How long to make katana

This is a tricky stage, in which as many as one in three swords is lost. Polishing the blade The katana, fully forged, now goes to a skilled sword polisher, who may spend more than two weeks honing the sword's razor-sharp edge. Sometimes called "water stones," these tools are typically composed of hard silicate particles suspended in clay. As the clay slowly wears away during use, more silicate particles are revealed, guaranteeing excellent polishing quality throughout the life of the stone.

Each consecutive set of polishing stones contains finer and finer silicate particles and removes less and less of the steel. Adding final touches In the final stage, metalworkers add a decorated guard of iron or other metals at the sword's hilt. Next, carpenters fit the weapon with a lacquered wooden scabbard, which artisans then decorate with various adornments.

Fashioned from gold or exotic leathers and stones, the katana's handle is as much of a work of art as the blade itself. Finally, the katana is returned to the swordsmith, who examines the weapon one last time. It has taken 15 men nearly six months to create this single katana sword. Though fit for a samurai warrior, this sword will likely sell to art collectors for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

We recommend you visit the interactive version. The text to the left is provided for printing purposes. The result of this complicated procedure is a blade with an extremely hard covering that can also be easily sharpened, and a very flexible heart that can easily absorb the shocks without breaking.

The one described is the simplest technique but sometimes more complicated methods are used for katanas and often is employed a stiffer steel than the Kawagane leather-steel : l'Hagane blade-steel particularly rich in carbon, therefore extremely hard. Of course also this steel is folded and hit properly. Behind the Hagane sharp edge we can find a Shingane heart-steel plank and a Kawagane leather-steel covering on the sides, but other combinations were possible.

They say that Masamune could use up to 7 different kinds of steel to make his samurai swords. At this point the future blades are heated up again and hit till it acquires its ultimate shape, the Nakago and the tip kissaki are shaped too.

Now we have to face the most critical moment: tempering the red-hot blade, dunking it in water or in oil at times. The tempering in water is quite difficult and it stresses the katana because the huge temperature leap modifies considerably the molecular structure and the shape of the entire plank.

This temperature leap changes also the curve of the blade and highlights the possible construction flaws by splits and cracks. The carbon makes the steel very hard since its big molecules interfere with the iron layers, preventing them to roll one on the other and the tempering process amplifies this effect. If the steel is cooled down slowly, the iron atoms recreate their crystalline structure, pushing aside the carbon atoms.

In this way the iron layers roll one on the other with great difficulty but this increases the hardness of the steel considerably. A hypothetical further heating can destroy the tempering; this used to happen when a fire occurred and tempering the blades of the samurai swords again was necessary in order to make them fully functional.

Anyway the worth of the katanas was halved since the original features were lost relentlessly. At this stage the sword is subjected to the second preparatory tempering: the blade is wormed up in different ways the blade and the sides are wormed up more than the heart and the back and is dunked in water. The Hamon is a curvy line that is visible along the blade and is formed when the samurai sword is cooled during the tempering process yaki-ire. During the cooling down the martensitic crystals, which are formed in the steel along the edge, fixate developing the Hamon.

Often the variability of the Hamon is considered synonymous of quality: actually the main feature of the Hamon is not its pattern but its uniformity along the blade. To obtain this effect the blade of the samurai sword is covered with clay, but not in a uniform way, because the clay is an isolating material and where there is more clay the area results less tempered, vice versa where there is less clay the area results more tempered.

The Hamon, which at the beginning was rectilinear, during the centuries has become a decoration of the blade and has acquired very beautiful shapes of artistic interest.

In the most valuable samurai swords, between the Hamon and the rest of the blade, we can also find the Utsuri, the Hamon shadow that is an area of a different colour which appears to delimit the edge of the Hamon itself see the picture above.

To become a Japanese swordsmith, one must undertake an apprenticeship with a master sword maker for five months. Once prospective smiths finish their training, they still have to pass a national certification test that takes place over a period of eight days. Once certified, building a reputation as a respected sword maker can take years.

T here are only around working tradition Japanese swordsmiths today. In , the Japanese Swordsmith Association counted a total of working swordsmiths in all of Japan. That is down from registered swordsmiths in , Sora News 24 reported at the time. A tsuba, the decorative handguard of a samurai sword, can be more important and valuable for a collector than the blade itself. By themselves, they can be worth tens of thousands of dollars. The pattern is etched onto a blade when it is heat-treated and differentially hardened so that the cutting edge is harder than the spine.

Japanese swordsmiths throughout history have differentiated their work from others with intricate patterns. Samurai swords are made using high-quality steel known by the name of ' tamahagane'. This steel is repeatedly heated, forged, layered, folded, and tempered. Layers of clay, with varying thickness, are applied as part of the specialized differential hardening treatment that makes the blade especially sharp and shock-absorbent.

The swordsmith repeats the painstaking layering process until they are happy to have the sword polished. The best swords can take up to 18 months to craft. The relationship between polisher and swordsmith in Japan has been compared to that of the composer and the musician. Both are needed to craft a beautifully realized work of art.