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Post by miraculix101 on Mar 1, 2024 16:41:59 GMT
If i drill holes in the tang of a katana, and they are misplaced to a corresponding tsuka, i can weld the holes shut.
Are there any disadvantages, except you cannot easily drill holes anymore thought the welded shut holes? I tried, its near impossible to drill trough. But otherwise you strengthen the tang again, with welded shut holes or?
And i am speaking of modern made blades, not that you think i tried that with nihonto
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Post by darknovashin on Mar 1, 2024 17:12:12 GMT
Weld I would recommend against just as the heat may harden the tang or open up micro fractures and make it prone to a break. Traditionally they filled the mekugi holes from previous mountings with lead, silver, shibuchi, etc. with a modern steel, I don’t think filling the hole will help much with strength and probably won’t be worth the effort of filling then needing to file it down so it still fits the same tsuka core.
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Post by mrstabby on Mar 1, 2024 17:26:48 GMT
You would very likely damage the uniform heat treatment and crate stress points in the material with welding, and if you are not careful it could spread far enough to be a problem.
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Post by Cottontail Customs on Mar 1, 2024 17:39:41 GMT
yes, you can drill new mekugi-ana if you need or want to. a couple of repositioned ana shouldn't compromise the structural integrity of the nakago, provided it's healthy and solid and they're not too close together or too many. no real need to plug up the ones you don't want to use but if you still want to, they usually plugged them with softer metals like copper alloys using a hammer or punch to expand the material into the hole until wedged firmly.
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Post by wildv on Mar 4, 2024 9:31:03 GMT
Depends on the sword, but good luck with drilling those holes! I've only successfully drilled one sword 1060, the other 2 I attempted -- one being 9260, the other T10 was impossible with normal equipment. You'll most likely need a carbide bit and drill press set up.
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Post by mrstabby on Mar 4, 2024 12:16:08 GMT
You can also try diamond drills, they work on metal as well but you have to gow slow and use some coolant/lubricant, if they get too hot you burn or chip off the diamonds and without oil they clog. On the cheaper end are carbide tipped masonry/tile drills, they should work as well but could do a lot more walking on extremely hard steel.
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Post by larason2 on Mar 4, 2024 13:28:37 GMT
If the blade is through hardened, it's going to be a challenge to drill. I have two diamond drill bits, you can use those with plenty of water. Personally I find the carbide ones to be useless, at least I've dulled two of them on stone without getting totally through. I use a spray bottle, and a drill press is recommended. If it's a differentially hardened blade though, you should be able to use an ordinary drill bit.
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Post by wildv on Mar 4, 2024 14:07:29 GMT
If the blade is through hardened, it's going to be a challenge to drill. I have two diamond drill bits, you can use those with plenty of water. Personally I find the carbide ones to be useless, at least I've dulled two of them on stone without getting totally through. I use a spray bottle, and a drill press is recommended. If it's a differentially hardened blade though, you should be able to use an ordinary drill bit. Sorry for not clarifying, I used to work as a fitter and I meant real carbide bits not the ones most people think of purchasing from Amazon.
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Post by larason2 on Mar 4, 2024 18:09:00 GMT
Ah, that's fair. I've never used the professional ones, just the cheap ones you buy at Home Depot. Clearly not all carbide is created equal! Diamond is great though, it's worth the slightly extra spend.
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Post by miraculix101 on Mar 6, 2024 17:34:47 GMT
Thank you all for you input and answers.
I tried it with a 1095 steel blade, a friend of me, who is a very good welder, welded 2 holes shut in the tang. I think he used gas shielded welding. After the welding, i used an angle grinder and planed/smoothed the surface of the weld.
You can see the angle grinder marks, but not that there was a hole before.
And for drilling in hard metals, i use something like this here:
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Post by crazyjons on Mar 6, 2024 17:43:10 GMT
I'm not sure if that $2 eBay drill bit is actually carbide that just seems too cheap. Good quality Cobalt or even high-speed steel bits should drill anything that you come across in swordland, even a weld. High speed steel is usually at least 60 Rockwell hardness and there's no way a sword tang should be that hard. Welding wire is usually mild steel.
