One more thing- the use of saws in tsuba making?

[roger dundas]

Ford Hallam in a post to the thread  'Tsuba Casting Molds' on the 10th November commented that "tsuba are not cut out with a saw blade but are drilled and chiselled as routine".

Now is that for all tsuba do you think or know or maybe just confined say to Namban type tsuba with their scrolling vines. If this is the case it would probably mean a lot of file work to sharpen or round off edges where required?

There is still a lot in the making of tsuba that baffles me.

Roger 2

[1kinko]

I think that should have been past tense. Everybody I know now uses jewelers saws.

[roger dundas]

Thanks for that Darrel, I have used a Jeweler's piercing saw myself but only on base metal sheeting (gilding metal). So I take it that the fine blades can handle iron satisfactorily.

Roger j

[Spartancrest]

There is some historical references to first drilling a very fine hole in the tsuba to be decorated then a very fine wire is threaded through with some form of oil [I am pretty sure it is not stated] the oiled wire thread is then coated in crushed up garnet or other abrasives and used as a fine saw. Mainly used with ito - thread cutting designs.

[roger dundas]

That to me makes sense Dale, especially with those multi spoked/multi petalled Saotome tsuba - drill holes at each end of the spoke/petal 'aperture to be' and then patiently saw away.

Imagine it would take a while.

Roger j

[Spartancrest]

Sorry I found the reference from 1915

METALS AND METAL- WORKING IN OLD Japan.

by  W. GOWLAND.
REPRINTED FROM -THE TRANSACTIONS OF THE Japan SOCIETY OF LONDON, Vol. XIII
Tuesday, March 2, 1915,
"From the twelfth to the fourteenth century the iron guard is still without ornament, except simple geometric perforations. From the sixteenth century onwards, this simple ornament gave place to intricate pierced patterns and richly engraved and inlaid designs. Many of these iron guards, especially of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, are marvels of skill and patient work. Forms of the greatest delicacy, often almost microscopic in their details, others with bold contours and sweeping curves worthy of the artist's brush, are alike carved with as much accuracy and freedom as if the material was plastic clay rather than solid iron. In some, the pierced cuts are so fine that they do not exceed 1/250 of an inch in width, and their sides are perfectly parallel. These were produced by a very laborious method of procedure. 
A minute hole was first drilled in the iron with a fine steel wire moistened with oil and powdered garnets or siliceous rock; the hole was then elongated into a slit by means of another fine steel wire used as a saw, also moistened with oil and the above powder. These cuts were further continued with flat wires, and were then reduced to the extreme degree of fineness required by hammering both sides of the metal until they were sufficiently closed. The sides of the cuts were kept parallel by rubbing them from time to time with flat wires of steel and grinding-powder. Iron guards by the best craftsmen were never cast; they were always of wrought iron."

 

[There is still some dispute over the last line of this extract - see "Tsuba casting molds thread!"] 

[Ford Hallam]

Roger,

in answer to your question; the modern jeweller's piercing saw and its very thin blade only became available in Europe in the late 19th century.

I imagine its use may have been introduced to Japanese craftsman sometime in the very late 19th century. We start to see obvious saw pierced-work, in things like finely fretted incense burner lids etc, at the start of the 20th century. Prior to this time tsuba and the like were drilled, chiselled and filed out. 

 

I would add that as piercing saw blades are easily breakable and I imagine were not exactly cheap back then, probably imported initially too) their use in cutting out iron plate would possibly not been seen as all that attractive or economical. I've not seen any evidence of Japanese manufacture of blades at that time but I wouldn't be surprised if they rapidly developed a process fro making blades, even in individual studios....more repetitive work for apprentices!

 

We take it for granted today that using a saw is the most sensible approach but I have some doubts. In fact I've seen film footage ( from the 70's ) of the late National Living Treasure 1965, Tahei Yonemitsu who was a Higo craftsman, where he is clearly filing out an opening in a tsuba blank that was created by 'chain drilling' ie; a series of small holes drilled in a line to allow a patch of metal to be more easily broken out of the plate.  The refined by chiselling and filing would then follow. So my feeling is that traditionally trained tsuba-ko didn't adopt the piercing saw. I'm hoping sometime to make a  sukashi piece by proper traditional methods for a film to see exactly how that approach works and what it's advantages might be.

 

Those Saotome tsuba btw, often have every other spoke as an 'inlaid' strip of iron, thus creating the illusion of a more tightly pierced pattern 

 

regards

 

Ford

 

 

[Brian]

Ford, are there any examples extant of early (1600/1700's) files and tools?
I'd love to see pics, and also also compare what they were using with what we know today. An Edo period tools thread would be great, if they are documented or displayed in Japan anywhere.

