- Joined
- Dec 18, 2008
- Messages
- 760
Greetings fellow forumites,
I have been working for some time on this project. It has survived the quench and has been tempered. A little straightening, and a ton of polishing and finishing work to go yet.
This is a 28" working length. The blade is 1.13" wide, .28" thick at the shoulders. It tapers to .97" wide and .2" thick (maybe thinner in the end, though).
I have a question - Does Aqua Fortis have a tendency to rust sword blades if you use it as a stain on a wooden sheath?
The Tang Dynasty style of swords are the progenitor of Japanese blades. There are a famous group (2 or 3) that have been preserved behind glass for hundreds of years. Two famous Japanese swordsmiths, upon seeing these swords in person, were quoted as saying that it was no longer correct to say that the height of swords in Japan came from the Kamakura period. Meaning, in their estimation, the best Japanese swords there ever were, are in fact Chinese swords.
The reason I bring this up is because I am doing a clay heat treatment. This was developed by Chinese, and the resulting pattern is called a shuangxue. Later to be renamed a hamon. Chinese used clay heat treatment, all manner of laminates, twisted bars, cores composed of multiple twisted bars, etc. There was a rich exchange of culture through the people of the Northern Steppes in China who were ethnically and in terms of their material culture European. As such, the Chinese used techniques that we often think of as Japanese (indeed they created them), and they used techniques that we often think of as European. Don't know who created them, probably they came from Europe to China rather than the other way. Not sure, though.
Just mentioning this to explain why I am doing stuff that looks Japanese on a Chinese style blade. Also, to let y'all know a bit about why I am trying to learn this style. Pretty much everything you would want to do as a smith, it was done during some period of China's history (except staggered counter-twists like the Vikings).
here are the bars to start. Each of the side pieces has 720 layers.
welded up and ready to go. I used a stop block on my press to get the outside bars to within a couple thousandths of an inch of each other in thickness and width. This is important with a sanmei (yes, sanmei, not san mai... it was a Chinese word first).
bar welded, drawn out, and made into sword preform. It has tapers in width and thickness that will let it become a sword.
here you can see taper in thickness and also layer count tracking on anvil (anyone know what kind of anvil this is? I got it from a kid in Pennsylvania who collects them for $250. It weighs about 200lb).
new horizontal quench tank for water quench. Only one small leak.
heat treating kiln and whole set of tubes for quenching and etching vertically.
you can see the 75lb piece of cast iron fire hydrant valve I put in my kiln for thermal mass. Makes a big difference).
all clayed up.
The blade, now. Notice the positive sori. I even pre-bent a little negative sori to try and get a straight blade. I have seen some originals that looked like this (ok, seen pics). I am leaving it. The point looks misleading in the pic. The end of the blade will be double-edged. These have a short cutting bevel, like the Japanese style only really short bevel. The ridgeline will be only about a third of the way up the blade from the edge. The last 4 or 5" of the back edge will be sharpened, too. the point will be very close to the midline of the tip.
comments, advice, offers to collaborate and make fittings, whatever... all welcomed.
take care,
Kevin
I have been working for some time on this project. It has survived the quench and has been tempered. A little straightening, and a ton of polishing and finishing work to go yet.
This is a 28" working length. The blade is 1.13" wide, .28" thick at the shoulders. It tapers to .97" wide and .2" thick (maybe thinner in the end, though).
I have a question - Does Aqua Fortis have a tendency to rust sword blades if you use it as a stain on a wooden sheath?
The Tang Dynasty style of swords are the progenitor of Japanese blades. There are a famous group (2 or 3) that have been preserved behind glass for hundreds of years. Two famous Japanese swordsmiths, upon seeing these swords in person, were quoted as saying that it was no longer correct to say that the height of swords in Japan came from the Kamakura period. Meaning, in their estimation, the best Japanese swords there ever were, are in fact Chinese swords.
The reason I bring this up is because I am doing a clay heat treatment. This was developed by Chinese, and the resulting pattern is called a shuangxue. Later to be renamed a hamon. Chinese used clay heat treatment, all manner of laminates, twisted bars, cores composed of multiple twisted bars, etc. There was a rich exchange of culture through the people of the Northern Steppes in China who were ethnically and in terms of their material culture European. As such, the Chinese used techniques that we often think of as Japanese (indeed they created them), and they used techniques that we often think of as European. Don't know who created them, probably they came from Europe to China rather than the other way. Not sure, though.
Just mentioning this to explain why I am doing stuff that looks Japanese on a Chinese style blade. Also, to let y'all know a bit about why I am trying to learn this style. Pretty much everything you would want to do as a smith, it was done during some period of China's history (except staggered counter-twists like the Vikings).
here are the bars to start. Each of the side pieces has 720 layers.
welded up and ready to go. I used a stop block on my press to get the outside bars to within a couple thousandths of an inch of each other in thickness and width. This is important with a sanmei (yes, sanmei, not san mai... it was a Chinese word first).
bar welded, drawn out, and made into sword preform. It has tapers in width and thickness that will let it become a sword.
here you can see taper in thickness and also layer count tracking on anvil (anyone know what kind of anvil this is? I got it from a kid in Pennsylvania who collects them for $250. It weighs about 200lb).
new horizontal quench tank for water quench. Only one small leak.
heat treating kiln and whole set of tubes for quenching and etching vertically.
you can see the 75lb piece of cast iron fire hydrant valve I put in my kiln for thermal mass. Makes a big difference).
all clayed up.
The blade, now. Notice the positive sori. I even pre-bent a little negative sori to try and get a straight blade. I have seen some originals that looked like this (ok, seen pics). I am leaving it. The point looks misleading in the pic. The end of the blade will be double-edged. These have a short cutting bevel, like the Japanese style only really short bevel. The ridgeline will be only about a third of the way up the blade from the edge. The last 4 or 5" of the back edge will be sharpened, too. the point will be very close to the midline of the tip.
comments, advice, offers to collaborate and make fittings, whatever... all welcomed.
take care,
Kevin
