Cross Sections Of Blade Types

[Jim P]

Hi Guys, I had been rereading an old copy of Bushido Magazine last month in it was an article by Havey Stearn done in 1969 on the quality of some blades from the infamous Thailand lot eg. Sukesada, Kiyomitsu, and how cross section of a few blades were done. It was an eye opener it explained how the cross sections revealed what some of the differences were between the better and low quality blades and how the different steels were not uniform and distorted and the low quality ones had more voids and less good welds. Do some of the members know if besides Alchemy and other chemical achievements of the ancient orient by professor Chikashige, as I don’t think I can get a look at his book. Has there been testing done on a larger scale? And if so by whom? It also gives some extra insight why we see Shingane on some blades that don’t look over polished. Thanks

 

[Surfson]

Nice figure, thanks for posting - I captured it for my files.   Although it is fascinating, how can you put it to use in any of your kantei or appraisals?  Are there methods to look at the hada of a blade and project which of these methods was used?  As long as the skin steel is intact, I'm not sure how..  Somewhere I have an old metallurgical book in which they did sophisticated analysis on cross sections of blades.  I will see if I can dig it up.  

[Darcy]

You can use it but you need to be very observant and very smart about it. Ted Tenold wrote a good article on this for the NBTHK/AB as well. 

 

I owned these and made them available for some NBTHK/AB study sessions and Ted wrote the good article at that time.

 

Then I gave it away to a Thai collector. So they went back home. 

[Rich S]

I have a page of the "idealized" types of blade construction on my website and a link to pictures on Ted's website (but not his full articles).

 

http://www.japaneseswordindex.com/laminate.htm

 

Rich

[Shogun8]

Next week I will be going to Florence for the second symposium on samurai armour and related arts, held by the members of the Nihon-no-Katchu forum. One of the topics seems on point with this one:

 

Francesco Grazzi: Identification of the forging methods of Japanese swords from the Ancient Sword (Koto) Age to modern times (Gendaito). A non destructive study through neutron diffraction.

 

At the first symposium in 2014, we discovered that some of the long-held beliefs about the construction of kabuto (especially the famous construction as pioneered by Yoshimichi) were actually incorrect as proven with scientific analysis (such as neutron diffraction).

 

Should be interesting.

 

John

[Jim P]

Hi Rich, If you had  cross sections of a lot of blades it would give you a much better understanding of the makers for example some Kiyomitsu smiths had a change in quality in  just 25 year period so IMHO if there is more of this type of info out there I would love to see it. It would make it easier to look for blades that were produced at peak times so you can make better choices especially  if the blades looks similar and are close in time.the sukesada cross section has given me more insight why some sukesada blades are not looked at favorably   

 

Hi Darcy, I have not seen Ted’s article does he give just a few examples or is there more in his article ?

[SAS]

Interesting that this subject came up, as I was just reading my copy of Bushido in which the article appeared. It seems there was quite a variance of success in the composition of the billets in multi-bar construction. Puts a bit of a dent in the myth of the perfection of Japanese forging quality.

[Jim P]

Steve, I think we are used to the idealized view from books and the net but the reality can be a lot different

I think there would some surprises if a large study was done  

[Darcy]

Interesting that this subject came up, as I was just reading my copy of Bushido in which the article appeared. It seems there was quite a variance of success in the composition of the billets in multi-bar construction. Puts a bit of a dent in the myth of the perfection of Japanese forging quality.

 

 

You can just hold certain Muromachi blades in your hands and that should be enough to know that some of them were very far from perfection. But you can't judge the best of them by mid to low class Muromachi works.