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Post by Deleted on Jan 7, 2010 8:55:35 GMT
G'day Y'all, Just found this on Al Jazeera- A brief profile on "The Last Traditional Swordsmith" of Taiwan. Interesting. He uses human bones in the forging process  Apparently he made the GreenDestiny sword for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Only three-and-a-half minutes, but worth a look... I'm having trouble embedding the thing, for some reason, so I'll just post the url... Cheers Marc E |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 8, 2010 2:36:53 GMT
Marc, thank you for that video.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 8, 2010 5:02:49 GMT
"...human bones, taken from the local cemetery with permission..."
"Hi, I'd like to grind up your late uncle and use him to make a sword. You cool with that?" That's got to be an interesting part of the job.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 8, 2010 5:20:51 GMT
...And of course, he is not the only one left in Taiwan. In fact there a several, 6, 7 contemporary smiths, who do great jobs, but they are all a bit artisty, so not that cheap and not that historically correct. Mostly, they have their own concepts on layout etc.
The guy mentioned, I have seen several times personally. A custom job will be around 900 - 1000 Euros, the sideworks are not that great, but the steel is really 1st. class, cutting just perfectly. When I was there last time, he used a just finished sword blade (without handle and no polish) and smashed it onto a Chinese kitchen knife, resting on a table. No scratch in the steel sword, but a big ditch in the kitchen cleaver, lol.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 23, 2010 21:28:39 GMT
Cool video, The question is what is the exact reason for using human bones in the forging process?  |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 24, 2010 0:59:17 GMT
Cool video, The question is what is the exact reason for using human bones in the forging process? Well, the voice-over talks about the "phosphorus from the bones removing impurities from the iron". I know next-to-nothing about metalurgy, so  [shrug]. Cheers Marc E |
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Post by Deleted on Feb 11, 2010 19:40:59 GMT
Very interesting. Thanks for sharing. I too am a little skeptical of the use of human bones. Does that warrant the sword being named after the person? "Nice sword", "Thanks it was made of Bob Smith". J/K
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Apparently he made the GreenDestiny sword for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Only three-and-a-half minutes, but worth a look...
[shrug].
