Tsuba casting molds ?

[Spartancrest]

13 hours ago, Alex A said:

old milk bottles.

  That's not an Ox - it's a Jersey!! 

[Hokke]

Greetings all,

 

While I have only just become an official member of this community, I have been a long time viewer. I am very fortunate to have had the opportunity to mingle in the same circles as those far more knowledgeable than I in all things nihonto. That said, having been a jeweler for over two decades this thread seems as good as any to see my first post. 

 

Although I have only worked in precious metals, there may be some similarities when discussing production. I am a custom jeweler, meaning customers bring me images or drawing of jewelry designs and I build them from scratch. Although I leaned how to do this on a completely handmade level during my apprenticeship, I quickly found it was far more advantageous to utilize a CAD/CAM system of production. I say this because technically, while my designs are one of a kind and custom, the items I make are NOT 100% handmade. This now leads into a discussion about value. If I make a ring and the cost to produce it is 4k, I would argue the value of that ring is in the fact that it is one of a kind, made by a competent craftsman, coupled with the sum of its parts. An identical ring made completely by hand where the metal is rolled cut and formed is going to be more expensive, however, will it be more valuable or superior in its construction? I would argue no, for a few reasons that at this point are unimportant. 

 

Now let's bring this back to the discussion at hand. Dan's repeated and unrelenting question has persisted through this thread. Is it possible for cast iron tsuba to have been cast in the Edo period. IMO, the answer is yes, however unlikely. I say unlikely, as others have previously, because I believe it would not have been a secret. Casting was not a frowned upon means of production. If casting tsuba was a method being used, I very much believe it would be well documented considering the number of craftsmen that were producing tosogu in that period. I believe it plausible to have been done using a method that would have produced a superior result compared to what we can create today and the recipe for that process was lost. I dont find this likely, but accept it was possible. If I have to play devils advocate, I actually believe more in the idea that has already been proposed in this thread of a possible hybrid method of tsuba manufacture. Perhaps there was a method by which cast iron was cast into blank plates saving the craftsman from having to start from scratch. The only reason why I still find this dubious is because of my experience as a craftsman in my own discipline. As a jeweler, there are items I have made which required basic skills that would seem really time consuming to the layperson. Muscle memory and years of repetitive practice have made these skills quite ordinary and not as time consuming as one may imagine. So with that in mind I have to ask if cast blanks were available, would they have actually been so labor saving that it was beneficial to use them? For me, I would say no. 

 

So where does this leave us? The question I have been asking myself is why Dan seems so desperate to have this hypothesis realized? Dan if you are reading this, what is your ultimate goal in this pursuit? When will you have the requisite satisfaction that allows you to move "onward"? Until such a time as you can provide empirical evidence to prove you claim, you have only "faith". Continued posting of anything else other than definitive evidence would seem to be only for the purposes of provocation. You are free to do so of course as this is a public forum, but it does seem as if the horse is well and truly beaten at this point. 

 

Nevertheless, I hope you are able to eventually find what you are seeking.

 

 

[Shugyosha]

I'm sure this question will have been asked and answered earlier in this thread so apologies for the repetition, however, if smelting iron was an option, why wasn't it used in weapons making? Why persist with a tatara to produce tamahagane and for smiths to make their own oroshigane when there was another process, probably less of a PIA than the tatara, that could get you an ingot of iron that could be used to make a sword?

 

If you hadn't noticed, the Japanese in the Edo period and earlier did like swords and lots of them and, if there was some process that would have made processing the raw material easier, is it not likely that this would have displaced the other technologies available?

 

According to another thread on here and from our own Jean Colin, even an oroshigane kiln doesn't heat iron or steel to the degree considered to be smelting, so where did the cast iron tsuba come from?

 

Anyway, this thread is pretty much the turd that just won't flush and I don't expect any logical argument to send it down the tubes so this will be my one and only contribution to it other than to suggest to Dan that if he has proof that the technology and capability to make cast iron existed in the Edo period and has primary sources that show this the please post those references or take the absence of proof positive as the end of the argument.

[joe2]

So does the fact that a tsuba is cast iron help with dating it?  I have a definitely cast iron tsuba which shows air bubbles and the seam from a sand casting process.  I used Evapo Rust on it (it was bad) and it sure looks like the cast Iron sand casting projects we made in high school a long time ago.

[ROKUJURO]

14 hours ago, Shugyosha said:

......According to another thread on here..... even an oroshigane kiln doesn't heat iron or steel to the degree considered to be smelting, so where did the cast iron tsuba come from?.....

