Existing comment:
Sword Blades:
The Japanese sword blade is a powerful weapon, an object of striking beauty, and a work with a spiritual aura. It is also an unsurpassed technological achievement.
The iron ore goes to the smelter, and a portion of the steel produced can be sent on to the swordsmith. He takes chunks of steel, welds them together at the forge, and turns them into a bar that is subjected to heating, hammering, clefting, and folding some thirteen to twenty times, so that the original chunks become the layers (16,000 or more per inch) in the dough of the bar. How the surface grain formed by the layers looks depends on whether the bar was folded lengthwise or crosswise and on how it was hammered. This bar is then wrapped around another -- of softer steel, for strength -- and shaped into a sword. The edge of the blade is hardened by heating it and thrusting it into water.
Before the sword is sent away to the equally expert polisher, grooves can be cut with a draw knife, and decorative carvings cut with chisels and a hammer. Finally the smith will chisel his signature onto the tang. |