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The hanwei practical plus XL is a beast of a blade. I mean, its long sure, but it's not amazingly long. the tsuka, is of course Hanwei. It's just Hanwei. Theres no getting away from that, however, because of the blade it actually works very well. The main aesthetic with this blade is the width of the motohaba. That is to say, its flipping wide.
On the right you can see the untouched blade, the new tsuba, the untouched tsuka cores and the new red ito. All these are going to go together to give this sword a new lease of life. I took the time to get my Hanwei practical out for a comparison shot. (below right) Mine is either the first or second generation of the official Hanwei Practical Katana. That means that all the fittings are fine, theres no plastic habaki or koiguchi or whatever, but it's an old generation of an old sword albeit one theyre still selling as it's reliable and tough.
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I took this on alongside a repolish and etch of a wakizashi. This blade also got repolished and reetched at the same time and the results I felt were really very nice.
On the right is a sneak preview of the finished sword.
I'm not sure what this blade would be like to cut with for me personally as my experience has been less Ryu oriented and more freestyle or backyard cutting and my choice of tsuka went very quickly relatively speaking from the longer 12" or thereabouts to as close to 9" as I could comfortably get with the blade length of the sword in question.
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The blade of this waki wasn't damaged in any way really, a couple of scuffs but that was it, however the typical frosted proprietary etched hamon was completely gone and it was my job to try and bring out the natural one that was there. I decided that being as it was a hanwei and I have had some experience with the steels they use, I would go with Lemon juice.
To anyone who hasn't done balde etching before, this no doubt sounds very basic, slightly unnerving and utter nonsense... but bear with me, my story gets better.. ;)
at
07:00
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First off, before we even get started, this is gonna be a shorter blog entry, I think I ended up enjoying this one a little too much. It all came together well and that saya! I adore that saya and sageo combo. I wish I had taken more pics of it to be honest. This blade is like a razor also. It's seen some action on the 1x30 obviously and the polish on it is etched on the ji and very polsihed on the ha as a result but it doesn't detract from the aesthetics which is nice.Read more »
up til now, we've been using rayskin panels for the tsuka. This one is going to have a full wrap of samegawa. That is to say, the entire wooden core will be sleeved in the best part of the rayskin. Not only that, we will be able to display the emperor nodes of the skin in between the wrap itself.
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Sometimes you get fittings that don't live up to the assumed notions of doing exactly that. My advice is really simple. If you have something thats either antique, hand crafted, not yours or can';t be replaced, err on the side of caution and modify the other side of the fitting. In this particular example, that would be the top of the tsuka.
However, if the fitting is an alloy, cheap repro, production line, easily replaceable or is yours and youre feeling lucky, sometimes a little 'adjustment' is all thats required.
Exhibit A)
at
06:09
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I received this new wakizashi from the client and now good friend, well wrapped in a 'will not get me nicked' box, all hidden away in bubble wrap and boxing material. the picture above is the cheat picture to show you what came of it all.... but for the work log.. carry on reading ;)
As long as you dont count the ko-kat I did, which was actually suriage (shortening) of a longer katana length sword that had broken, this will only be my second wakizashi or wakizashi length sword that I have ever re-wrapped.
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My most recent kitchen accessory.
I made a saya for my Sabatier brand kitchen knife. Theyre not the best knives, but they are a notch or two above the usual crap you can easily buy and for around £20 you can't really knock em. It's made of X50CrMov15, which as far as I can tell is proprietary to Sabatier and it seems like a godo enough steel. It's survived a while with me so it passes the 'shad cant be trusted with a spoon' test at least.
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I actually ended up going with a new tsuka core, being as the one I had for it was cracked and I didnt trust it. I wont be held responsible for someone swinging a sword, the tsuka failing and a long metal razor being hurled towards anybody.. or even at a wall. This is an expensive piece of metal ya know? ;)So, after making sure the tsuka fit perfectly, and that it was cut to size, I ended up with this (the photos get better as I have a new phone now, this one is awful, but be patient :) )
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This ones an interesting one. The blade is differentially hardened, folded steel but not cheaply folded like Damascus but very subtle and the geometry including the yokote is absolutely spot on, but the tsuka was too long for the clients needs and the wrap wasn't up to his standards. he also doesn't like the fittings. I agree, the fish menuki are massive for a wakizashi. so after my hiatus, it's off to work again.. hi ho, hi ho, etc etc ad nauseam.
Hope you all enjoy. I find myself creating this post from hospital after a particular horrific bout of depression, seizure and a very recent diagnosis of Bipolar Affective Disorder.
Sounds as horrible as it is, but this is a positive thing. Now I can get medicated and back on my feet. I only wish this could of been noticed about 20 years ago. but nevermind, glass half full and all that.
So... on with the pretties...
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