[John Cooksey]

About a year ago, one of my friends picked up three of the discontinued (and discounted!) KC Naginate III blades: one for him, one for me, and one for another good friend of ours.
After all that time, we finally decided to actually mount those puppies up, beginning with mine.

We picked out some very straight red oak boards for shaft, and repaired to our other friends house for inletting and tang-drilling (damn, that sounds dirty).

Inletting came first, and that was a pain, given that the blade tangs have distal taper, profile taper, and bevels.
We actually cheated on mine (probably won't on the other two, because of problems encountered) by burning in the tang to finish the inletting process, which was all done by hand chisel.

Drilling the tang was a nightmare!
Standard steel bits would barely mark the surface, so we tried a titanium bit in a large, sturdy drill press..
The titanium bit actually welded itself to the blade in a beautiful little rosette, after penetrating almost all the way through the tang. After welding, the "rosette" separated from the rest of the bit and proceeded to chatter its way across the blade's surface and through the body of the shaft / tsuka (we were trying to drill both blade and wood at the same time). Luckily, it did not cut all the way to the front of the shaft, and that interestingly shaped little hole will be filled with a handmade copper decorative element.

I finally procured one of the new (to me , at least) cobalt bits, which managed to cut through the super hard tang of the KC blade with zero problems.

Tonight was spent shaping the shaft and test-mounting the blade without fittings.
We spent hours hand-planing and hand-sanding the shaft until it fit my hands like a dream.
My friend started the cut, shaping the blade-end of the shaft appropriately, and then I did the main job of stock removal. He finished the cut, using his "500 yen" Japanese plane, aligning the shape of the haft with the cutting edge of the naginate blade and tapering it to the proper shape.
I have to hand it to my friend, he is not only very knowledgeable about Japanese weapons and armor (that's his primary research interest and focus), but he is also a superlative wood-worker. I have seen other things he has made, such as furniture, but the graceful shape of this naginata haft surpasses anything that I have ever seen. It was magic, watching and helping transform two long wooden boards into a smooth and streamlined weapon.

I wanted to quit for the day at that point, but he insisted that we make and create the mekugi from copper rod. We turned it down to the appropriate size, with files, hammer, and bench-vise.
End result, a perfectly functional test mount of the bare blade on a beautiful red oak haft.
Fittings and final finish ( lacquer or stain: I have not decided yet) will come later.

I will try to post photos of the final product, as well as in-progress pictures of the two additional blades as they are mounted.

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