Broken blades

[Strider]

Has anyone ever heard about what was done with the steel from a broken blade? It seems to me that if it took so much time to smelt tamahagane and refine this into nihonto, it would have been used again. Just something I wondered about Scott

[Guest Simon Rowson]

Hi Scott,

 

In the seminal "The Craft of the Japanese Sword" by Yoshihara and Kapp, it mentions that swordsmith Yoshihara Yoshindo uses a drawknife called a sen to shave off any irregularities on the surface of a new sword and that this sen has a blade "usually from a section of a sword".

 

Simon

[Brian]

Good question Scott,

 

I assume you are asking if old sword steel would be recycled back into forging new blades. I have heard of old sections of broken blades being used for umegane (to fill up opened fukure and flaws in a blade) and i assume given the chance, the steel would not have been wasted. Either the blade would have been reshaped to make it a shorter sword, or possibly the steel would have been smelted down to be re-used.

Maybe someone has more info on this?

I think an email to our resident apprentice in Japan, Pierre Nadeau, would be in order?

 

Brian

[Splidge]

Hi Scott

Dont know if this is a regular sort of thing, but occasionally you find this sort of item on e-bay.

 

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Imperial-Japanese ... dZViewItem