It’s been a while since my last post, but nothing really interesting has happened during that time. About a month ago we started making 5 new katanas and now they’re almost finished, only handles need to be wrapped and sheaths to be made.

During past few weeks I’ve researched about steel bluing processes – both hot and cold bluing. During this research I bought sodium hydroxide, potassium nitrate, hydrochloric and nitric acid. And finally about a week ago I found out how to get really nice black mirror like finish. It’s actually quite simple – melt pure sodium hydroxide (it melts at 318°C) and heat it to about 500°C (until stainless steel pot is red-hot and glows magically) and put the metal piece in it. Keep it there couple of minutes so it reaches the same temperature as NaOH and viola, it’s done. This process creates really strong oxide layer on the metal, so it should prevent rusting and make it stronger overall. Time will show if this is really so. And by the way, if 500°C sodium hydroxide splashes to your skin, this isn’t the most comfortable thing in the world. Kids, don’t try this at home.

Here’s little overview how the process looks like in our shop.

Hand guards (tsubas) are waiting to be blued.

Hot bluing process close-up.

Tsubas are drying/cooling after bluing. Here the left one had to be redone, because for some reason it had brown oxide, not the needed black.

Polishing guards. Here is half polished tsuba, I think you can see the difference of before and after polish.

And this is how it looks already mounted on sword (it’s our older style sheath, with bronze rings, new ones are with brass and look much better).

And here are the new swords that are finished real soon now.

Little close-up of rings and details, as you can see all details are not yet polished, but those which are look real nice.

If anybody wants to buy one of these, then let me know.

One of the required skills for blacksmith is forge welding. This is also basic skill for making pattern weld, also known as Damascus steel. Basically you take two pieces of steel/iron make them very-very hot, when they almost melt, beat them together. In the end you’ll have just one piece of metal.

When we first tried to do this we just couldn’t get the pieces to stick together. Maximum of 2mm was welded, no more. And there was no way to know what was wrong. Too cold? Too little flux? Mouth too open, or what? As it turned out the old coal was crap. Two days ago we bought almost 1 ton of ‘special’ blacksmith coal (it burns much cleaner, no smoke and that ‘romantic’ sulfur smell) and with it the welding just works. Oh what a great feeling it was when the first piece stuck together!

Here’s a picture how forge welded piece of steel is really one piece.

No welding lines or anything. Perfectly one piece.

To practice my hammer skills I made a knife blade out of this piece. But as the steel was low carbon it didn’t harden enough, so the blade is no good for usage.

Today afternoon my father made a 32 layer Damascus knife. After it’s polished and etched we’ll see what comes of it.

For the last month or so we’ve set up our workshop. And it amazes me every time we have to buy something just how much stuff you need to set up one normal workshop. With programming it’s easy. You buy computer for $1000 US, install linux and bunch of free programs and you’re ready to go. There’s not much you need to pay for on regular basis besides Internet connection, if you work from home.

Now try to start blacksmithing from scratch. You need quite big room for your own, cubicle will definitely not do. You need forge, either coal or gas, anvil, hammer, grinder, belt grinder, drill, drill bits and lots and lots of other stuff. If you want to be competitive you really need power hammer. New one will cost around $5000 US and more. We are really lucky to be in post Soviet country – lots of old equipment is still around and no one really needs them. So we got huge power hammer for the price of 2 iPods. It looks like this:

And for example this little 3 ton thing was with the price of just one iPod:

I mean, even brand new anvil alone costs 3 times as much. Of course no one says you have to buy everything new, but you get the idea. Besides buying all that stuff you need to build lots of custom things, for which you again need tools like arc welder and many-many more. Ok enough of that.

Here’s what we’re actually producing:

And here is our first successful forge weld in process, and yes, it really does spit out all these sparks.

It looks nice, but it also can give you a new meaning of hot.