Kosatsuba

Chris jumped on his bike and rode to Seki to meet his friend Shin for an interview about himself, his work and his path to becoming a Katana smith.  Due…

We chose to go with brass on the first prototype to establish a base line. Of course Copper and Sterling-Silver will be standard options for the Kodogu on Matsukaze. The…

Manuel has been working on the Tsuba for the first Matsukaze prototype. It is an iron Mokko-shaped Tsuba with a fine Mimi and bears “千里之行 始於足下” on its Ura side,…

Well,  obviously we do over here at Tokensho and lots of it. But what I meant to say is that our polisher Christophe discovered some nice activitiy in the Jigane.…

After some of the no all pleasant discoveries we had to make when the blade first got here (but remember, this is what protoypes are fore), polishing is now progressing…

The Polish is now in the Chu-Nagura stage and Komi-Nagura is next. While polishing, he discovered a small area in which the Shinogi-Ji got accidentally hardened, called Mune-Yaki, which is…

Not the country or the river but rather the Japanese polishing stone. The initial grind, an associated craftsman in Japan had put the blade through, basically had butchered the Shinogi…

Yakiire, the hardening of Matsukaze. The blade is coated by the mixture of clay and charcoal (Yakiba-tsuchi), and it is suddenly cooled in the water after the heating to approximately…

火造,(Hidukuri) and 焼きなまし (Nakinamashi), followed by a cold hammering are the steps in which the blade is given its (more or less) final shape.