Last week passed very quickly. I mean really-really quickly. This happens when you do something you really like – you just get lost in the process and forget about yourself and world. Your mind is focused on the very thing you are doing. You are not checking your 3 email accounts after every 10 minutes to see if someone wrote you and you don’t check Google Reader to check out if any of the 20 blogs you’ve subscribed to has some new posts. And if something new accidentally pops up, then it’s even better excuse not to work and read it.

This happened to me very often when my job was boring. For some reason I just couldn’t find the excitement in programming anymore. Of course there are still many things/areas I want to learn in programming, but this can’t happen in some government office job.

Anyways.

Last week passed very quickly. We are getting very close to finishing our first bigger batch of practice swords. They’re katanas. They’re practice swords for us (we practice the making) and for clients (they practice some kind of sword art). In the beginning of week we finished the blade sanding – now they’re sanded with 150 grit paper. After that we started to make all those little details that go with sword. There are about 5 copper details to make and some of them require soldering together. So all in all about 50 pieces to cut out, solder, sand and polish to mirror finish. I hope they’ll be finished in a week or two. Then I’ll post some photos here too.

In the mean time my father made two knives to find out how 2 processes work. First is pattern welding (also called Damascus) and second is temperline creating (called hamon in Japanese sword). Good thing is that these processes are actually very simple (once you know how to do it).

This is the temperline knife. Blade length is 11cm.

This is Damascus blade. Blade length is 7cm.

And here is big closeup of Damascus blade tip. Different layers of metal are nicely seen, there should be about 30 layers.