Building a Charcoal Tanto Forge
This forge is a scaled down version specifically geared for tanto and smaller knives but has a removable spacer to allow for a larger fire when needed. Details about traditional measurements and clay mixtures here.
Museum Forge Project
Building western Canada’s only full-sized traditional Japanese style swordsmith forge. See the whole process and more video here.
Making a Swordsmith Anvil from Scrap
A Japanese swordsmith style anvil made from junkyard scrap. The two side pieces are cast steel or iron John Deere 8255C rear counterweights from a shovel dozer. They weigh about 200-240lbs each and measure about 2 1/8″ x 14 3/4″ x 25″. There is a ‘T’ shaped face and stem that extends to the ground…
Inside look at a traditional kaiken mounting
A look inside the carving of a small kaiken tanto mounting (futokoro-gatana) with additional examples from an Edo period tsuka and an even older shirasaya. The omote is the “public side” of a tanto or sword, the side that faces outwards both when being worn and when on display. The edge faces upwards and the…
TimeWarp #9 – Making a Mountain Kotanto
Read about the process of making this knife, learn about the Tools for Satoyama project, or design your own knife.
Satetsu – testing iron sand, skimboarding bladesmith
Collecting and testing some local iron sand (magnetite/hematite) at the beach using a harddrive magnet. These samples were collected as west coast additions to soulsmith Pierre Nadeau’s satetsu archive. Bonus summer skimboard footage thanks to a couple of good friends who stopped by to enjoy the beach. Additional footage thanks to Dan King and Crow~san,…
SOTW #14 – Making the Mountain Kotanto
Tools for Satoyama project: Design your own knife.
Forging a Nakago Punch for Making Tsuba
This punch is specifically designed to create nakago-ana (tang opening) in iron or copper tsuba, saving time with a cold chisel and files. The concept is to forge something shaped similar to a tang but with an exaggerated taper for strength. The tool could be hardened but will likely lose its heat treatment during the…
Carving an Aikuchi Tanto Koshirae
Hand carving a classical tanto style mounting from reclaimed and local natural materials using traditional Japanese woodworking tools. A note about the wooden koiguchi: I don’t recommend this method with any wood other than Oceanspray ironwood due to its peculiar strength in cross section…wood (or better, horn) grain should run vertically across the opening to…
Arashiage – Hand Filing a Forged Tanto
Hand filing a classical tanto style blade forged from half of a reclaimed horse carriage leaf spring. (4x) Arashiage is the rough shaping stage that comes after hizukuri (fire shaping) and before yaki-ire (hardening). Serious students of the forge can read more and watch the full process version here.
TimeWarp – Forging a Carriage Spring Tanto
Charcoal forging a traditional tanto style blade from half of a reclaimed horse carriage leaf spring at 4x speed (total actual forging time including heating was about 2 hours). Serious students of the forge can watch the full process version here: https://rumble.com/v2fctln-timewarp-1-forging-a-tanto-from-a-century-old-carriage-spring.html The two distinct stages are sunobe and hizukuri…sunobe establishes the geometry and proportions,…
Crossed Heart Forge on YouTube
Crossed Heart Forge has a YouTube channel, check it out and please subscribe! also available on rumble:
Field Trip To A Bladesmith’s Forge
A workshop visit from the The Samurai Carpenter
MadeFor: Creating Off The Grid
See the full feature on MadeFor.com.au: Crossed Heart Forge – Off The Grid We come into this world with an innate yearning to discover. The belief that there is something out there bigger than us, beyond our own frontier, constantly compels us to make more with what we’ve got, for the time we have here.
An Australian Media Visit to the Forge
Read the article on MadeFor.com.au: MadeFor – Crossed Heart Forge