man! I love what you did with the edge steel. The blade/socket transition is the hardest part really, but I find that making a stub tang and then drifting the socket end open with the stub before forge welding makes it bulge a little. This gives you some mass to ensure a good weld and not make the transition too thin! Some of the historical ones I've documented have very thin blades, like sub 1/4 near the base, and the socket goes from kind of soft rectangular to round as a result in order to make the transition clean!

Whenever I do work like this I tend to use 1/16"-1/8" stock for the edge bar at most. That coupled with wrought iron that is maybe 3/8" will give you a great line if you forge carefully and take your time. The photos are of a seax and a dagger I did recently that came out pretty well! Low san mai is one of my favorite things to see in bladesmithing. Both of these were forged really close to shape, and then you clean the profile and give it a quick etch to see how aligned the core is, if your forging was good the core should be very centered, which makes the line come out low as long as your grinding is clean!

I think a good way to go about it is to search them in museum archives online. They'll usually have some information on time period and size etc, could be helpful in deciding what you do and don't like. I find once you've decided what sort you want to make its a lot easier to search out pieces from that period or in that particular style. Here's one I made a while back after researching how the ferrule and sheath worked together. It's finicky but really satisfying to put together.

I tend to hit between 1.5-2.5mm on thickness at the heel on my kitchen knives, the last I did as thin as the one you've made was a tall integral that had great flexibility and lightness, but was still sturdy in the hand likely because of the bolster. I tend to aim for about 100g-125g overall weight for an 8 inch chef as I find it to be really pleasant to hold. Ultimately, the thickness/thinness will be good or bad based on the end users opinion on how it feels. Some people like a thick and heavier knife, but when I made a wedding gift for an old friend he let me know it weighed 3x less than his current favorite, and became his new favorite in quick order. I think you should ask the customer what they are used to or if they are looking for a more nimble kitchen tool and go from there. Since it is such a taste based thing, knowing what they are looking for specifically will help a lot. All that being said, I think your spine is right on for a light and nimble piece, and you should finish it out regardless of whether its destined for this particular customer and get a feel for whether you like it in the kitchen!

Nice work Aiden! That looks fantastic! 8 folds is what I usually do when going to medieval or viking age work!

So your first run was 650grams total weight going in? I generally charge about twice that much in my furnace, and it's about 25 minutes from start to finished high carbon puck. Your blower may be under powered for what you're trying to do. I would try using a shop vac with a ball valve hooked up, more pressure and air.

I'd recommend taking that bar to a higher layer count to help decarburize and also homogenize it a little more. I tend to shoot for 12 folds with this material for Japanese work, 8 for Viking age stuff. I think Kevin Cashen did a test with the stuff that found after about 4 folds you even out carbon content in a bar. When you continue to fold you lose carbon content by exposing the surfaces to oxygen, then as you continue folding the average carbon goes down little by little. I find that a bar that sparks like you're second or first photo in your recent post is a good candidate for hardening, but it is hard to judge from just pictures. Maybe the best bet is to cut a small coupon of your 8 layer bar, and forge something small from it. Harden in water and see what happens, then adjust from there. Either way good luck with it! This material is not easy but it is very rewarding to work with

I spent two years trying and failing at making good oroshigane because I was using feed stock that had too much phosphorous in it. Nowadays I only use the cleanest iron I can find to make my steel, so the regulating steel is as close to iron with some added carbon as I can get without any random alloying elements in it. My guess would be your issue has to do with your fire and the starting material. I would sometimes get material that could make hamon after 10-12 folds, but it was always very faint and would only really show up in the right type of light. I'm guessing those pieces were around .3%-.5% carbon at best. I was doing all of my work with a press which sped things up but not tremendously as the power wasn't there. What I would recommend is to try and find something relatively pure, real 1018 is a good get if you can find it, as it has low carbon and a low alloying elements, and use that for your melts instead. The only way I've been able to make good progress with this has been by knowing my material as well as I can, and starting with 'random' material that you don't know the makeup of is a surefire way to get into trouble. For all of the time and effort that goes into forging a blade out of this stuff its a shame if you don't know you have a good shot at a nice high carbon piece. I know its old advice, but the whole 'find steel you like and buy a ton of it' isn't too far off here, I bought as much iron as I could find when I knew what worked for me, and haven't looked back since.