Hi John,

in the EDO period, the Japanese had iron casting technology, and it was mastered in very good quality. They had furnaces to heat up iron to its melting point (1.538°C), and of course they would have been able to cast small objects like TSUBA! They used the "lost mold" (not 'lost wax') technology learned from the Chinese, and it was not the same as our modern 'sand-casting', but for the molds they used a mixture of clay and sand to produce a fine surface.

The problem in the discussion here about this subject is the lack of knowledge about iron casting and annealing, but also about Japanese history. Making a mold for casting is a lot of work. You have to make a 'master object' first, considering the shrinkage of the desired final object. Using this, a two-piece mold was made that had to be heated up for casting so the molten iron could run freely into the finer structures. After cooling, the mold had to be destroyed to 'free' the cast object. Cleaning and cutting-off sprues and air-ducts had to follow, together with careful filing-off casting seams.

Annealing to make the objects less fragile was an additional process, necessitating fuel (charcoal) and furnaces, adding to the production costs.
  
This single-item process was labour-intensive, not resulting in cheap mass-production! Only when industrial steel production came up in the late 19th century, chill-casting was invented which allowed mass-production and low item prices. 

In EDO JIDAI, there was no demand for cast iron TSUBA that could be substantiated. "Normal" people (so-called 'commons) had no use for TSUBA, and wealthy people could afford traditionally made ones. Generally in the Japanese culture, hand-made objects were (and are) highly appreciated. Mass-produced small 'art' items are still considered trinkets or giveaways today. 

The other side should also be looked at: Forging was a well established craft in Japan, as we all know. Forging a TSUBA blank is really easy and not time consuming, and they used simple iron for it which had good toughness as opposed to cast iron. We know that not all TSUBA were made by a single workshop,  but some traditions/schools used ready-made blanks and decorated them in a more artistic way.
   
Coming to your post, we have to differentiate between "smelting" and "melting".
You can feed an OROSHIGANE kiln with old iron objects that were originally made from TAMAHAGANE. The result would then be a kind of bloom looking very close to a TAMAHAGANE bloon (= KERA), differing possibly only in the carbon content. There is no melting intended in this process!

Of course you can also use scrap iron of any alloy type in an OROSHIGANE kiln, but the resulting bloom would not have the properties of TAMAHAGANE and could not be treated the same way. The main purpose of this special process besides the recycling is to control the carbon content.

With this short abstract, I have only scratched the surface of these technologies, but I wanted to show that throwing assumptions and guesses around is never a basis for true research. Often, the reality is not what we want it to be.

[Steve Waszak]

Excellent post, Jean.  Thank you.  

[Iekatsu]

A great summary Jean.

[Dan tsuba]

Good information from Jean, thanks Jean!

 

But I would like to address the question that one of our new members asked on this thread that hasn’t been answered yet.  I include the post from joe2 (Joe) below-

 

“So does the fact that a tsuba is cast iron help with dating it?  I have a definitely cast iron tsuba which shows air bubbles and the seam from a sand casting process.  I used Evapo Rust on it (it was bad) and it sure looks like the cast Iron sand casting projects we made in high school a long time ago.”

 

So, to answer your question Joe, the fact that a tsuba is cast iron does not help in dating it.

 

There are those that believe that cast iron tsuba were only produced after the Edo period (the Edo period ended in 1868).

 

Then there are those few that believe that cast iron tsuba could have also been produced during the Edo period (1603 to 1868).

 

But again, just because a tsuba is cast iron does not necessarily help in dating it.

 

If you want to find out more information about the possibility of cast iron tsuba being made in the Edo period, you can always read the 18 pages of this thread.

 

But I wouldn’t wish that on anyone!

 

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, etc (I just crack myself up)!

[KungFooey]

Here you are Dan - your elusive unicorn at last. Think of it as a farewell gift from me.

(I don't think even you will down-vote this one.)

 

Membership Plans | LOT-ART

[Dan tsuba]

Hey Dee, thanks for the link.

 

But as has been stated before (somewhere on this thread) just because something is labeled by the seller as cast iron it does not mean that it is actually cast iron.

I don't know if that information for that tsuba was translated from the Japanese language.

Something could have been wrongly translated or the seller may have put down the incorrect infomation.

Maybe it is cast iron or maybe not.

And the elusive unicorns are probably hanging on the walls of my (and others) tsuba collection!

Once again, only the development of a cheap non-invasisve metallurgical test will ever determine that!

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, etc!

 

[Stephen]

Left the down in memory of Miss Dee