Another detail squared away. Gustavo has picked a nice (yet reasonably priced) Sageo for the first Matsukaze. The one you have seen in the pictures with the “illustrative” Saya is a beautiful handmade specimen, made by Kumihimoshi Sida Yin from Sweden (sageo.se). I love his… Read More »Sageo
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 to adverse weather, workload and the Kamis’ wishes, we were unable to conduct the interview… Read More »Meet the smith of Matsukaze: Ono Kanemasa
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 Habaki was modelled in Fusion 360 and it took about a dozen plastic prototypes to… Read More »Habaki and Menuki for the Prototype are here
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, the old Chinese proverb that means, “a thousand mile journey begins with the first step”.… Read More »Matsukaze prototype Tsuba
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. Something one would not necessarily expect to see on a blade not forged from Tamahagane.… Read More »We have activity …
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 nicely. Christophe has now taken the blade to the stage of polishing with the Nagura… Read More »Komi-Nagura polishing
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 desirable to some. Far from being Hitatsura but still … But hey, again: This… Read More »Chu-Nagura polishing
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 and the Yokote as I wrote in one of our earlier posts. Shin (Kanemasa) is… Read More »Back to Kongo
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 800ºC. In this process also the Hamon is produced by the thickness difference of Yakiba-tsuchi.
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.
