Looking for information about Yakite-kusarakashi

[ROKUJURO]

4 hours ago, GRC said:

.....i suspect using the right grade of steel from the right type of sand iron formed in a tatara will be a critical key to unraveling it all... 

but we shall see... i hope 

Hi Glen,

thank you, very interesting and helpful! One of the factors you did not mention is the making of a TSUBA. I believe this will be most important.

As you say, we shall see....

[GRC]

@ROKUJURO Jean, I'm with you 100%.

I also think that the degree to which the slag is initially hammered out of the billet, along with the way the edges are folded over to shape the plate will be the other key components... maybe an acid bath in some cases to get a more pitted look from the mixed composition steel.

This effect has to be the result of multiple factors, otherwise it would have been sorted out by many other people already.  

[OceanoNox]

To comment on alkali use, I had my students make a fairly nice iron oxide layer on steel with NaOH. The recipe is not mine, and it involves a very concentrated solution and electrolysis. We made it to see how protective it would be in a specific gaseous environment (completely unrelated to tsuba). 

 

For my own texturing, I have done carving+punches (to make it a bit stone like), or glowing heat in air+acid wash after cooling (posted above). I think I will try a combination of both (carving, heating, acid, then additional texturing as needed) to see if it makes an interesting jigane. My most recent project involved forging a piece of angle iron flat on an old anvil, and already the surface needs very little work: there are lines and a roughness from the forging that give already a lot of character.

 

Jean, it's a pity I cannot join your workshop in July. I hope it is fruitful, and I hope you can share some insights gained from it here sometime.

[JohnTo]

A bit late coming into this topic, other things going on besides tsuba

The first etched tsuba I’d like to show is by Efu ju Masayuki (Ruben of the NMB informed me that the odd way of writing the kanji ‘fu’ with a long tail was a characteristic of the last Masayuki of the Ito school working around 1900).

This oval iron tsuba is unusual in that it is a flat plate and the decoration appears to have been made by etching.  The scenes on the front and back are similar and show a typical Chinese, Kaneie style landscape consisting of a range of three mountains at the top, a woodland in the middle (maybe with a thatched hut) and a lake or riverbank at the bottom, one side with a man in a small boat, the other with figure looking over the water.  The brown patina of the iron is unusual in that it resembles bronze and has a sheen to it indicating that it has been lacquered, which has probably prevented any rust.

Height: 7.1 cm. Width: 6.7 cm. Thickness (rim):  0.15 cm, Seppa-dai: 0.4cm

As an aside to etching I remembered dissolving a copper penny in nitric acid as a schoolkid 60+ years ago.  It was fascinating to watch the penny get thinner and thinner but still retaining the clear image of the king’s head (sorry your majesty).  As to which acid to use; nitric for copper and sulphuric or hydrochloric for iron

Best regards John

Just a guy making observations, asking questions and trying to learn

[JohnTo]

I’ve been wanting to post these two tsuba from a daisho pair for some time as I have some questions you guys might be able to help with.

The tsuba are almost truly round, flat iron plates with large sukashi openings, probably stylised butterflies, though I have seen similar examples described as clouds.  I go for the butterflies because of the symmetry in the piercings.  One of the first things to be noticed is the surface of the ji which seems to have been etched.  The high points of the etched surfaces appear to be a random mixture of shapes and sizes.  Some are large (ca. 5mm), whereas others consist of clusters of pin pricks.  How did the artist manage to apply such a varied variety of resist coatings before etching?  My own view is that the plate was sprayed with a fine mist of resist solution and the large areas applied by hand.  Spraying with a viscous resist like lacquer to form a fine mist would have been impossible, so how?  The other less likely scenario I have is that the plate consists of a very heterogeneous mixture of hard and soft iron and the acid preferentially dissolved one of the materials.  If this were the case I would expect the depth of etching to vary.

The second unusual feature of these tsuba is the gold nunome cherry blossoms.  Each inlay is surrounded by a circle of cross hatching in the iron to secure the gold leaf.  While this method of securing gold nunome inlay was standard the observation that the area of the plate prepared to anchor the inlay was far larger than the inlay indicates sloppy workmanship in my opinion.  Perhaps the outline of the cross hatching on the plate was not visible when the tsuba was new but subsequent aging and oxidation (rusting) has made it noticeable.

Both tsuba are signed, but with gold kao, making them unreadable.  Anyone got any ideas?  Also, opinions as to whether the signature relates to the guy who made the whole tsuba, or to someone else who finished the tsuba (etching and inlay).

