Monday, I set myself on fire. It wasn’t too bad, but it was definitely not any kind of good. My face felt sunburned for a couple days, and my mustache was all crispy. My eyebrows are still OK, along with my eyeballs, but my bangs are gone. I got my arm up and covered my face (put it out) pretty fast.
Once the forge body is all assembled, the next problem is to see if it can get hot enough to weld in. The whole exercise is completely pointless if you can’t use the thing for its intended purpose.
I’ve had my blade-making operation shut down for the last 2 years, because my old forge began developing awkward melted holes in the shell, which allowed long burning jets of propane to go shooting out all over the place.
Sheath-making is a fascinating sub-genre of leatherwork. If you have leather carving skills, btw, the recent interest in knives has made teaming up with a knife-maker a very attractive opportunity.
I thought I’d sell my old anvil and get a new one. The surface of the anvil was pretty pitted, and if I tried to forge down an edge, the steel often picked up the pits. Also: new anvils are pretty!
When you form the tip of a japanese-style war-blade, you cut the steel at a 45-degree angle then hammer the back over to form the tip. Usually, the cut-off piece goes in the bin, but with oroshigane or tamahagane, the material is valuable enough that you can’t do that.
I’ve fallen into a habit of randomly switching from project to project, as my interests hit me. That results in a pretty random output, but I’m having a lot of fun.
Willie Sutton said you rob banks because “that’s where the money is.” Well, what if you’re looking for wood?
The next step in the blade’s preparation is to clay up the edge, heat the whole blade until it comes to critical temperature, then plunge it into warm water to harden it.
A trope about samurai swords is that they are incredibly strong and sharp.