even though the handcrafted part of Hackaday is still in its infancy, we expected to put up a publish on conventional japanese sword making by now. What [Kelvin] sent in to the suggestion line far surpases the artistry of forging a katana by hand. It’s a tsuba, the hand guard for a katana, and over the course of two videos (one and two), you can see this masterpiece of conventional metalworking methods take shape.
Tsubas typically are available in a matched set, one for the katana, or long sword, and another for the wakizashi, a somewhat shorter sword. [Ford Hallam] was asked to build the tsuba for a katana that had been lost to the sands of time. Fortunately, a black and white photograph of the original in addition to the matching wakizashi tsuba were available for reference, making the design of this tsuba an exercise in replication.
The piece of metal this tsuba was built from is constructed out of a somewhat customized conventional alloy of 75% copper and 25% silver. After the blank was cast, many, numerous hours of scraping, filing and hammering began before the design was laid out.
The craftsmanship in this tsuba is, rather simply, insane. There are about 100 different pieces of metal inlaid into the tsuba to emulate the tiger’s stripes, and numerous hours of work in hand carving every leaf and every bit of fur.
Even more, no power tools were utilized in the creation of this hand guard; everything was crafted utilizing the exact same methods, tools, and materials as the original tsuba. A masterful piece of craftsmanship, indeed.
