I am finishing up the polish and mounting of a sword for a good customer of mine. The blade is shobu zukuri, optimized for aggressive cutting practice, and made to spec. The polish is about done and I really enjoyed this one because Howard Clark really made an interesting hamon on this piece. It is light, fast, and very nicely done. But the hamon is really stunning. Hopefully I'll have time to get out my good lights and set up to do more professional looking photos, but I really wanted to show off some of Howard's work here. The hamon on this is just stunning to me showing off Howard's immense control over the microstructures in the steel. Polishing something like this really reminds me why I do this stuff. And even after cursing for days polishing this blade (this steel is *VERY* tough, hard, and abrasion resistant making finishing a real challenge) when it is finally done I'm reminded of why I love this stuff so much.

Anyway, please realize that these are simply two photos taken on my dining room table using just the light coming in the window this morning. Not professional, not color balanced, not done with any sort of purpose other than capturing the hamon. I'm still working on finishing up the koshirae for this one and still have a lot of work to do there. There are lots of weird reflections and dust on the blade too. So certainly not optimal, but I thought the photos were worth posting. Once it is done, if I have the time, I'll take some more photos of the entire piece.

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If you look at that last picture in the tip you'll see some "splotches" from me not cleaning all the oil off. That's not in the polish and the "whitish" stuff back in the shinogi-ji near the tip is also just a reflection of something in my dining room. As I said, not optimal photo situation. But it gets the point across...

Edit: Edited to fix up some (but not all) of the rambling and poor grammar... ;)

:eek:
Stunning, Definately,
Keith,
please do take some more pics before this goes out to the happy customer,
Thanks for sharing , :)

Beautiful activity in that hamon Keith. It's just right without seeming too busy.

Neat.

Beautiful Keith, simply beautiful.

Thanks, guys. I'll try to take more pics when it's done, but when I'm this far behind in my deadlines, well, photos take a back-seat to getting it to the customer. I'm still working on the saya (scabbard) and the tsuka (handle).

But yeah, Howard does some nice work. Amazing what he can make that stuff do sometimes. There's bit of mistiness floating out of the various pieces of the hamon into the soft part of the blade. In essence it is forming what traditionalists call utsuri in the ji. It reflects the hamon to some extent but also works into it in areas almost like it is pulling the mist into it. Really quite cool to see in person but near impossible to photograph.

:eek: :eek: :eek:

Wow

Yummy.
:)