JHrisoulas

Hello!! I also got an e-mail from him a few days back...selling the same two swords as described earlier in this thread..Hummmm maybe he has an antique sword factory?? JPH

Hello!! As someone who has made quite a few dozen barrels (all pattern welded..but still it's a barrel...one of whch was for my .45 120 3 1/4" SS rifle...) if you are going to attempt to straighten it cold I suggest that you fill the entire barrel with sand, and the drive in a soft wood (like pine, poplar, whitewood or something similar) and the torque it straight. The sand will prevent the barrel from "kinking" or creasing during straightening...Whatever you do I would say DO NOT HEAT IT UP.... Now there are some techniques for straightening a tube where you will the barrel with water and the water filled barrel/tube is then placed in a freezer until the water has turned to ice but I would forgo that due to the fact that as a metallurgist I wouldn't want to chance any posibility of causing a crack due to cold..Old iron can be really finiky when it come to being moved at freezing temps.. Hell's Bells..you are going to be taking a big enough chance straightening the barrel cold with the sand..no need to "complicate" matters with below freezing temps unless there is no other choice... Anyway that's how I'd do it... Hope this helps JPH

Hello: To my eye it looks to me a welding flaw along the lines of an inclusion..it is not a cold shut (too cold) weld...Seems to look alot like a little bit of "crud" got caught in the weld and wasn't "thrown free" during the weld itself... Hope this helps JPH

Bazza: Thank you and there is (at least to me) no such thing as useless information. What you are describing is what I (and many other smiths) call "composite construction", I.e. taking two or more seperate pieces and incorporating them into a blade.. Kobuse construction would be a composite blade, as would San Mai (in its variations) and the same with Wariha Tetsu. Now a "homogenous" blade ( Maru?) would not be, in my opinion a composite blade even though it is more or less a "laminate" of sorts due to the refining of the Tahamagane and the inclusion of various grades of raw materials, due to the fact by the time the forging/welding courses are completed the content within the piece is pretty much homogenous. Now having made quite a bit of my own "Jim-agane" and playing about with that I can say by the time one is on about the 10th weld/forge cycle things are pretty much well on their way to being more or less homogenous and by the 12th to 15th cycle they are pretty well refined.. Now proper thermal cycling also plays a very important factor if forging a sword (especially) and that seems to be a "forgotten step" in the making of a solid blade, one that is very often not mentioned in texts and other sources... The photo below shows two pieces of Jim-agane that I am refining for research purposes. Both pieces are on their 12th weld/forging course.. Looks like I will have enough for two decent size sunobe..or one real MONSTER of a sword if I weld them together. Spark tests show approx 80 pts of C or so..a little high but still use-able for a water quench. Thank you once again for the information.. JPH Oh..if anyone is interested..once I get this section wrapped up..I may be able to send out a "peek" at it to interested individuals once I get it all out of my head. This will be another two months or so as I am just now really getting into the guts of the thing now that I covered the differences between using laminate vs modern homogenous materials in composite construction...

Hello: In reply: cabowen: Thank you..this is a starting point. I will see what I can dig up in regards to this gentleman. Having made a considerable number of pattern welded gun barrels I can see where this fellow would be "coming from"...More for me to research. THANK YOU... watsonmil: If the welds are solid and the material is properly worked there should be no problems at all as far as strength goes, in fact it should actully, to a point,m help to strengthen the whole assembly as the weld lines will not be parallel, rather they would be more like strands in a rope...Now if the welds were NOT as good as they should be..then other problems can arise, some which can cause a catastrophic failure... What I am asking is (maybe I wasn't clear as I should be in my original post) after the last welding course, before the bar was incorporated into the construction of the sunobe, are there any pieces that show evidence of having been twisted in order to manipulate the Hada into a different pattern? The result would look something like the European/Asia Minor "Maiden's Hair" or "Waterfall" pattern, with the weld lines running down the blade like the stripes on a barber pole... This is to satisfy my own curiosity more than anything else as I am about to start my "Sword of 100 Abominations" just for grins and giggles... JPH

