Japanese Metalwork Blog! (Patreon)

So, as you probably noticed from either Tumblr or Instagram, I’m doing another Japanese metalwork course at the moment, and I asked you a little while back if you were interested in maybe reading a post about the process and what I’m doing. Here it is! I hope you find it interesting. I'll probably do one more later on when I'm further ahead, but in three days I've got a load of stuff done, so here's my progress so far, with some inside information on how it's done!

I’m making a tsuba, which is the hand-guard on a Japanese sword (katana). They're gorgeous little works of art in themselves, with incredible designs and colours, and some of them have great sense of humour too. They're usually circular, but they do come in a variety of special fancy shapes too. The Met in NYC and the Boston MFA both have stunning examples of Japanese metalwork, as well as the V&A in London. They can be made in iron or in copper alloys which make for a wide variety of colours, and they can be carved, pierced, or inlaid for decoration. That’s what I’m learning: techniques for decoration. 

 A tsuba in the Boston MFA! Look at this guy! He has been nicknamed the 'Grumptopus'! [source] 

I have already carved the front side of the tsuba, with two ginkgo leaves, and now I’m working on the back. I haven’t finished the front by any means, but I wanted to start a new design on the reverse while I had the opportunity. My teacher, Ford Hallam, is pretty much the world expert on Japanese expert, even within Japan, and I’m very lucky to have spent a fair amount of time studying with him in the past already. This course is rather more relaxed, with a group of us who have studied with him before doing basically whatever we want to work on, with his guidance. This makes for a variety of techniques being studied in the workshop at one time, which is super exiting! 

I’m doing carving, two other folks are doing uchidashi, which is similar to, but not the same as, chasing and repousse work, and involves creating a 3D shape out of a sheet of metal with just a hammer and a set of punches, and another guy is making some other sword fittings, the fuchi-kashira (collar and butt plate of a sword hilt). 

Anyway. My stuff!

Here we go: 

So it started out with an idea – I wanted to do a fox because I love foxes, and the street I live on is fox-related! I did a number of drawings to work out what was ‘right’, and it took me a while to get the smoke-like tail sorted. I wanted the tail to be a focal point, and to be unusual, not just a normal fox’s brush. 

Then I prepared the surface of the steel tsuba, using a water of Ayr stone to do so. This is a special stone from Scotland with a pretty unique composition. When you get it wet and rub it on the surface of a metal/material, it breaks down into a very fine sludge, which then polishes the surface to a matt finish. If I wanted to polish the surface after that, I would then move to a charcoal (magnolia or willow) and then to a fine tonoko powder, which is ground-up fire clay, and finally a very fine silicon-carbide powder. Anyway, I didn’t need that, so I just prepped the surface with the stone. 

The tsuba is set in a special pitch which goes hard when it cools, and holds the piece in place while I carve it. 

I drew on my design in pencil, and then scribed it with a sharp scriber to give a very fine line. With a ‘v’ shaped chisel, I then carved a fine line around the fox-shaped area that I wanted to cut out, and raised a lip around it with a punch. This lip will be pushed down against the inlaid piece, and will lock it in place once I’ve carved out a recess for it. 

Then I cut out a matching fox-shaped piece from another separate piece of steel with a piercing saw. The sides are cut out slightly slanted inwards to create a firm lock.  

The recess is carved out, leaving a flat bottom so that the inlay piece doesn’t rock or wobble. It’s really hard to do, and took a long time to do properly. 

Next, using a bamboo punch, I locked in the inlay piece into the recess. With a teardrop shaped punch, I went around the sharp corners of the design and locked in the piece, pushing that wave-like lip back down to hold it in firmly, before going round the rest of the piece and making sure the flat surface of the tsuba came right up to the sides of the inlay. 

(sorry for the blurry photo)

Now comes the really fun bit – carving! 

I modelled a couple of foxes in plasticine, drew some more foxes, made a few more special chisels, faffed around a fair bit, procrastinated, made some tea, and then finally worked up the guts to start carving. This is Very Scary™. Once you’ve taken the material away, you cannot put it back!

I began by blocking out various planes, and then started to carve in earnest. 

And that’s the stage I’m at at the moment, at the end of day three. I’ve made all the chisels I’m using, which in itself is a major faff. You start with a blank, kindly forged by a friendly blacksmith out of tool steel, and then you have to square it up to make sure that you’re starting from a flat, regular surface, and that all the planes are true. Then you file in the flats and adjust it until you’re happy with the complex geometry, and then you harden (heat to red hot and quench in water) and temper (heat gradually until it’s a straw-yellow) it so that it’s not so soft it’ll wear down after two strokes or too hard that it’ll chip when you tap it with the hammer! It’s a delicate job and it’s easy to mess up. 

Anyway, I’ll do another post showing how I will patinate (colour) the iron towards the end of the week. I hope you’ve enjoyed this. I’ll resume my normal story posting soon, just as soon as this crazy week of intense study is over, and I’ve had my interview on Monday for a conservation of Arms and Armour job!! I don’t expect to get it, but it’s great experience nonetheless!

Til next time, take care!