Ok. This is the bit that I've been dreading. This isnt a cosmetic habaki to demarcate the tsuka from the hamachi, this is to actually hold the damn thing together. Knocking up the blade was easy. Building a habaki was frustrating, disheartening, but eventually, it all started to come together. I thought I'd show you the yuk before the yay!
OK, so this is where it all started.
Firstly, it literally involved using a chisel and hammer to knock two large cuts into the back of the piece of cut copper and then clamping it to a piece of metal the thickness of the blade I'm looking at using with it.
Secondly, I used a combination of a lump hammer and a rubber mallet to attempt to convince the metal to form an L shape. By the time I'd done this, the damn thing needed re-annealing.
Here I am,s at in hospital for a lung infection that looks bad and Im blogging about this kwaiken style knife Ive just started. I often forget the before pictures so I thought I'd just add a small document for posterity.
Just a couple of pictures and as you can see, its a little terribad atm. the blue marks on the top of the kissaki are to remind me where the niku needs to be adjusted to keep everything uniform. It will more than likely a plain wooden shirasaya style design when finished. We shall see.
A little bit more altered and looking a little better apart from that damn tsuka. the channels are ok, but as you can see ive used paralell blanks to keep the ha side of the nakago against actual wood and tried to avoid potential break points.
As you may have worked out by now, I love repurposing steel. The idea of taking something that is actually made of a material that is decent for its purpose, but yet will be thrown away or allowed to rust to death in the shallows of someones garage or basement/cellar and breathing new life into it, really makes me happy. The more obscure the item the better to be fair. And so like the kitchen knife, this small paring/vegetable knife took shape.
Sometimes things go smoothly, sometimes they don't. This work log is about the latter.
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So, it turns out you can patina brass fairly easily. I basically experimented as I am getting terribly bored with the cheap brass hardware that you get with most production katana. The thing is, Im pretty sure its because they can cast the habaki whereas with copper its more complex. Nonetheless, this is how to do it.
Well, I'm no Togishi, however I have certainly polished more than my fair share of both my creations like the kitchen knife and tanto, as well as my own swords.
It's just one of those things. My friend runs a business that deals with Japanese swords and high quality, premium ones at that. He is constantly busy and sometimes i think he would rather be doing other things than polishing.... especially when you take a look at the blades he wanted me to polish back up.
As I've mentioned before, this O-Tanto was gifted to me by a friend and I decided to change the look and feel of it quite radically and in an almost entirely non traditional fashion :)
This was the original, unaltered article.
A while ago, a good friend of mine donated 2 swords to me. This O-Tanto is one of those swords.
For those that don't know, the "O" prefix is simply the way we designate the weapon as being larger than it is usually. This tanto is quite large. With the addition of this new tsuka core I carved, it's now massive!
Originally it had an 11" tsuka in hineri maki and it was the standard, quickly done, no hishigami, cheap cotton ito I usually delight in stripping off and throwing in my bits box which of course I proceeded to do.
