Strider Posted July 7, 2007 Report Posted July 7, 2007 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 Quote
Guest Simon Rowson Posted July 8, 2007 Report Posted July 8, 2007 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 Quote
Brian Posted July 8, 2007 Report Posted July 8, 2007 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 Quote
Splidge Posted July 9, 2007 Report Posted July 9, 2007 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 Quote
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