Although I cannot read the signature, I have attributed the tsuba to late Hayashi/Kamiyoshi on the ground that the overall design is typical.  One of the last tsubako (late 19thC) of the Kamiyoshi ha was Rokujo, who reportedly liked to experiment with surface finishes and signed his name in a variety of ways, including gold inlay.  He also had students and so I expect their works would have been similar.

Best regards, 

John

Just a guy making observations, asking questions and trying to learn

[ROKUJURO]

Beautiful, I like them! No sloppy work, perhaps sold before finish was completely done?

[Tim Evans]

This surface is associated with Kamiyoshi Rakuju per the Higo Kinko Roku translation by Jacoby. There are various names such as gamahada (toad skin) or Imohada (skin of the imo tuber). The shape and design is theirs. I don't see Kamiyoshi tagane, but that is not necessarily disqualifying. 

Edited May 19 by Tim Evans

[Robert S]

14 hours ago, JohnTo said:

  My own view is that the plate was sprayed with a fine mist of resist solution and the large areas applied by hand.  Spraying with a viscous resist like lacquer to form a fine mist would have been impossible, so how?  The other less likely scenario I have is that the plate consists of a very heterogeneous mixture of hard and soft iron and the acid preferentially dissolved one of the materials.  If this were the case I would expect the depth of etching to vary.

 

This reminds me of something we used to do for etching - spattering resist off of a large brush, giving a wide range of sizes of "speckles and blobs".  As regards the viscosity, lacquer or another resist could be thinned.  You don't need a very thick layer of resist to get the desired effect.

[FlorianB]

I agree the pieces by John B are etched. But I wonder how to get the smooth transition of the details in the first one.

 

The dot like elements on the others remind me to aquatint, a special way of etching for artwork: Colophony powder is applied to the surface and heated until it starts to melt.

After cooling it sticks to the surface and protects the surface in an etchant. In the result You have something like a dot matrix in which the motif is scratched in.

 

Similar can be done with lacquer by dropping or spraying with a brush as Robert S mentioned.

Edited May 19 by FlorianB

[JohnTo]

Tim,

I was wondering about Kamiyoshi Rakuju and his toad skin, which is reported to be difficult to copy, but the only reference that I could find said that he melted blobs of silver on the iron to achieve the effect.  I'm sure that the effect is etching on my tsuba, but the han probably used other surface finishes.  With regard to the unfinished nunome, perhaps these were being made about the time of the haitorei and they were going out of business.

 

Thanks for the info, John

 

[Tim Evans]

I have also seen gamahada described as blobs of silver on a base metal. Jacoby has some examples of imohada in his book which look like textured iron. I agree it is odd that the nunome cross hatching was not removed on your tsuba. 

 

for something completely different, there is a modern tsuba smith that is able to create a mottled or textured surface on his tsuba. I don't know the process but suspect heat might be involved. 

 

http://tsubaryuken.com/

 

 

 

 

[JohnTo]

While we are on the subject of yakite-kusarakashi  and toad skin I have just remembered this tsuba that I bought about 15 years ago.  A simple tosho style tsuba but with an go-ishi kata profile tapering evenly from 5mm at the seppa-dai to 2mm at the mimi.  Bought cheaply and I'm not even sure its not modern.  What is interesting is the surface finish, now that's what I call toad skin.  This is what I think may have been caused by Florian's original post: a smooth surface, speckled with a resist, etched and finally subjected to yakiire to melt the raised areas, before being lacquered to protect the surface from rusting.  I've puzzled over the surface effect for a long time, but I think this is how it was probably done.

Specification: Height: 9.2 cm, Width:9.2 cm, Thickness at rim: 0.2 cm, Thickness at Seppa Dai: 0.5 cm. Weight: 166 g

 

Best regards, 

John

Just a guy making observations, asking questions and trying to learn

[ROKUJURO]

John,

what would happen technically when heating up a TSUBA to melting temperature? We are talking about 1.538°C.

As you cannot suspend the TSUBA on a wire or so in a furnace, you will have to place it horizontally on something flat that would be more heat-resistant. As all metals are very good heat conductors, the temperature on the upper side of the TSUBA will be the same as on the underside. So while you are trying to create a "like-melted" texture on the upper side, the underside will do the same and take on the texture of the material it is lying on. 

Now the details: A clay-based ceramic board that could withstand temperatures of about + 1.500°C was not known in Japan and is not known elsewhere today. In high-temp ceramics like porcelain, silicon-carbide boards are now used which withstand temperatures up to 1.700°C (theoretically). In traditional porcelain firing in China and Japan (about 1.350°C), special fireclay-based boards were used which had a short life-cycle. 

So I am afraid we have to discard the notion of YAKITE SHITATE being a "superficial melting" process in TSUBA making. As the term YAKU implies, fire plays a role in the process, but it is not aimed at melting. 

