Scratched effect, best tool for the job?

[snow_imp]

Oooh CAN I FEEL ANOTHER Peter does fabulous creations post coming on??
You know you want to
Nic xx

Oh, I'm with Nic on this Peter - please another post!

[ps_bond]

Argh... It's quite a long process! I'm still at the stage where I'm chucking habaki away because I'm not satisfied with the fit. Each one is better, but still not good enough.

For each sword, I need to make at least one habaki (the collar round the base of the blade that wedges it in the mouth of the scabbard), a shira saya (sort of a storage scabbard & handle), a guard (tsuba), a couple of menuki (ornate little objects that go under the handle wrap to index the correct hand position)... And so on. I've missed a lot out there. My blade still needs the polish completing, the commercial ones are OK as is.

This is another area where there were a lot of highly specialised craftsmen, all dedicated to one skill only. And there's no way I'm going to get close to the results of a team who have spent their lives doing that!

Scratch *quite* long - individually they're going to take me an age!

Here's an example of how a traditional sword goes together - http://www.ksky.ne.jp/~sumie99/koshiraemaking.html
There's a fantastic book by Joe Earle Lethal Elegance that has a huge number of pictures of koshirae - the only slight criticism is that I'm as interested in the techniques as the results, and the former isn't covered.