[Keith Larman]

FWIW, Nathan has commented a few times that he'd like to see more posts on Japanese style swords. So here's something I just finished for a customer of mine (i.e., it ain't for sale).

Folded 1086/Electrolytic Iron daito by Howard Clark. Fittings by Patrick Hastings and Shuji Yamamoto





This is a rather unique sword by Howard Clark. The blade was made from 1086 steel folded with electrolytic iron. It was to some extent an experiment in steels by Howard. The blade is shobu zukuri and is very graceful and elegant in the hands. Shobu zukuri refers to an "iris leaf" shape. It is *not* just a shinogi zukuri without a defined kissaki. That is sort of a "general" definition that helps one understand, but it is not completely accurate either. Anyway, shobu zukuri means iris leaf and should generally taper gently towards the very tip.


As you can see from the photo above the hada (folding pattern) is in places very subtle but in others rather visible. Burnishing was carefully done to retain the hada in the shinogi ji (back ridge). According to Howard the blade is composed of over 12,000 layers of steel, hence the "tightness" of the hada pattern. It was a challenge to polish to say the least. The 1086 steel is amazingly abrasion resistant and getting the hada to "stand up" was an exercise in creativity. Especially considering the tightness of the majority of the hada. Most steels are like butter in comparison to this stuff. Which makes it even more difficult to polish. The end result was the majority of the hada has a vastly more traditional look.

The tsuba is from Japan by Shuji Yamamoto (signs "tomoji"). The fuchi kashira and matching kojiri are made by Patrick Hastings.



That's all folks.

[Geoff Freeman]

As much as I am into Western stuff, that is a real thing of beauty.

[Bill Grandy]

You said it, Geoff!

Keith, could you explain a bit more about the electrolytic iron? What exactly is it, and why was it choosen?

[Nathan Robinson]

[Jeremy V. Krause]

This is a very handsome sword.
I would like to comment more but I know next to nothing about Japanese swords hence if I attempted to I would just come across as an idiot. I think it would be cool for myArmoury to have a feature article regarding the components of the Japanese sword with maybe some general information on the subject. [/i]

[Nathan Robinson]

[Keith Larman]

Electrolytic iron is basically as close to pure iron as you're going to find. Basically it is created with an electrochemical process where the iron is deposited on an anode. I think they use different ferrous solutions, but the idea is to deposit the pure iron from the solution.

Howard used it to to see what would happen with the activity in the blade. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get photos of the more subtle stuff, but it is loaded up with small little odd little things in the hamon. Howard has been experimenting with a variety of things and when a good customer of both of us wanted a new sword we discussed the possibility of pushing the limits a bit.

The hope we both had was that the addition of the electrolytic iron would create a more visible grain all while going for more layers. We also hoped the addition of the pure iron would make the steel somewhat easier to shape, polish and finish. The bottom line was that it was even more difficult to polish than his homogeneous 1086 blades. Just as tough, just as hard, just as abrasion resistant, but now with a grain pattern I wanted to bring up. But the exact properties of Howard's 1086 formulation that make it so tough also made it very difficult to get the pattern to show up. So not only was it as hard as ever to shape and polish but getting the grain to show up that Howard worked so hard on was *really* a pain. Traditional polishing relies on welds becoming more visible due to the differences in the way the steel reacts to the abrasives (the stones, iron oxide abrasives, etc.). But this one just laughed at the stones.

I spent a *long* time on the finish on this one. Gorgeous steel, but the work to get there was enormous. Conventional steels (both modern and old tamahagane) is an order of magnitude easier to polish than this stuff. But you can't argue with the performance...

And on terms and definitions. Dr. Rich Stein has a long standing and excellent Japanese sword resource on-line. It is at http://home.earthlink.net/~steinrl . If you look around you'll find a visual glossary which also links to a few other pages with more things shown. Lots of very good info on that site.

Maybe some time after I get caught up with long overdue projects I'll sit down and put something together. I've been thinking of doing it for my own site one of these days anyway.

[Keith Larman]

Oops, I left a thought out...

On the electrolytic iron... Basically at welding temps the carbon goes into solution so the electrolytic iron would "pick up" carbon from the 1086. So it slightly lowered the overall carbon level (although you wouldn't know it from polishing it). Carbon goes into solution very easily so part of the hope was the other differences in trace alloys that may not completely migrate would create a more vivid grain. The problem is that the steel is so bloody tough that even if that happened, the overall "matrix" of the sword surface was so bloody tough and also finely folded (12K layers) that even if it did happen, it just wasn't visible through polishing. The surface just wants to "skate" on the stones. So it was a huge amount of work to polish.

Looking in the right light at the right angle the steel gets an almost textured look. Which is interetsting because that's very much like what the blades of the so-called Hizen School traditionally had. The finer folded skin steel of certain traditional styles was often compared to things like pear skin or rice bran. So the grain pattern was discussed more as a texture (pear skin) than as a texture of more conventional pieces (itame or "wood grain" as an example). But this one also had some interesting welds running that were more visible than others. But Howard thought those welds were more related to being the last in the series of welds rather than related to the electrolytic iron.

Interesting project. It has been a lot of fun working with Howard in pushing the limits of all of this stuff. Him in his forging and steels and then to me to try to figure out how on earth to polish the stuff so it looks sort of traditional. It pushes my abilities too. And in the process I get to learn more about the metallurgy, heat treatment, etc. As we try to figure out how to get both a faithful traditional looking blade while pushing the limits of modern metallurgy and performance at the same time. There is no reason you can't have both.

[Jeremy Scott Steimel]

Question for you, Keith.

In the third photo, it looks like almost a lot of the Chikei / Inazuma comes back up into the Ji to form a closed shape. That's kind of interesting, don't know if I've ever seen that before (you'll see some that seem to form a bit of a shape, but not so obviously or frequent). Is that possibly related to the use of the electrolytic iron?

Either way, that's a really, really beautiful piece. I love the look of suguha hamon on a Shobu; there's just something so graceful about it. Thanks for sharing!

[Gabriel Lebec]

I'm not Keith and I haven't seen the sword in person, but for what it's worth I think those are some of the more prominent weld lines that Mr. Larman was referring to.

[Keith Larman]

[Russ Ellis]

Yeah, yeah but I want to know who built the saya. It looks rather nicely done. I've got to get better at lacquering...

[Nathan Robinson]

Keith-
Were I to be in the financial situation I was years ago, this would be similar to the sword I'd want in my collection. I absolutely love the flow of lines and austere beauty of this piece.

[Keith Larman]

[Keith Larman]

[Gabriel Lebec]

[Thom O'Leary]

[Keith Larman]