Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith
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Stacy Apelt - WIP - Yanagi-ba
This project is a smaller Yanagi style blade for general kitchen slicing chores.
Yanagi means willow in Japanese, so a yanagi-ba is a willow blade knife. This describes its long, slender shape with a pointed tip.
Here is an excellent photo of one:
http://zknives.com/knives/knimgtmpl...ves.com/knives/kitchen/aritsugu/artgwpy02.jpg
The project will entail making the blade form a san-mai billet with a center core of 52100, and outer segments of 1095 and pure nickel damascus.
You can make the same blade in mono-steel, or regular damascus, and have a very nice knife. You can use any high carbon knife steel, or CPM-S35VN in stainless.
The blade will end up about 1.25 wide and have an edge length of 7. The handle will be 5 long.
The blade will be single bevel Chisel Grind, or Kata-kiri-ha .
The back will be ground in a shallow hollow grind, and the front a single bevel rising half way up the side. I will do almost all the shaping by stock reduction.
The handle will be an assembled two-tone octagon shape. More on that later.
Lets get started:
The billet was a bit too narrow for this project, so I pulled down the edge a bit to widen it. While the forge was on, I drew out the tang and roughed in the bevels and distal taper. This could have been cut from a wider billet without forging.
The basic profile was roughed in on the grinder, using a 60 grit Blue Zirconia belt. These belts will really hog steel, but also leave a surprisingly smooth surface.
The tip is placed about the center line. The bevel is only roughly ground to set the angles.
The back will need to be hollow ground. I would normally do this on a 48 radius platen, but later on I will show a trick on making a larger radius with a smaller wheel.
I shaped the tang to a taper, then refined all grinds with the same 60 grit belt. This is where we will stop grinding. The rest will be by hand.
I etched the blade to show the pattern. The surface is 60 grit right now.
I have a large Burns Supper I am in charge of, so I wont get any more done for about two weeks. More to come after Burns Night is over.
This project is a smaller Yanagi style blade for general kitchen slicing chores.
Yanagi means willow in Japanese, so a yanagi-ba is a willow blade knife. This describes its long, slender shape with a pointed tip.
Here is an excellent photo of one:
http://zknives.com/knives/knimgtmpl...ves.com/knives/kitchen/aritsugu/artgwpy02.jpg
The project will entail making the blade form a san-mai billet with a center core of 52100, and outer segments of 1095 and pure nickel damascus.
You can make the same blade in mono-steel, or regular damascus, and have a very nice knife. You can use any high carbon knife steel, or CPM-S35VN in stainless.
The blade will end up about 1.25 wide and have an edge length of 7. The handle will be 5 long.
The blade will be single bevel Chisel Grind, or Kata-kiri-ha .
The back will be ground in a shallow hollow grind, and the front a single bevel rising half way up the side. I will do almost all the shaping by stock reduction.
The handle will be an assembled two-tone octagon shape. More on that later.
Lets get started:
The billet was a bit too narrow for this project, so I pulled down the edge a bit to widen it. While the forge was on, I drew out the tang and roughed in the bevels and distal taper. This could have been cut from a wider billet without forging.
The basic profile was roughed in on the grinder, using a 60 grit Blue Zirconia belt. These belts will really hog steel, but also leave a surprisingly smooth surface.
The tip is placed about the center line. The bevel is only roughly ground to set the angles.
The back will need to be hollow ground. I would normally do this on a 48 radius platen, but later on I will show a trick on making a larger radius with a smaller wheel.
I shaped the tang to a taper, then refined all grinds with the same 60 grit belt. This is where we will stop grinding. The rest will be by hand.
I etched the blade to show the pattern. The surface is 60 grit right now.
I have a large Burns Supper I am in charge of, so I wont get any more done for about two weeks. More to come after Burns Night is over.
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