Coming to GAMA HADA, we should have a look at a toad's skin first (see images). I am not speculating how it would have been made on a TSUBA; there are several ways to do it, and none is fast and easy.

Looking at your TSUBA above, my comment would be (not looking at the NAKAGO ANA shape which is off) that it was made by casting in coarse sand. You can buy TSUBA like these cheaply as souvenirs (see images of my souvenir TSUBA below).

[Spartancrest]

   A Gama-hada tsuba from the A.H. Church collection [Ashmolean museum]

Tsuba with gama-hada, or toad skin, surface (EAX.11186), Bequeathed by Sir Arthur H. Church, 1915.

[GRC]

The one Dale posted @Spartancrest is a very rare example. It looks like deliberate inlays of metal blobs to me.

 

Here's a nice variant of the etched toadskin effect that is actually in the for sale section on NMB. I keep looking at it lol. I have a similar one in yamagane copper.

It has the sort of splotchy fractal-esque pattern that you get when some solutions are subjected to conditions that cause them to clump and separate like that, using something called a "reaction-diffusion mechanism".

Maybe misting on drops of something hydrophobic to cause the initial resist solution (maybe urushi lacquer?) to recede into clustered pools?

That kind of process makes sense to me because it already exists in various "irregularly spotted" patterning effects seen in nature like in tabby cats and cheetahs. Varying the degree of the effect gets different patterning results, from something more stripe-like to something splotchy.

I did my M.Sc. degree on pattern development in plants so it's something I am familiar with  

    

 

On a similar note, but different, misting water is also used in Western-style Raku firing of ceramics to get a linear fractal-like crackling effect.

But, that's more because of rapid cooling and heat differential when the spray of cool water hits the red hot glaze, rather than hydrophobic/hydrophilic interactions.

Hydrophobic/hydrophilic interactions will get irregular spotty blobs.

I have also done this in person so have first hand experience with this too. Lots of fun.

[Spartancrest]

10 hours ago, GRC said:

It looks like deliberate inlays of metal blobs to me.

Granules of silver melted onto the base metal - just hot enough to pool the silver without it running off. Rare because getting the temperature correct is extremely difficult.

Technique found here in:: https://ia801304.us.archive.org/2/items/arsorientalisar111979univ/arsorientalisar111979univ.pdf

ARS ORIENTALIS
THE TECHNIQUES OF THE Japanese TSUBA-MAKER 
By ELAINE I. SAVAGE* 
and CYRIL STANLEY SMITH** 
 
  VOL . 11 FREER GALLERY OF ART, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 
DEPARTMENT OF THE HISTORY OF ART, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN  
Copyright © 1979

" An interesting variation is the use of silver in the effect called gama-hada , “toad-skin” surface. In this, convex drops of silver are attached to an iron surface to yield interesting contrasts of shape, texture and color (fig. 35). For rather subtle reasons dependent on the balance of inter-atomic forces at the interfaces between the iron, the silver, and the air, the molten metal does not spread out over the surface, but remains as drops with a well-defined angle of contact (fig. 36)."
 

The technique does sometimes [mostly?] fail, I have an example of such. 

Edited May 30 by Spartancrest
typo

[ROKUJURO]

Traditional Japanese craftsmen are not known for bad work or even fails. That 'decoration' might even be intentional, we will never know. Perhaps just creating a randomly uneven texture?

Besides that, an unusual WAN-GATA shape!

[Spartancrest]

2 hours ago, ROKUJURO said:

an unusual WAN-GATA shape!

Yes I have searched and thus far never seen a CONVEX LENS shaped guard - it is not oval or egg shaped - perhaps it represents a grain of rice?  

Edited May 30 by Spartancrest

[OceanoNox]

Sorry for thread necromancy.

 

I stumbled on a video about nanbu tetsubin. To make the handle look antique, they use a process they call moyashi: by putting boric acid powder on the handle and putting it in the fire, it will burn the metal (you can see sparks in the video), which makes an interestingly rough surface.

 

 

[ROKUJURO]

Hi Arnaud,

this happens because hot melted borax/boric acid is highly corrosive. It can solve iron oxide at moderate temperatures (1.100°C), but at white-hot, it will even attack the metallic iron.

By the way, these are not tea-kettles but water-kettles.

[OceanoNox]

Hi Jean

Thank you for the info. I did not know that was how borax/boric acid worked (I assumed borax made some kind of glass like surface). 

[ROKUJURO]

Yes it does indeed melt at about 900°C to a glassy coating, and this is used in fire-welding to keep oxygen away from the surfaces.
Borax is not the only substance that can be used. Our ancestors had several methods.