Is the craft still the craft ? A discussion on smithing.

Dear all, this question is split off from the "question" topic.

A short summary :

is the craft still the craft ?

When I see smith of the modern era using power hammers I do not really get the idea that the craft still is the craft.

The use of a power hammer in no way diminishes the skill of the craftsman or the quality of his work, it merely replaces a man with a hammer and thus reduces the cost of production. A power hammer is far more accurate than a human hammerman.

 

When you go to a re-enactment do you ride a horse or a chariot merely to get there, just because it was traditional and in some way a 'purer' form of transport? Or do you drive a car because its more efficient?

A car of course.

 

But doesnt a power hammer change the steel structure of the sword significantly compared to all those "art" swords of bygone eras (which were hand forged) we all cherish so much ?

 

KM

Can anyone inform me whether the following is correct :

 

Machine made : Rolled iron, pressed in a mould. quenched in water or oil.

 

Traditionally made : "either hammered by hand or with a power hammer" quenched in water or oil.

 

Nihon-To/Gendai-To, made by hand using Tamahagane and traditional folding techniques. Quenched in water, never in oil.

 

This because the answer Keith gave is a little confusing.

 

KM

KM.

 

The reason I did not enlarge upon what I said concerning power hammers and your subsequent query about it affecting the metal composition, is because the subject is off this current topic and may detract from the present discussion. If you start another thread with this new subject I'm sure that I as well as others will be happy to discuss it and enlarge upon the subject. I suggest you call it

'Is the craft still the craft'.

So, basically my question and the discussion at hand is about smithing.

Can you call smithing of Nihon-to where power hammers are used, still the craft of making Nihon-To ?

Or to be more precise, Gendai-To.

Is it not so that the craft constitutes that a sword should be entirely handmade without any use of any power tools whatsoever, being then quenched in water ?

I have seen a difference with some contemporary sword smiths in documentaries, one not using any form of power tools, the other using a mixture of powertools and hand-work.

Also the definitions of Machine made vs Traditionally made seem to lack somehow in preciseness and seem blurry. Hence the second question I asked the forum members.

Hopefully this will become a proper discussion.

KM

As a first answer, lets have a look at what does constitute 'the craft'.

Swordsmithing as far as nihonto is concerned consists of producing a composite steel blade using tamahagane as a base material, then quenching it in water. Maybe this is a little simplistic, but it serves as a basis.

That it is correctly composed and quenched here being the core of the 'craft'. That, and that the resulting blade is of a form accepted and recognised as that of a nihonto.

What changes the metal composition is of course the base material (or materials) being used, the method of forging. (number of times it is folded and returned to the fire and of course the final quenching).

What kind of hammer the smith uses is of no consequence, (beyond that which achieves the required result), be the hammer mechanical or manual. The hammering is merely a process in itself and has no effect on the composition of the steel.

Oil quenching tends to be a slower quench and therefore does not produce the same dramatic hamon and other steel effects or to the same degree as water quenching. Nor is it traditional. I cannot conceive of a traditionally made blade that has been oil quenched.

The craft lies in the production by a single individual with the aid of assistants (or a mechanical hammer), of a single blade to the preceding specifications using traditional materials and techniques.

Now, Chris will probably come along and add to this or possibly shoot me down completely, but this is basically how I see the core of the craft.

KM

The following is purely opinion not based on 1st hand experience but I hope a little common sense.

What makes a Japanese sword a Japanese sword is the material used and how it is worked/constructed.

The use of a power hammer when forging pieces of tamahagane together into the blocks which will eventually be formed in to the blade is an alternative to having one or two hammer men doing the same job.

The force used can be more easily controlled therefore you would expect it to be more consistant than hand hammering. Having said that hammer men are doing the job so much that it is reasonable to expect they would be consitent as well.

The chemical construction of the metal is effected by the number of times it is heated and folded, as some of the carbon content is lost in the process. The act of hammering should not change the composition. However if such a thing were possible it would be within the smiths ability to modify the force and frequerncy of blows to imitate hand hammering.

The final shaping, quenching etc are done by hand. All of the features that one would expect to see in the finished blade are created or enhanced at this stage.

Based on the above the use of power hammers is not a substitute for nor does it impact on the smiths skill nor does it effect the material compostion. It simply replaces bodies in the process.

We all have an ideal image in our minds of what we expect artisans to do and how we would like them to work. Commercial reality impacts that image in sword making as in anything else, it always has. I do not believe using machinery in the early stages of forming the blocks will necessarily have a great impact on the finished product. Nor does it disqualify the end product from being a crafted object.

sorry Ketih we seemed to be responding at the same time and in the same vein

PaulB.

No problems........... Mutual positive reinforcement is always a good thing.

