Customising a KC Shingen Katana
Dec 23, 2011 14:23:09 GMT
Post by william m on Dec 23, 2011 14:23:09 GMT
Hi all,
Thought I would share with you an old project of mine, which is my customisation of a KC Shingen katana. This was a few years ago but was one of my most successful projects as I haven't done a great deal since.
This was I think my first performance katana, with the previous sword being light weight Hanwei swords.
The sword was an absolute beast, it had a good deal of niku along with a fairly wide blade and a strong sori.
However the sword was really rather bland and non-traditional for my tastes, so I thought I would give it a complete make over.
The original sword.
Now I love Tachi and Handachi style swords, and as the saya already came with a few metal fittings I thought I would follow this style. I took great inspiration from an existing sword in one of my books.
The Tsuka had to change completely as I really hated the existing tsuka. I could not dismantle the tsuka so I carved a new one. This was the second tsuka I carved and came out a lot better than my first... which I shall not put pictures up!! Oh the shame the shame...
I fitted the sword out with some gunto fittings that I bought from ebay. I tried to darken the fittings with fire and gun blu but nothing really worked. In the end I painted it black... not the best solution but oh well.... For the samé I just spray painted it black, which seemed to work out fine athough I later decided to give it a clear lacquer just in case the paint would ever flake off.
The tsukaito was Silk, which I soaked and pre-stretched for a day to ensure that it would remain tight. I did not use traditional hisigame and had cut out triangles out of cardboard. It worked but would had been better with paper. The wrap itself came out beautifully and very tight.
For the saya I decided to differ from the design I took inspiration from and installed some Rattan rings and two toned the painting style. This came out really well I thought! It took quite a lot of effort with the rattan rings when trying to get the joins to be completely flush. The paint was bog-standard spray paint and clear lacquer. I used masking tape to mark off the two sections for the black and red. To mask off the metal fittings I used blue tac.
KC Hamons leave a LOT to be desired.. they are very very difficult to etch out, and when you do there is almost nothing decent to look at. So after having tried to etch out what I could, I decided to give it a fake hamon line using some fec acid. I went for a pretty nifty three clove design, which you don't see often.
Original hamon... a lot of wierd tempering lines were all over the blade.. some people may like it but I didn't.
Here is the process of etching out my design in fec acid.
This turned out fairly well.... Better than a wire brushed hamon anyways!
Here is a shot of the completed sword. I was very happy with what I was able to do with the sword.
However I never really settled on the handling of the sword and eventually sold it on. I am currently ... again very slowly working on an Oni Forge Ukigumno. I hope you have enjoyed my post and sorry if all the pictures have eaten up your bandwidth! hehe
Thought I would share with you an old project of mine, which is my customisation of a KC Shingen katana. This was a few years ago but was one of my most successful projects as I haven't done a great deal since.
This was I think my first performance katana, with the previous sword being light weight Hanwei swords.
The sword was an absolute beast, it had a good deal of niku along with a fairly wide blade and a strong sori.
However the sword was really rather bland and non-traditional for my tastes, so I thought I would give it a complete make over.
The original sword.
Now I love Tachi and Handachi style swords, and as the saya already came with a few metal fittings I thought I would follow this style. I took great inspiration from an existing sword in one of my books.
The Tsuka had to change completely as I really hated the existing tsuka. I could not dismantle the tsuka so I carved a new one. This was the second tsuka I carved and came out a lot better than my first... which I shall not put pictures up!! Oh the shame the shame...
I fitted the sword out with some gunto fittings that I bought from ebay. I tried to darken the fittings with fire and gun blu but nothing really worked. In the end I painted it black... not the best solution but oh well.... For the samé I just spray painted it black, which seemed to work out fine athough I later decided to give it a clear lacquer just in case the paint would ever flake off.
The tsukaito was Silk, which I soaked and pre-stretched for a day to ensure that it would remain tight. I did not use traditional hisigame and had cut out triangles out of cardboard. It worked but would had been better with paper. The wrap itself came out beautifully and very tight.
For the saya I decided to differ from the design I took inspiration from and installed some Rattan rings and two toned the painting style. This came out really well I thought! It took quite a lot of effort with the rattan rings when trying to get the joins to be completely flush. The paint was bog-standard spray paint and clear lacquer. I used masking tape to mark off the two sections for the black and red. To mask off the metal fittings I used blue tac.
KC Hamons leave a LOT to be desired.. they are very very difficult to etch out, and when you do there is almost nothing decent to look at. So after having tried to etch out what I could, I decided to give it a fake hamon line using some fec acid. I went for a pretty nifty three clove design, which you don't see often.
Original hamon... a lot of wierd tempering lines were all over the blade.. some people may like it but I didn't.
Here is the process of etching out my design in fec acid.
This turned out fairly well.... Better than a wire brushed hamon anyways!
Here is a shot of the completed sword. I was very happy with what I was able to do with the sword.
However I never really settled on the handling of the sword and eventually sold it on. I am currently ... again very slowly working on an Oni Forge Ukigumno. I hope you have enjoyed my post and sorry if all the pictures have eaten up your bandwidth! hehe