Project
I recently bought a fairly crappy iaito - a sword intended for iaido practice. The blade itself is made of spring steel, I think; it's reasonably hard (though not nearly hard enough to keep an edge for more than a minute) and fairly flexible. Fortunately, I don't really care about having a blade sharp enough to cut the wind as long as it has the handling characteristics of a live steel sword. Cutting with a steel blade feels quite different to cutting with a bokken; it requires considerably more care and precision.
There was a lot wrong with it though, and I'm spending a bit of time rectifying those of its many faults that I can. I didn't take any "before" pictures unfortunately; I didn't think about it until just now.
For a start, it had a hideous fake hamon sand-blasted along the edge. I removed that; I don't want a blade masquerading as something it's not, and this blade doesn't have any sort of edge, let alone a hardened edge.
The blade had been pretty roughly shaped, probably as one of thousands on a production-line linisher, and then wheel-polished. So the shinogi (blade ridge) was very soft and indistinct, and the blade had several dips and hollows along its length. I cleaned those up somewhat with file and stones, but it could do with quite a bit of work yet. The kissaki (point) was especially poor, and needed a lot of grinding to make it close to acceptable.
Down at the other end of the blade, the habaki was very loose and ill-fitting. I moved it down the blade, cutting new notches to accommodate it so that it now fits tightly and securely. It, like all the other mounts, is just made of some kind of cast zinc-based muck-metal, plated in copper.
As you can see, the nakago (tang) is rather a shambles, but it will do the job well enough - this isn't intended as an art sword, after all.
I threw all the mounts into a bath of Simple Green to remove any laquer or anything. I haven't decided yet if I'll re-use them (they'll need to be tidied up with files, re-plated and patinated in that case) or if I'll just discard them and make simple, functional replacements.
My intention is to replace saya (scabard) and the tsuka (handle), which is just made of white plastic with cheap webbing wrapping (bleeuch!) with a fairly simple polished rosewood grip. I may do some minimal carving on it, depending of whether or not I'm fed up with the whole thing by then or not.
It's going to take me a while, I think.
There was a lot wrong with it though, and I'm spending a bit of time rectifying those of its many faults that I can. I didn't take any "before" pictures unfortunately; I didn't think about it until just now.
For a start, it had a hideous fake hamon sand-blasted along the edge. I removed that; I don't want a blade masquerading as something it's not, and this blade doesn't have any sort of edge, let alone a hardened edge.
The blade had been pretty roughly shaped, probably as one of thousands on a production-line linisher, and then wheel-polished. So the shinogi (blade ridge) was very soft and indistinct, and the blade had several dips and hollows along its length. I cleaned those up somewhat with file and stones, but it could do with quite a bit of work yet. The kissaki (point) was especially poor, and needed a lot of grinding to make it close to acceptable.
Down at the other end of the blade, the habaki was very loose and ill-fitting. I moved it down the blade, cutting new notches to accommodate it so that it now fits tightly and securely. It, like all the other mounts, is just made of some kind of cast zinc-based muck-metal, plated in copper.
As you can see, the nakago (tang) is rather a shambles, but it will do the job well enough - this isn't intended as an art sword, after all.
I threw all the mounts into a bath of Simple Green to remove any laquer or anything. I haven't decided yet if I'll re-use them (they'll need to be tidied up with files, re-plated and patinated in that case) or if I'll just discard them and make simple, functional replacements.
My intention is to replace saya (scabard) and the tsuka (handle), which is just made of white plastic with cheap webbing wrapping (bleeuch!) with a fairly simple polished rosewood grip. I may do some minimal carving on it, depending of whether or not I'm fed up with the whole thing by then or not.
It's going to take me a while, I think.