JPH

Hello:

I am still battling this thing with my hand but here is something that took me close to 25 years to finally finish up.

As some of you know I was very close friends with the late Mr Robert Engnath..as close if not closer than brothers. He and I back in the day were working on ways to produce "finish it yourself" sword blades with a real hamon for his business "Blades -N- Stuff"..We must of destroyed two tons of steel and hundreds of blades figuring this out..but we did. Bob went on to become one of the most sought after "japanese blade" makers in the world.

Well while we were mucking about with this I forged this blade out of 1076, in the shinogi-zukuri shape, and I not knowing better at the time forged in a bit of sori prior to heat treating.. Well Bob and I were trying a new quenchant mixture, a mix of lye, salt and dish soap.. It worked great but it put even more sori in the blade...almost 1 5/8" of an inch..(This mix worked so well that Bob used it from that day on...)

Anyway I finished it up using wet/dry paper and put it into shira siya where it stayed from that day on..I was mostly burned out from doing all the Japanese stuff so I didn't really think about going all the way with this one, I did however take it with me to the various shows that the Engnaths and I were doing so Bob could take orders for similiar sword blades... This is where it gets "interesting"

Bob and I were at the Pasadena Knife show...our tables were next to each other as we usually were..I had this blade with me when this geeky fellow comes by my table and without warning grabs and pulls out the sword...Now I am trying to get this guy calmed down and Bob is rapidly coming to my aid, when the fellow says "Don't worry I am a trained Ninja" (what ever that means I do not know...) and then proceeds to raise the sword up, over and down his back from his right shoulder..

He shouldn't of done that. All that sori in this blade means the point isn't "where it should be" and about 3" or so of the kissaki burried itself neatly in the idiot's right but cheek.. Now things get worse (for him..funnier for us..) Instead of thinking and reassessing his situation and pulling the sword straight up and out, the idiot simply pulled down on the tsuka and opened up his behind like a canoe. Copious amounts of blood followed. Needless to say I finally got my sword back and he was off to the ER via ambulance..never to be seen again.

I spent the rest of that afternoon cleaning the numbskull's blood off the blade. Of copurse what happened spread like wildfire throughout the show..with more than ample help of Bob and his lovely wife Stevie. Several other makers dropped by with suggestions as to what I should "name" this sword...

Well I just put it away and more or less forgot about it...and when Bob passed away so suddenly..it just didn't see the light of day for a good long while. I was heartbroken at his passing as he was very much "family" and I couldn't bring myself to do anything with it until now.

Seeing that this was the last blade we made together as a team..I figured I should mount it up and finish it as a cover sword for book IV, which I did.

So here it is..the infamous sword named "Arse Biter"...

It is in Tachi mounts with a 29 1/4" long shinogi-zukuri blade, the tsuka and saya are covered in tiger rayskin and my favorite black and gold chevron pattern Ito. The saya has hammered copper fittings and the rest is done in a mix of silver and gold leaf under black cracked lac. It is sealed with 10 coats of clear hard lacquer. I feel this give a very nice visual effect.

The mounts are bronze, with gold and silver details done in a dragon motif. Tsuka length is 12 1/2" or so.

I think that Bob would be pleased with the way it all turned out. Given the fact that is is one of the few pieces I have that he worked on..it is a very special sword to me. It is only fair that it be used for the cover of book IV as I will be including all he notes and other information that he and I came up with on Hamons back in the day.

Hope the photos turn out..

JPH

Hello:

This is a companion piece to the Chisa Katana I did a while back..(see the swordsmithing forum for that one)....

Blade is welded L-6/1060, Kobuse construction with a mild steel core. Blade length is 15 1/2" in the Unokobe-Shobu Zukuri shape with 1/3 blade length Naginata Hi and 4/5 blade length Bo-Hi running down the Gi.

Hamon is quite visible but doesn't show as well in the photos as it does "in the flesh"..Still has a bit of polishing to get done to enhance the contrast. Eagle and Pine theme kashirae and the black and gold chevron silk over natural Tiger Ray Samegawa on he tsuka...Tsuka length is 7 1/8".

OAL: 24".

Siya is red gold leaf under the black cracked lac. All in all I think that it turned out quite well and I consider this still a work in progress..

JPH

Hello:

This is something I am currently finishing up for book IV..a Chisa Katana in laminate Kobuse construction using 1060/L-6 around a mild steel core (1018 I do believe)

Nagasa is 25" with Naginata-Hi and Bo-Hi on each side, scraped in by hand...sounds like a lot of work but it goes pretty quick once you get use to doing it.

Uno Kobe Shobe Zukuri blade style (my personal favourite cause it cuts so smooth for my cutting techniques..my students all say I cut like a peasant swinging a hammer...I just nod and agree cause I know I do......)

Tsuka is in Tiger Ray skin that I got from a friend in out in Guam. These skins are HUGE... On the Omote side I have three large nodes on the skin that after about 6 hours' or so worth of tweaking and a LOT of T&E I fially got to show in the diamonds in the center of the tsuka. That was a real tense time figuring that positioning out for certain...

I left the Tiger Ray natural..un-bleached to show the colour variations in the samegawa. I think the effect came through pretty well overall...

Tsukaito is wrapped in my "Modified Battle Wrap" style in black and gold silk chevron ito..(I just love that pattern..very attractive) Tsuka length is a little long (cause I like it that way for my cutting swords) at 14" mounted in a Eagle and Pine Tree theme kashirae with gold and silver leaf accents.

Still have a good deal of polishing to do on this one to bring out the Hamon and that will be the next step. It is already showing pretty well and I already have a very frosty hamon line that will, hopefully, really start to come out once I get "into" the polish a bit more....steel is about 2500 "layers" worth there abouts...