It all depends on how you wish to define "traditional". Some will contend that the last "real" samurai sword was made in the Muromachi period, before the change to localized steel production....Others, when human power was superseded by power tools...In my opinion, as long as the gov is requiring the licensing of shinsakuto and calls them Nihon-to, I will continue to consider them Nihon-to as well.

I agree with the reasoning of Paul and Keith. The tools are simply means to an end. The power hammer gives the smith more control and consistency. It is hardly the only power tool used in modern times by smiths....No doubt earlier smiths would have used them if they were available.

Henk,

As has already been pointed out, tools are merely a means to an end. Powered or not is less important than what you can do with them.

Many Japanese potters use electric wheels for throwing while others still prefer a kick wheel. It would be wrong to suggest that those using an electric wheel were somehow not making real Japanese pottery.

As Chris suggests, it also rather depends on how you define 'traditional'. To my mind there is no single fixed entity that is this thing called 'traditional'. When we speak of traditional Japanese crafts are we speaking about something that can really be defined by specifics? I don't think we can. It's really something far more elusive and to do with guiding principles and spirit that informs each age and the practitioners of the various crafts.

Traditions by their very nature are an ongoing process. Once they stop evolving they become merely a mindless repetition of form, the true significance and meaning of which is soon lost.

I actually wrote a little piece about the hand vs power tool question in an on-line interview I did a while back. You can read it in it's entirety here but the relevant piece is this;

4. In your video ‘Utsushi – in search of Katsuhira’s tiger’ we’re seeing you scraping the tsuba in order to make it perfectly flat. Why are you not using any ‘modern’ tools to make it yourself more comfortable or can you just don’t get the same end result ? I mean, even lot of the Japanese smiths these days are using an hydraulic hammer to give the blade it’s rough shape.

 

Ah, yes! The ‘power tool/ labour saving’ dilemma. I think that there is sometimes a misapprehension about my apparent rejection of power tools. Where I choose to do things by hand it’s not for philosophical or ideological reasons at all. I know that for many people seeing me do all that work totally by hand was inspiring and even a confirmation that their own desire to ‘do things the old way’ was right. But the truth is I’m a craftsman (ignoring the art aspect for a moment) in exactly the same way my predecessors were.

 

Any tool, whether a simple chisel, an electric drill press or the very latest CAD driven model growing machine, is assessed on it’s merits and in terms of what it can do for me. My drill press is used without a second thought and if I need to make some forming dies in steel you can bet I’ll be using my trusty angle grinder. I won’t be bothering to get CAD program though!

 

The point I would make is that not all power tools can be judged in the same way. A smith using a power hammer is not actually changing how the hammer works the metal nor the speed at which the process evolves. He is still totally in control and able to follow exactly what’s happening under the hammer.

 

This is not the case when using electric micro-grinders or power ‘hand-engravers’ . When I’m carving or doing ultra fine inlay I need to know that every minute tap of my hammer is completely under my control. And when carving something so that it evokes feelings you need to be able to, very sensitively, work your way to that goal. Speed really isn’t everything.

 

 

 

The question arises, can one discuss the craft in any of the depth it deserves without also considering the prime motivation of the craftsman, and how any change in that motivation has modified the product of his craft?.

In the past, a tosho produced swords to survive and serve in the capacity of a weapon. His motivation was to produce the best possible blade for use. Whilst some consideration of aesthetics was undoubtedly implicit in that production, it was not the focus.

A modern tosho by comparison produces a blade with aesthetics and the art value of the piece as his prime motivator. Likewise he no doubt also considered the viability of the piece as a weapon, but this is not his focus.

Has this quantum shift in the focus of the craftsman had an effect on the craft itself?

Has the craft suffered in any way with the shift in this focus?

Personally, I tend toward the thought that any impact of this focus shift has been minimal since in the main, the properties and qualities that go to make a fine weapon are those that also make a fine art sword. But what do others think?

Keith,

Has the craft suffered in any way with the shift in this focus?

you raise an interesting point It seems to me that the "shift in focus" is absolutely appropriate and that 'the craft' is evolving in ways that are driven by a healthy evolution. A craft only remains relevant if it, in however small a way, meets the needs of a society. Swords are no longer required as weapons, not even most dedicated martial arts practitioners can genuinely claim to use their swords in the same way as 16th cent. battlefield veterans might have, and we don't even really know what that would have properly entailed.

Certainly there are swords being made today, especially in America, that are highly regarded for their cutting ability but it's revealing how their overall form differs from classical models. Revealing perhaps yet a further re-imagining of the swords original function, but we're seen that sort of 're-imagining'/redesign before, as a response to Edo period dojo based training. Slicing bamboo and tatami mats not at all the same as hacking at a bloke in amour who's also trying to hack at you

However, as an art-form and with the concomitant shift in emphasis on aesthetics, the sword is now 'performing' a very different function in the way aficionado's regard them. Modern art swords easily meet the essential requirements of a weapon, qualitative assessments of that fitness aside, merely by adhering to good classic models that reflect the attributes practicing warriors admired and avoiding overly showy construction that is intended solely to produce 'bling'. The real artistry is more subtle, I would argue, and is intensely focused on the varieties of ji-hada, manipulation of the structure of and activities within the hamon, and further features that may be coaxed from the ji.

