Habaki making the traditional way is well outlined in the book "The Craft of the Japanese Sword" which features the work of Yoshindo Yoshihara and his associated craftsmen in Japan. There are a lot of ways to make habaki but forging to the blade seems to be the fastest and yield the best results. See Bob Engnath's site for more proper ways of forging to the blade. I just don't seem to have very good luck in forging anything so I always find alternative ways of doing things.
My habaki way is to make billets of copper, brass, silver, or nickel silver (or combinations of metals) and then solder them together. It is not brain surgery but can be time consuming. Take a look at the pictures and you will see that it is just layers of thin stock stacked and soldered that have had a hole filed through them that fits the area of the blade that the habaki is going to come into contact with. Many folks have pointed out the deficiencies of this type of fitting but I have made quite a few of these now and they seem to be doing well on using swords and stuff. I beat up my originals with hammers and put them on blades and beat them to failure to see how good/bad they are. I still like my way better.
The tricks are to measure the blade carefully and lay out the area that you are going to cut out on the block *very* carefully. Develop your filing skills.
I start with sheet stock of the appropriate materials. I rough up the surface with 220 grit paper (the whole sheet). Flux the entire sheet and then tin it with solder using either the lead-free plumbers solder or some of the higher temp. stuff for gun smiths. It doesn't seem to matter what kind of solder I use but the higher the melting temperature the stronger the bond/joint will be when finished. Try to use the hardest/ highest melt temperature solder you feel comfortable working with as it will give the best strength. Try to use electric irons (Hot air guns for paint stripping are excellent) as gas torches leave behind oxide and black crap that always seems to get into the joints and leave voids and such in the final product. Cleaner is better!
Cut the tinned sheets into rectangular pieces that will be of the correct dimensions to form your billets. Make sure they are *really* clean and then make a stack of them about 1/4 inch high. Use paste flux on both sides of the plate as you stack them. Then get some spring type metal wood working clamps and take the rubber or plastic tips off of them. Clamp the stack of "chips" or plates with the flux between them with a couple of clamps. It helps if you leave the plates a little oversized to facilitate the clamps...you can grind the excess off later during finishing. Now take your hot air gun/or propane torch and heat the whole stack up until the solder melts. Don't do this in the living room and use a lot of ventilation with forced air....I'll give the "use a frickin' respirator" lecture later! When the stack has reached the melting temp. of the solder you will see the whole stack scrunch down as the spring clamps force the plates together and the excess solder from the tinning will squish out the sides. This is hot enough and additional heating helps not at all so get it out of the heat *NOW*.....hold onto one of the clamps with a pair of vice grips when heating. When it squishes hold it in front of a fan until it cools and then let it out of the clamps. When cool enough to handle, grind it or file it to get the faces of the block square and even and clean it up some. Don't grind it trying to hog off a lot of material so that the block gets too hot...it will delaminate either in your hands or it will weaken the solder joint and it will crack or break later. Solder gets weak if it is heated repeatedly to a high enough level. Keep it cool and slow when shaping, quench in water often. Make enough blocks like this to form the entire habaki...maybe even make a bunch if things are going well and it is workin' for you today!
Now measure the size of the area that this block is going to slide onto and transfer the measurements to the block face. Drill it, file it, whatever, until it just slides over the tang of the blade and fits as tight as possible. Don't cut big sloppy holes. Look at the pictures. The hole should fit the shape of the blade and all of it's contours as well as you can make it. I usually drill out as much as possible and then use needle files to get a good fit testing it by sliding it into place over the tang repeatedly. It's just like making a big, fat, seppa or washer. The more a blade tapers or curves in the area that you are mounting the habaki the more difficult and critical this fitting and filing becomes. I usually make the habaki block in 4 or 5 sections 1/4" or so thick. When you have cut and filed holes in all of the billets we just repeat the first process of sticking them together.
Flux the faces of the 4 blocks that have holes in them and then, one by one, slide them onto the blade until they all stack up. Use your spring clamps again to clamp all of the billets/layers together and then slide the whole 1" to 1 1/4" clamped blank forward and back to check the fit with all of the sections stuck together and seat everything. Then repeat the heating process until you see all of the layers squish together again and the excess solder get forced out of the joints between the individual billets. I always flux the entire block and run a little solder over the outside to be pulled into any gaps. Don't add too much excess solder while it's hot or it will get all over the inside of your nice filed holes and it will also run into the notches inside that fit onto the hamachi and munemachi ( the shoulders on the blade) and screw up your fit. These areas will fill up with solder and flux anyway but you will fix this after it is cool by filing and fitting once again.
Clean up the geometry of the block and square the faces like the picture. File the inside until it just fits nice and tight over the tang and onto the blade. Clean all of the flux up and look for gaps...you will always find little black or gray streaks in the solder joints. These can add "character" or they can be so wide and devoid of solder that you need to clamp, heat and flux/solder again. Experiment. You will probably screw up at least 2 or 3 of these before you get the heat and technique figured out. If you don't find this aspect of the craft exciting and educational, then it's probably not for you. Now you should have a solid block that fits the habakimoto (the area on the blade that accepts and holds the habaki) pretty well. Like the picture below!
Now all that is left is to file/grind the outside of the fitted block to the shape you desire. I use 50 grit belts on my grinder and bare fingers to sense the heat. Have a cold bucket of water close by and dip the block often. Repeated heating is *BAD* and will screw up the whole project. Remember, solder joints get weaker and weaker as they crystallize by repeated heating, expansion and contraction. Use a fresh sharp belt or, better yet, file it down to outside dimensions with files and diamond hones and stuff. 220 grit paper on a ceramic block and diamond files are great for this and surprisingly aggressive! Look at the pictures in my earlier posts for outside shape ideas. Better yet, buy yourself a Japanese sword (even a cheapo reproduction) and study the shape carefully. Go to every sword show you can. Buy a katana, wakizashi, or tanto with a decent habaki to use as a muse. Old WW2 Japanese swords are not all that expensive and the rusty, crappy ones are a steal. Buy one and look long and hard at the fittings and how they all go together.
Remember, this is not *THE* way to make a habaki. It's just *A* way and it is my way. Ain't easy but it's kind of cool to watch folks faces as they try to figure out how you did it. Blast me an Email if you get real stuck...I will try to help. And be careful of discussing any aspects of Japanese style sword/knife craft with collectors or officiators of real Japanese swords. They will usually get the hair up on their backs and get real pissy if they find that you are doing things "outside of the box". The true Japanese sword craft is extremely well defined and...well, rather anal retentive. Nihonto specialists don't seem to take kindly to folks adapting or experimenting with a centuries old style of mounting.
Good luck. Have fun and study hard and experiment heavily.
Brian