Jon
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Post by mrstabby on Mar 6, 2024 18:19:34 GMT
If you go for carbide, don't cheap out. The cheaper ones either aren't carbide or not good quality carbide, there are definately a lot of quality steps for carbide. I have used a Bosch carbide tipped tile drill and after drilling 8 holes in hard bathroom tiles it basically wasn't dulled at all. The problem with the carbide insert tip drills is, that they might not give you the cleanest holes, so you better go undersized and clean it up a bit with a file or something. Mine look like this, definately work on metal but the normal spiral flute drills make much cleaner holes. www.bosch-professional.com/at/de/expert-cyl-9-multiconstruction-bohrer-2867205-ocs-ac/
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Post by crazyjons on Mar 6, 2024 18:44:38 GMT
Hopefully no one is suggesting using a masonry bit to drill holes in steel. All you need is a good quality high-speed steel drill bit, that's what it's for.
I have some golden colored supposedly ti nitride coated Chinese drill bits and they couldn't drill holes in an S7 katana tang, so I switched out for my good made in USA snap-on bit set and it went through like butter.
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Post by larason2 on Mar 6, 2024 18:49:25 GMT
At least on the Nihonto fragments I've cleaned up, the hardened steel is very resistant to tooling. It just laughs at a hack saw, it dulls drill bits meant for hard materials quickly, and even diamond tooling is slow because it heats up quickly (so I have to wet, cut a small amount, wet, cut a small amount, etc.). So I'm sure it depends on the exact steel, how it was heat treated, etc. Soft Nihonto steel is a piece of cake to cut with a hack saw. Not tried a full spectrum of modern steel swords, but I'm sure there's a range of responses to tooling, with hardened carbon steel being easier to get through than some of the tool steel types they use for swords. The problem with "Carbide" is it can probably even just be a tool steel that was badly hardened, all the way to practically pure carbide tips, and they can all technically be called "carbide" because they have some of that in them. I guess the point is unless you have a diamond bit, if you need to cut hardened steel, buy something tough and try it. If the sword laughs at it, you need to go more expensive!
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Post by mrstabby on Mar 6, 2024 19:40:50 GMT
Hopefully no one is suggesting using a masonry bit to drill holes in steel. All you need is a good quality high-speed steel drill bit, that's what it's for. I have some golden colored supposedly ti nitride coated Chinese drill bits and they couldn't drill holes in an S7 katana tang, so I switched out for my good made in USA snap-on bit set and it went through like butter. These do work for hardened steel, and they live longer than HSS, only problem is hole size (they make about 1mm bigger holes on 7mm drill) and walkabout without a center punch. They are made to drill anything, but again not precisely, at least these Bosch are. They're also not that pricy.
Of course a real full carbide drill works better.
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Post by crazyjons on Mar 6, 2024 20:33:28 GMT
Well I'll be darned, learn something new everyday.
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Post by wildv on Mar 7, 2024 1:33:34 GMT
Hopefully no one is suggesting using a masonry bit to drill holes in steel. All you need is a good quality high-speed steel drill bit, that's what it's for. I have some golden colored supposedly ti nitride coated Chinese drill bits and they couldn't drill holes in an S7 katana tang, so I switched out for my good made in USA snap-on bit set and it went through like butter. These do work for hardened steel, and they live longer than HSS, only problem is hole size (they make about 1mm bigger holes on 7mm drill) and walkabout without a center punch. They are made to drill anything, but again not precisely, at least these Bosch are. They're also not that pricy.
Of course a real full carbide drill works better.
0:25 of the video, that's exactly what I was talking about. You have to purchase real and proper carbide bits and they are expensive and can only be purchased from specialty machine tooling places. You'll never get real ones from Ebay or Amazon for example and if they cost $2 there is no chance they are real.
This video is really handy!
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