[Ford Hallam]

Hi Brian

 

sadly no, all we have to examine are fairly rare survivors from the very late Edo and Meiji periods. Some of Kano Natsuo's tools, for example, are held by the Crafts museum in Tokyo, part of the University of arts. there's a good metalwork museum in Niigata, but again Meiji period kit. The odd few chisels exist here and there but nothing very early. A few (4) belonging to Noritsuke 

 

The Soken Kisho offers a few rough illustrations and and some lists of tools, although some a bit hard to accurately imagine.

Suki-tagane - open-work chisel ie; sukashi chisel

me-tagane - woman chisel...no idea!

otoko chisel - man chisel...again!

natsume tagane - tea caddy chisel, maybe with an edge that is shaped like a natsume lid? I've made one like that and use it quite a bit, cant be sure it's the same thing though.

shibu tagane - four sided chisel...your guess is as good as mine 

 

Different sized files were in use; Oyasuri, koyasuri , chuyasuri large, small medium, hira and maru, flat and round, hangetsu-yasuri half-round file, sumi-yasuri corner file? and natsume yasuri. There was a shitodome file, itome, hausu, uroko and koke files; fine line file, thin blade file, fish scale file and moss file. 

 

It's the same with the European goldsmithing tradition, how we work today is different in almost every respect to how work was made even 200 years ago, never mind 500. This is something I've been exploring in my own goldsmithing practice in recent years. 

 

[Brian]

Ford, how would files be made? Literally carving the "teeth" and then hardening them?
I'm guessing decent tools must have been something well prized once the West started visiting Japan. Or did they stick with their own tools? I would have LOVED to see the shop of a guy making Tanegashima or tsuba to see what his toolbox looked like. Thanks for the info above.

[Geraint]

Dear Brian.

 

Not specifically Japanese but here is a link to some info about making files by hand.

 

 

 

All the best.

 

[roger dundas]

Thanks for the information Ford. At last (for me at least) we are seeing how a lot of this work was done.

What is obvious is the vast amount of patience and time it must have taken to produce pieces that today we can purchase for so little. I suppose the craftsmen became skilled and fast but for all that, still one hell of a lot of patient labour to produce the more complicated designs.

I love them for that fact- a craftsman's work, what man can achieve.

Roger j

[GRC]

Ford does this also apply to the very fine lined sukashi of the Ito schools (Odawara and Bushu Ito)?

I genuinely don't mean to be contrary here, but I don't know how to reconcile what you are proposing, with the information and examples that are available on this topic.

 

I've also seen refences like the one Dale posted, citing an entire style of sukashi made by saw cuts, like this one:

"The original style, Itozukashi, or Odawara Sukashi consists in designs cut through in fine lines with a fine saw. The style of sawcuts thus called Itozukashi was not altogether the monopoly of the Ito family. We find example of it in the work of the Shoami of Akita, also in Inaba, Owari, in Mito, and many other places besides such men as Seisai, and Shosai who worked in Yedo. We may mention as a tour de force, a tsuba by Munenori pierced with an extremely elongated Svastika, once in the Burty collection, of which the sawcuts were about 0.25 mm, without the slightest defect in the cut being visible, even under the microscope." 

 

Here are three examples that I got with a google search for "itosukashi".

 

I can't see any deformations along the sukashi edges that would indicate the use of chisels, in 1- the pine needles, 2- the birds, or 3- the wave lines & bird wings.

Even the chisel work of the mei on #1 shows edge deformations, and some of the strokes of the mei are even about the same width as the sukashi.

The tips of the finest sukashi lines are pointed.

And if you look at the tips of the three tiny little birds in #2, you can see that they aren't cut clean through, they sort of gradually rise up from the center like an "onramp" to get onto a highway/freeway.

Also, the curves of #1 and #3 are remarkably smooth. 

 

I could envision all these features being formed by dragging a thin abrasive wire up and down through a tiny drilled hole.

 

Are you certain that these were produced by chiseling and filing rather than "sawing" with an abrasive wire?

   

[Ford Hallam]

Glen,

 

sorry, yes I ought to have been clearer. While it seems the 'go to' approach, being evidently the more efficient method, of drilling and chiselling etc. was used in most usual situations, where the cuts were required to be exceptionally fine it does appear that a wire with an abrasive, possibly garnet powder and oil, was employed. In fact one of the 'tools' listed in the tool descriptions in the Soken Kisho is exactly that, a length of fine iron wire. Presumably for this purpose.

 

I would add though, that we might regard this extra fine method as being quite specialist and not exactly standard workshop practice. Even today with modern saw-blades I'd struggle to cut a 5mm plate with a 0.25mm blade. I'd imagine that using a more pliable and less brittle wire may in fact be a more reliable and less frustrating way to cut those fine lines.