They are still the same swords, made the same way but with a keener eye on beauty.

Personally speaking, I don't see the craft as having suffered by this new emphasis, it's merely adapted to meet the demands and interests of it's contemporary audience. As Chris pointed out, it does rather depend on when you see the last old style 'real'(practical) swords having been made. Wasn't 'Osaka Shinto' a significant shift in emphasis away from the essentially functional also? Yet those blades served a very real and significant 'function' too, within the society that required them.

Just some musings over my first cuppa. I'll be interested to hear other views. No doubt certain 'sword swingers' may have some objections to my rejection of modern day romantic illusions of warrior training

regards all,

fh

I gave lot of thought to the PH issue when I built mine. I wanted to closely approximate the shape of the hammer that a hammer man would use. Most western power hammers use a form of drawing dies. That is the hammer and anvil are radiused in one direction. Hammering moves the material in one direction-lengthwise.

A hand wielded hammer is basically round with a spherical shape to the face. When struck the material moves is all directions. The smith compensates for this by alternatly cutting and folding across and with the grain. The smaller the spherical radius the more easily the material moves. This also deforms the material more in the area stuck-smaller and deeper dimples. This will distort the layer structure. If the blade is then filed and scraped to remove the dimples the circular whorls characteristic of Mokume hada will result. In practice the smith will strike a balance with the shape of his hammers both powered and hand.

I chose to emulate the round type hammer in my PH build. You can see some videos of it here.

http://www.youtube.com/user/Katanabuilders

The video

In particular shows how the shape of hammer and anvil affect the way the metal moves.

Power hammers used by modern Tosho also use the round hammer head.

I have to believe that there is at least some effect on the steel structure imparted by the heavy hammers-hand or powered.

As Ford so eloquently put it-all tools have to be evaluated for use and affect. As tools (hand or powered) become more complex decisions are taken away from the artist/artisan/craftsman. It is the millions of minute decisions made by the artist along with his/her knowledge and skill that dictates the results. The fewer the decisions required the less individual the result.

To answer the question-The craft is still undoubtedly the craft.

Gentlemen,

as a smith and experimental archeologist, I have often been confronted with this question. When I get an order from a museum to replicate a tool or a weapon, I usually ask what they want. Is it a look-alike for display behind glass? Do they want to play around with it? Do they want me to use material as close to the original as possible, perhaps to be able to study the performance and form changes in use?

I can do all this with my traditional tools, and with the addition of special fuel (charcoal instead of hard coal) and the necessary knowledge of historical facts about forging (e.g. use of fluxes), I can reproduce whatever I am asked for.

Concerning Japanese blades, today there might be a tendency to the art side, as Ford stated. This shift is not a sudden or recent one but it may have started slowly at the beginning of the EDO perod, getting a push in this direction after the end of the SAMURAI period. What makes a sword still be a weapon instead of an 'objet d'art' is what is intended by the KAJI.

Our late head of the KYUDO HEKI-RYU INSAI HA, INAGAKI-SENSEI, used to say: Practicing KYUDO is a question of life and death.

In the beginning I had a problem in understanding why a sport should be taken that serious, but I had to learn that everything we do is depending on how we do it. Our spirit and our thoughts make a lot of difference in the results, and a modern swordsmith who's main intention is to form a technically and aesthetically appealing blade may be just be one small step aside of what was intended a few hundred years ago. Any sharp blade may do a 'good job', but a blade made with the experimental background of fencing techniques of a special period of time or a fencing school might make a - possibly barely noticeable - difference.

In this context I may remind you the old story of the comparison of a blade made by MASAMUNE and one by MURAMASA (I am not going to tell the legend here). Japanese people believe that there are spirits (KAMI) in many object which we would call 'dead', but they might as well be right.....

In my understanding, it is not so much the power-driven tools that have influenced the crafts and initiated changes in the working process. Our conciousness for the time dripping away definitely has an influence, and thus our goals to finish the work in a 'reasonable' time. The attitude to use 'slow' tools as described by Ford is not only a way to get your back free of the pressure of time, it has also another effect: 'slow' tools also allow to think while you are working, and they minimize the risk to produce big flaws. While a belt grinder could effect a change in the shape of a blade in a few seconds, it also could ruin the SHINOGI in the same small amount of time.

So I would support the idea that power driven tools might be helpful without affecting the quality and meaning of the craft as long as they do not push the speed of the processes so that the work becomes dictated by the rhythm of the machines. It should remain the rhythm of the craftsman.