question for sword makers

B

bartblade

Joined
Nov 4, 2002
Messages
344
ok i have gotten a practical katanna the guy was chopping some stuff and he hit right in the middle of the blade and took the curve out; so now it looks more like a ninja sword. he wants me to try and put the curve back into it.

my thoughts are to take it apart aneal it and try to reheat treat the blade.

my problem is should i water quench or tranny oil quench? or do you have a better way to do it? the steel is supposed to be high carbon but says nothing about what type it is. plus now im gonna have to make a long make shift forge to even try to do all this. which wont be to hard for me just time consumming and the thought of making all that coal again and again.

and if this dose work how much would you guys charge for this?

ive been charging $30.00 to sharpen these things and havent had any complaints or refunds. all my customers in the sharpenning area have given great feed back on how i sharpen them. most of these guys are from my buddys dojo and are trainers and trainees
 
Oil will actually pull more downward curve.Water along with a clayed spine will pull it upward.(add sori) You will need to dull the edge as to prevent it from pulling apart as the tip rises.Then there's no guarantee it wont crack.I use the Fogg style 55 gallon drum heat treating forge for it has the ability to heat the entire blade evenly without over heating.
In other words it's a lot of work.I feel that if the sword took that much of a set you might want to consider looking for a new supplier.
 
If the sword was worth more than $300 then I would try to find a guy who would do this work a lot , and ask him the question.

One the other hand, if the sword is not worth that much money, then i think I remember reading that some katana come out of the quench with a wrong curve....
sometimes too much
Sometimes too little.
But in both cases the sword smith was able to add and take away cuve without harming the hamon lines.

I think I saw a photo of the smith holding the back of the sword against a block of red-hot copper (see page 94 in THE CRAFT OF THE JAPANESE SWORD)
 
he bought the sword for about $100

so your saying to dull the sword and then heat treat and quench in water. hmm the water should be like 105 to 110 dagrees right?

i have that katanna video should i just follow that?

and the copper block is that with the blade heated or not? i dont have that magazine so i cant see the pic. its to draw the curve into the steel right?

in the video it shows him only doing 1 real quench. would it be advisable for me to 2 or 3 quenches and if i do more than 1 should i reclay it each time cus i know some of the clay will pop off pretty easily.


thanks for the advice guys!!
 
If someone was able to take the curve out of the blade by cutting with it, it couldn't have had any heat treat to it at all. These are disposable swords, not Kokuho. I'd charge him more just for the heat treat than he paid for the entire sword, and he'd still need to arrange for the polish afterward. He would also have to have the entire blade remounted, as nothing would fit after you took 1/8" off the width. It's cheaper to buy another one. Hopefully the next time he'll get something decent.

Best,

Darryl
DGuertin.com
 
bartblade said:
he bought the sword for about $100

so your saying to dull the sword

and then heat treat and quench in water.
Click to expand...

As the sword is so cheap it is clearly better to not worry about fixing.

HOWEVER, it might be a good one to experiment with for you.
As it's junk anyway, lets say we do try to fix the look of the thing.

FIRST I would just try to bend it back.

NEXT, I would try a real heat treatment as seen on the KATANA video you talked about.
The only change I would make is that I would use more interruptions to the quench.
Dunk and lift, Dunk and lift, etc, etc, etc,
The moment I had the curve I was shooting for I would get the blade back into the fire...
To temper it and try to keep it from snapping...
(It's going to want to snap anyway as the blade is so thin, but I might be able to save it this way)


I would not mess with an attempt to dull the sword...Because that would mean re-grinding and this sword is just not worth the effort and that huge amount of work.

Do I think I could fix the sword in the end?
I think there is a 20% chance I could fix it, in a real heat-treatment...It depends on a lot of things that might happen in the water-quench that I cant guess going into it.
BUT,,,There is a 100% chance of fun along the way ....
 
Since the curve came out of it by smacking something with it, it only stands to reason that its basically just a bar of plain steel. flip it over an whack the spine on what ever bent it in the first place :D
 
What Tekniton said. Man, 30 bucks just for sharpening one of these things. I'm screwing up. I've been charging 5. But then again, this isn't knife country. I get less for sharpening a knife here than I did in Huntsville Ala. 25 years ago. HeeHee!
 
What steel is it? A lot of $100 swords are 420 stainless, which won't get hard enough no matter what you do to it...
 
the guy he bought it from is my buddy from work and he said its supposed to be high carbon but unknown what type it is. i did put some ferric on it to see if it was tempered. it didnt show any and i highly doubt it is fully hardened.
 
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