Pavel Bolf
Information about Japanese swords and
the making process

At the end of March I met with my friends Bitner and Loki and the guys from "Nože Z vostra" at our place in Pálovice to test the new furnace for tamahagane production. For the reduction we used iron sand as raw material, magnetite of extremely high chemical purity...

I have seen some remakes of Chinese swords recently of really very poor craftsmanship, presented as expert sword work. So I decided to buy one such piece, redesign it and publish the process and the result..

Polishing, modification of the final appearance of the structure and steel particles of Japanese sword blades...

The use of traditionally made tamahagane steel in the blade is one of the essential features of the Japanese sword. In the last few years, this steel has been referred to as "jewel steel". This designation probably originated outside Japan. This may be due both to the beautiful appearance of the broken pieces of traditional steel and its stunning silver crystalline structure with cavities coloured in shades of blue, purple and gold, but also to the legendary reputation created in Japan. Many sources present tamahagane as a steel of exceptional properties that make it a true Japanese sword. So what is Tamahagane? Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Due to the fact that TAMAHAGANE iron sands steel produced in Japan is almost unavailable, I usually melt my own steel for blades made with traditional technology...

A small photo gallery of the production process of one Japanese sword ...

HADA, a pattern of folded steel, is one of the typical features of the Japanese sword. It is formed during the processing of the forged steel, by repeated folding and forge welding.

Blade hardening is one of the most important technological steps in the Japanese sword making process. One could say, with a bit of exaggeration, that the blade becomes a Japanese sword only after hardening.

Photo gallery of tsuka, fuchi and tsuba production...

Samegawa tsuka. The wooden core of the handle is covered with very hard stingray leather. Its surface is made of bone grains. There are three styles of using stingray leather on the sword hilt...

Photo gallery of wrapping tskuka-ito around the handle (tsuka)...

Photo gallery of the habaki production process ...

Photo gallery of tanto production process ...

The primary intention of the swordsmith in the hardening process is to create a hard, cloudy HAMON blade line. The UTSURI line, which usually appears as a shadow following the HAMON line, is one of the secondary metallurgical manifestations of hardening on the blade. UTSURI is a typical feature of quality KOTO blades ...

I recently completed a job that was a bit different from the usual ones. The client supplied his blade, I was to polish it and fit it with a koshirae (set). The blade was roughly half the size of my swords in terms of massiveness. Similarly, most of the swords, from the serial production of various companies, often have subtle blades that do not match the parameters of the new sword ...

Swords with a blade length (nagasa) up to 30 cm are generally considered to be tantó. This dimension is measured between the tip of the blade and the setting of the back (munemachi) in front of the thorn (nakago). However, longer blades can also be classified as tantó, which are more similar to tantó in shape and especially in their use and type of set...

https://www.topky.sk/cl/1000680/1374950/Pavel-a-Martin-vyrabali-v-Japonsku-mece-samurajov--Teraz-ich-budu-vystavovat-v-muzeu-

Tameshigiri is a good way to check the quality of the blade. However, it should be remembered that it also takes a skilled swordsman to make this examination.

A ninja, a shadow warrior dressed all in black and armed with a typically straight sword - the ninja-tó - in addition to a host of hidden weapons. There are few ninjutsu-themed popular literature or films where ninjas are not depicted with this weapon.