Siya is finished in red gold leaf under black cracked lac..I am finally figuring this part out so I can pretty much control the size and amount of cracked I get....figures now that I am about done with all this Japanese stuff for book IV

OAL: 40 1/2"ish.....A nice stout little slicer that should cut pretty well (I hope)...

Anyway I hope the pics turn out at least half way OK..


JPH

Hello:

I’ve been away a bit due to a reoccurring hand problem so I am basically on light duty until that is resolved, so in the meantime I am doing a lot of little stuff here and there and one of the activities is getting myself caught up on my polishing.

I am currently busy polishing a Kogarsu Maru Tachi made from steel that I smelted myself using the locally available ore from my area, via direct reduction for the smelt. For the ore itself I used Nevada Desert magnetite, which I obtained from the sands that's all around here.

During the smelt I added a small amount of graphite to the mix in order to raise the carbon content. The bloom came out really clean, not many voids and felt very "heavy" mass wise for its size... It was flattened then it was triple cut and re-welded using triple cuts each time for 5 times in order to refine the grain structure. Worked smoothly and was very "solid" under the hammer. No problems with crumbling or anything. Welded great..one of the smoothest refinings I have done so far.

It sparked like a 60 t0 70 pt C steel but the sparks were very "white"..not the golden/reddish yellow like most carbon steels...

The sword blade was then forged out of this material, rough shaped under hand hammering, rough ground and then shaped, the two Bo-Hi started and then heat treated. ( I’m not going to tell you, yet,, how I got that little arrowhead shaped termination at the Kissaki, as that will in book No. IV. I got that idea for that type of termination from several pieces I have seen what I was doing research for a book IV).

The blade was clayed using A P Green High Al furnace repair/cement with concrete tie wire used to hold the clay in place during yaki ire. The quenching medium was warm brine ( my own mix of sodium hydroxide and ammonium nitrate, which is basically caustic blue salts) at a temperature of 265°F. Horizontal quench.

The blade came out of yaki ire with no cracks, warps or bends, and with a graceful amount of sori. I then started the polish after I scraped clean and base polished the Bo Hi…

While I was polishing I noticed that the Hamon was taking a much "smoother finish" than the unhardened areas of the blade. Now this is not all that unusual, as it is harder but for some reason the colors were little “ off” than what I usually see, more "darker grey", almost a bit "greasy" in colour in the softer areas.

This was becoming more noticeable as I progressed up in the polish into the finer grits. Once I got to 2500 grit, I did a very short etch in ferric chloride for approximately 30 to 45 seconds. Upon the removal of the blade the entire surface was black, which for me is more or less normal for the way I work.

As I was wet rubbing out the blade with 2500 grit wet/dry paper to get off that black crud I noticed that the Hamon was very smooth and silvery white with a cloudy transition line between the hard and soft areas of the blade (Shibuchi line) The softer area displayed a surface that had an "open" grain that looked like either some flavour of wrought iron or Wootz. Now I have never seen this happen before and I am stumped, maybe alloy banding but I doubt that....

Now let me backtrack a bit, the area where I obtained the magnetite is downwind a little ways from Ti-Met, which is a titanium foundry located here in the Henderson area. Now since titanium is paramagnetic, I feel that some of that material may have piggybacked onto the magnetite‘s surface, being picked up along with it as that is the only way it could have been “picked up“, or maybe my adding the graphite to the smelt may have caused the effect illustrated in the below photographs. Maybe it’s a little both, I do not know.

The finish was totally smooth and hand rubbed out to 2500 grit before the etch.NO scratches visible, almost to a full mirror polish.

The resulting finish after the etch, on the non-hardened areas of the blade is very similar to, at least to my eyes,as I said before, WI or Wootz. Now I was wondering if any of you fine folks have any idea as to what happened and why I’m getting this effect and result. I’m also wondering if I could of accidentally violated Mr. Daniel Watson’s so-called “Techno-Wootz” patent. Either way I am at a loss as to what happened either during the smelt or the hardening process. So does anyone have any ideas at all?

I was thinking as I am continuing to study that the grain looks alot like a wrought iron type of structure, but then,thinking a bit more why wouldn't the grain then be visible in the hardened areas of the blade as well, instead it being only seen in the un-hardened areas?

(If any of you are interested I am more than happy to post photographs of the completed piece but right now I’m wondering what in the heck I did to this steel to get this effect). This sure has me stumped. The surface was totally "mirror smooth" before the etch, with a nice Hamon showing and when I saw what happened when it came out of the etch I was totally taken back...

Any and all ideas are welcome so enjoy the photos.

Thank you

JPH

Hello:

I have been away dealing with some seriously nasty family problems coupled side by side with RPFS. Well I am getting down to the last of the Japanese stuff I need for book IV so here's a naginata I am working on

Nagasa is 25 3/4" Nakago is 19 1/2" Blade width at hamachi is 1 1/4", Blade width at the kissaki is a whopping 1 7/8" Two Bo-Hi. Sorry about the lousy pics but I ain't no sort of photographer. OAL: 45".

I still have a good deal of polish work to do on this to bring out the hamon a bit. There is a good deal of hitsura on one side of the blade (and not the other...hummmmm) that is probably due to the 1055 being so shallow hardening. Methinks that the clay may of pulled away from that one side but stayed in place of the other.. Anyway this one I am planning on keeping. I have already fitted a habaki (I HATE making those) and am planning on mounting this on a 5 1/2 to 6 foot long laminated oak haft with some sort of fittings yet to be decided upon....

This one is a monster and I am planning on NOT selling this one like I did my other one so this will be a keeper. Will look great next to my Japanese armour

Once again sorry for the poor photos..

JPH