The fourth in my sword series, a fullsize claymore. It’s decorated with clan imagery engraves and inlay. Quarantine necessitates that I use a different international unit of measure as bananas are hard to come by. I submit the humble chicken egg as an alternative.
Materials:
Blade - 1/8” Baltic birch plywood (3layers)
Handle - figured black walnut (from Kim Oberlin)
Pommel and crossguard embellishment - Yellowheart
Inlay - redheart
Finished with hand rubbed satin polyurethane. Overall length end to end is approximately 52”. It’s big.
What’s to say here? Work carefully and take your time shaping and sanding the handle. It’ll pay off. You can’t help but ooh and aah when you pick this thing up.
Oh one note about the quillion/crossguard details. I sanded the ends of the crossguard to taper a bit. The overall effect really lends some refinement, but the really cool part to me is the interesting round “topographic” lines of the layers of the ply. Sanded to high polish, Baltic birch glows and has significant chatoyancy. The end effect is lovely in person, and the shapes of the visible layers make it easy to ensure that your taper is even and smooth.
You know, it’s funny you say that. It really is like smithing a bit, you work it almost like you would a metal blade. Belt sander to shape, files and sanding blocks to fine tune, etc. I setup a sanding/working station outside and make a LOT of sawdust.
So, my problem right now is materials, I’m out of long plywood. I suppose I could go with a wakizashi, but I really wanted to make an Odachi, and that’s going to have to wait. Katanas and Ninja-tos will be really easy designs to make, I’ll probably spend more time on the tsuba than anything else.
Also, I looked at silk wrapping a katana handle, it’s no joke! Would take a lot of work to get it right.
My theory on hamon line is to take a contrasting veneer and cut it to be the same blade profile, and glue it to the surface, and then sand it away. I may well have been googling yellowheart veneers for this purpose.
In hindsight, maybe the thing to do is glue the veneer to the ply and cut the entire thing in one go.
My local supplier of BB ply does delivery but there’s a significant charge. I suppose I could gear up for quarantine expeditions and be careful, but I’m not there yet.
I also have a 6’ Zweihander in the pipeline (again no plywood), and I already made a matching Dirk to go with this claymore, it’s currently drying its first coat of polyurethane. I’ll post that in a day or three.
I’ve been planning a tanto because you got my wheels turning. I was planning on using a board of burl maple and cutting out the hamon line from that board and inlaying some contrasting wood like aromatic cedar or something of that sort. with a tanto normally being around 12" it would be a good size format to test it out at least and fit nicely on the bed. Haven’t gone down the rabbit hole that is silk wrapping but that is next on the list of things to do. was planning on using some basic sewing thread instead tho.
That is so awe inspiring! This makes me want to start one tonight!
As some of you know, I’m a very active member of my Scottish Clan Society, and this would make an awesome presentation award…
having a wood inlay for the hamon line down the blade would look pretty amazing i think.