Hello: (I hope this is in the right section)..... While I am doing research for my 4th book I am delving rather deeply into how to visually re-produce the various Hada that is seen..While I am working all this out I was wondering...Are there any swords that show a twist in the Hada? From my research I can pretty much duplicate the visual appearence of Hada like Mokume and Ayasugihada by surface manipulation of the laminate but as I was working I realized that I have never seen a blade that had the material twisted in its forging. So my question is: Does anyone know of any blades that exhibit evidence of having the material twisted during the forging sequences?? Thank you for your time JPH

Hello: Thank you for the warm welcome...I hope to be of some benefit and make a decent contribution from time to time.. JPH

Mr Mazzy: Yes the work is pretty much all mine except for the kashirae. I get the tsuba, menuki, fuchi and kashira from an art foundry that specilaizes in reproduction sword furniture. I am working of finding someone who can do hand made tsuka-ito but no luck as yet. The steels I use are usually 10XX series combined with something a "little different" like 15n20/L6 or refined mix of meteoric iron/wrought iron when I am feeling really masochistic. From time to time I do my own iron from ore and work the bloomery down and then make steel from there (I do two smelts every year or so for reseach purposes). Now my primary area of reseach is in Northern European Pattern Welding techniques of the Migrationary Period, but I have had "my hand in" making Japanese style blades ever since my best friend, the late Mr. Bob Engnath decided to figure out how to get a hamon on homogenous material. We must of went through two tons of all sorts of steels until we can up with the proecess that I use now. Compared to some of the milti-core European swords, the Japanese methods are much simpler in terms of construction, but that is really a very general observation as there are other factors that come into play. The polishing techniques that the Japanese employed resulted in a finish that can be described (when properly done) as nothing less than spectacular... As I said in my introduction, I am currently doing my 4th book and that will incude a chapter on differential hardening blades to get a hamon as well as adapting traditional Japanese composite construction and forging techniques using "modern" materials. While some sword collectors call me a heretic, I hope that this is not the case here. I will also be covering modern methods of polishing using both abrasion and chemical ectants in order to reveal the haomn, here again to some it would seem to be heresey but I am not advocating that these techniques be used on "old" blades, just on the blades made by someone who has an interest in getting started and even then, simply a stepping stone to more traditional techniques. I am currently working on a tamashigiri Dai-sho that once done I will be posting once I get them finished and my web site back up and running (it is currently crashed due to a "uodate" by my hosting company). Now I have a question.. I have a sword (blade only) made by Ansano Kanezane around 1941. It shows his kokuin at the end of the nakago underneath/below the mei so it wasn't made by his company workers..so I have been told anyway.... It is what I call a "rescued blade" as I picked it up at an estate sale in Los Angeles around 1978. It has been slightly abused, there are some very small nicks on the ha and the kissaki has lost the last 1/64" or so. I would like to have it polished and re-mounted. Does anyone know of a decent polisher that would accept the work? Thank you for your time JPH

I hope this is in the right place..if not I am sorry..I am still not all that tuned in to the computer age tech. My name is Jim..I am a swordsmith/researcher living and working in Southern Nevada and I am presently in the midsts of my fourth book and I am hoping to clean some background informaton/data about the Japanese sword for inclusion in said book and to present some of my own "raw data" to check for accuracy and content. Thank you for your time. Below is a photo of one of my Japanese inspired pieces made in the Kobuse method of construction from 1095/84, wrought iron and meteoric iron laminate around a wrought iron core. This is just "inspired" and not of any real identifiable blade style other than "big" with a nagasa of 34" and 3/4" sori. Tsuka length is 14" done in my own version of a "modified" battle wrap tsuka-maki in black and gold chevron pattern silk ito over tiger ray samegawa. This siya is 22K gold leaf under a black "cracked" lac sealed with clear lac over it. The remainder of the siya is covered with the same tiger ray samegawa as on the tsuka with horn furniture. This blade cuts very well (at least for me it does) and is surprizingly light for its length due to the distal taper and the two Bo-Hi. I hope you like it... JPH