4th attempt at tsuba making

[goo]

Here are some phone pics of my latest work, this is my 4th attempt at making tsuba.  The bronze original is in the V&A London online collection. The details are as follows.  The project took 7 months to complete including choosing the design to inlay of the mei.   The material is iron(not mild steel) I sent some 100 year old relic parker brothers and other Damascus shotgun barrels to a blacksmith who returned them as 1/4" iron plate.  I made a pen and ink drawing adding the kogai hitsu ana.  The design was xerox copied and transferred to the plate.  I then pieced with a jewelry saw and sculpted with hammer and chisel gravers. Polished with files and finishing stones.  The color is heat blue patina.

[Brian]

Good looking tsuba. Nice lines and shape, well done.

[OceanoNox]

This is very nice! I cannot believe it's only your fourth attempt. Congratulations on a beautiful tsuba.

[ROKUJURO]

Gustavo,

if this TSUBA had a good patina, it would be difficult to tell it from a Japanese one in my opinion. Really well done!

[goo]

12 hours ago, ROKUJURO said:

Gustavo,

if this TSUBA had a good patina, it would be difficult to tell it from a Japanese one in my opinion. Really well done!

Thank you for the compliment.    I know that other makers put an antique finish on their work but I choose not to because I think when the surviving works we see today were new, that they must have "looked new".    I feel I walk a moral and ethical fine line.  I have a responsibility to achieve and maintain artistic quality while at the same time make it clear to those who collect tosugo that these are new works.  Part of the reason I document them online is so there is a record, should they ever survive me into the next century and by that time aquire a "patina" they should not be confused for old original works.

[ROKUJURO]

Gustavo,

Japanese do not like the "newly made" look of an item. Instead they appreciate the "respectfully used" appearance of objects, so TSUBA always got a patina treatment when they were made. All metals were treated except gold and silver. There were (at least) 2 reasons for that: The artificial patina prevented the item from corrosion, and it was stable, so the looks did not change for a long period of time if the TOSOGU (not tosugo) were well cared for.

In olden times, the patina treatments were a secret of the artisans, but thanks to modern artists like Ford Hallam, many recipes are known and used.  

An exception to this standard patination procedure are steel blades. They were polished and always kept clean. 

[Curran]

wow.

Seriously impressed.

 

Work on practicing your signature 1000 times before signing that one.

It deserves a signature to match.

 

Hard to believe this is only your 4th go at it.

 

 

 

[Iaido dude]

There are many beautiful aspects to your 4th tsuba-smithing attempt! I especially like the execution of the 3-D sculpural aspect, which seems like it would be the most technically challenging. 

[goo]

16 hours ago, Iaido dude said:

There are many beautiful aspects to your 4th tsuba-smithing attempt! I especially like the execution of the 3-D sculpural aspect, which seems like it would be the most technically challenging. 

I re executed the finish over this past week.  The first time I used heat blue oxide you heat the metal after cleaning and it forms an oxide which can be stopped at a number of colors from yellow to gray.    I decided to change it to a more traditional controlled rust patina.   The camera is not picking up the black under tones that make it look like dark mahogany.

[Kurikata]

Beautifull and a very nice tsuba to enter in any collection... congratulations 

[DoTanuki yokai]

I think it looks much better with the new patina, also it looks more "smoth", great work !