I think you might have touched on the issue with the sulfide deposits part of your most recent post, I've never had this issue with my steel even at 1% of above with a finished piece! You could try oroshigane with the steel, though it could be that the process won't remove the sulfur.

Hey everyone! I taught a class at the New England School of Metalwork over the last week and thought I would share some images here! I took a ton of photos over the class, but will kind of pair it down to the images of the demo spear I made, and a few shots of all of the spears together. We studied and made three pattern welded billets based on historical patterns seen on various originals. We also drew out a bunch of wrought iron sheet from round stock for the sockets. We also made some really nice edge steel, 480 layers of 15n20 and 1095 The wrought iron sheet with the templates ready for cutting. A few of the twist bars for my spear, 24 twists on the left, and one of the interrupted twists for the other side of the spear. Beginning to square the twist bars to assemble the spear. 5 bars welded into one! I like to do my welding sequences as close together as possible. I laid the twist bars and wrought iron core together, and forge welded the five bars in the same step. A quick, and apparently out of focus, test etch of the side of the spear with the interrupted twists in it. The edge bar has been wrapped around the core and forge welded in place, then drawn out! Test etch on the other side of the spear. Wrought iron socket ready for forge welding. The plan! And the result! Next to the demo I made in preparation for the class. Something kind of interesting! I left my spear thick to account for grinding into the center of my pattern and to avoid drawing it out too long. I am a big fan of complex multibar patterns, and this was a fun exercise in making precise patterns in a different blade shape than what I'm usually doing. The finish ground weight! This was after hardening and tempering of course. And here's the finished piece! Made from 7 separate parts, an iron core, 4 twist bars, a wrapped around edge, and the socket! The twists are 11 layers of 1095 and 15n20 and the edge is 480 layers of the same. It was finished by being put on a 7 foot Ash haft, and its kind of amazing to hold something this alive on a 7 foot pole! We're in the process of figuring out where to display it in the shop now! And a shot of all of the spears finished during the week! All have different patterns and constructions and showcase each students creativity beautifully! I'm super proud of the work these guys did, and will share a shot of all of us together in a bit. I don't think I've ever seen this many newly made spears in one place, and much less of this quality! IMG_4738.MOV

I wouldn't necessarily count it as a failure! I understand the issues with the core and the cracks, but there is a chance the cracks will polish out, and the core steel showing is something seen on nearly every nihonto still surviving, except for those that have seen fewer polishes. I would use the blade as a polishing practice to evaluate the quality of the hamon, and if you end up wanting to, you can use it as a quenching practice piece to try and form hamon out of the fire instead of using an oven, I find that having a heat differential caused by using the fire carefully instead of the eveness of a kiln can be very beneficial. I do all of my hamon without clay, so the technique is slightly different, but I think you may benefit from practicing with just the fire and clay instead of the oven. I am glad you're going to start again and give it another go! Your carbon levels seemed good, and you were able to get a nice midare hamon with bright nie. please show the polished surface when you get a chance!

looking good! I tend to start with tamahagane or oroshigane at about the same level of carbon and fold to 10-14 folds depending on what I am making. I also do all of my work in propane though I will soon have a charcoal forge made up for hardening work. What are you using for your forging? Is it all by hand or do you have a press or power hammer? I use a power hammer and try to do all of my folding as quickly as possible. I start with ~5lbs of material and usually end up with about 30-45% of my starting weight when finished folding after a few hours. My most recent works have been about 5.5-6 hrs of folding to get to a usable bar of material. I like to work as quickly as possible in order to mitigate carbon loss due to using propane as my fuel source. I don't use clay or straw ash to mitigate carbon loss, but usually end up with enough carbon to make good hamon and harden to 62-64 RC out of the water. Anyway, looking forward to seeing your results! I don't weigh everything as carefully as I did when I first started anymore, for a while I was measuring loss after each fold in order to understand where the inefficiencies of my process were, but now I just make sure I know much much material I am starting with and generally can guess how much I will have when I am finished.

There's a video I couldn't find just now of a mukansa togishi polishing swords with a setup he uses while standing, or maybe sitting in a conventional chair. There are straps set up so that he can hold the stone down with his feet even though he isn't kneeling. It's definitely something people can do!