You need to be sitting down ...

[D_W]

A big thing in tool making is the grain size. The Japanese white paper steel is great stuff with a very fine grain size. But overheat it a couple of times and you get a biscuit like substance with a grain you can see with your naked eye! It is the skill of the smith that makes the tool, the right forging temperature, not too hot not too cold, working swiftly to avoid unnessary scaling etc. Then comes the heat treatment that could easilly wipe out all skilled forging work if done incorrectly, but when done with care it could decrease the grain size even further.

I think we can admire the skill of the Japanese blacksmiths just as well without mytical hokey pokey. Making a laminated blade from a very simple high carbon steel at very high hardness levels is a quite a feat!

I think the skill itself is what serious users are after, not any of the other stuff. Pine charcoal probably doesn't do much of anything compared to gas (and especially not good temperature regulation), but it suggests some attention to detail. (There may be something about it preventing decarb, I don't know).

The real trick is that white 1 has a really narrow temperature range, and it takes some skill to consistently make great tools.

Making "good" ones doesn't require anything other than prelaminated material and good process. I'd imagine that the process could be tightened well enough to do white 1 well, too, but don't know as there probably isn't much of a market for the risk. Of course, mass produced goods tend to look mass produced, and that's a bit offputting in the world of japanese tools. The kind of crisp subtle finish isn't on mass produced tools.

I've never heard the one about the water, just the narrow temperature range that white 1 has.

 

[BHolcombe]

Many (probably nearly all of them) are using trip hammers but that which is a huge dividing line is the gas forge, the traditionalist is using pine charcoal and it makes for a better product giving that the talent and ability is there.

How so? What evidence do you have to suggest that working with pine charcoal produces a better result? What is the mechanism of action for the improvement?

I suspect if I took three knives, the one from the OP, and two of the same design one forged with a gas hearth and power hammer and one made by water-jet cutting Hot-rolled plate.

• functionally they would be indistinguishable,
• The pine-charcoal one might be carburised on the surface giving increased hardness, but the effect wouldn't be uniform enough to be truly meaningful.
• Etching the surface to show microstructure would reveal that both forging methods produced the same effect of flowing the grain in specific directions to increase the stiffness of the workpiece,
• the one cut from plate would exhibit substantively similar characteristics when etched, as long as the cut was aligned with respect to the grain structure produced by rolling.

[Apologies, I'm aware that this devolves into a kind of rant beyond this point]

Blacksmithing, at heart is just a name for small scale forging, which boils down to bashing hot metal to achieve specific properties... As these properties are desirable, they're well studied, and modern methods have been fine tuned over the last 175 years to produce things to exacting standards. It's almost insulting to the industry and the individuals who have been involved with that development and the current practice of forging to suggest that they can't possibly meet the standards of someone using traditional methods.



I have a lot of respect for the skill of this famous Japanese smith, but I doubt that it exceeds that of the skilled smiths of the early Victorian era. His experience and apprenticeship will have taught him approximations of how to achieve results we can now deliver with great accuracy and reliability; and he rightly deserves recognition for his dedication to his craft.

However, with regard to your earlier comment

... top tier of smithing in a country known for quality blacksmithing.

, give where credit is due, Germany and the UK have led the world in forging for well over a century, and on such a phenomenally grand scale that Japan's cottage industry is not of any great note by comparison; the Chinese and Taiwanese (or is it Chinese and Chinese?) have followed hot on their heels, and the US made a pretty important contribution to during the 1910-1970 period too...

It reduces carbon loss in extremely high carbon steels, that combined with a capable smith makes for a glass hard carbon steel blade the does not chip. They do need to keep the heat range very tight.

I actually enjoy using both old Western laminated blades and new Japanese laminated blades using traditional method. I don't feel the need to poo-poo one or the other, or suggest that one is all fan-fiction. Also I'm not attempting to be an annoying know-it-all but instead point out that some of the opinions are Japanese tools presented are quite unfair.

You are implying that I mean to say that Japan is the only place with capable smiths, I did not say that. I do not need to qualify my statement by saying that other places also can make a nice thing..

I would think anyone carving with handtools might raise an eyebrow if I suggested their process is better done by CNC machine. Do you think smithing is any different?

Better still when you think of the virtues or hand planing and someone comes along to tell you that your missing out in not simply putting the wood through a sanding machine....

 

[Corneel]

It reduces carbon loss in extremely high carbon steels, that combined with a capable smith makes for a glass hard carbon steel blade the does not chip. They do need to keep the heat range very tight.

You get exactly the same effect in a coal forge. And a gas forge can have an oxygen starved atmosphere too when you turn down the air supply. That of course reduces the temperature so you need some big manly burners to start with.

It's mostly a traditional thing I guess. And they sure can get good results with pine charcoal. In my little bit of experience it doesn't make things easier. I use charcoal when forging at home but have worked with coal and gas too. Charcoal needs a constant resupply and readjusting of the fire. Coal is much easier in that respect. But coal stinks so I don't use it at home and I haven't made a gas forge yet.

 

[Andy Kev.]

I think that much of the discussion turns on that: I imagine that most of us value genuine handwork as opposed to the mere operating of machines. Do we not tend to value hand cut over machine cut dovetails?

The Japanese smiths are clearly highly skilled people and it seems to me to be a good thing that smithing has a valued place in Japanese culture and of course that these blokes can make a living from what they do.

I personally don't feel the need for a Japanese chisel (Ashley Isles, Veritas and long gone Sheffield producers have the ground covered for me) but can well understand why people want to own such objects especially as each piece is by definition unique. I can't imagine that they cut wood much better though.

 

[Wildman]

I think that is quite a reasonable price for a marking knife, I can supply razor sharp marking knives made from broken hacksawblades, err quality HSS for only £100 pound each though.

 

[Trafalgar]

"I think that is quite a reasonable price for a marking knife, I can supply razor sharp marking knives made from broken hacksawblades, err quality HSS for only £100 pound each though."

 

[Trafalgar]

I recall reading in Bernard Jones, or it could have been Wells & Hooper, a recommendation to use a chisel "found too hard for its intended use" as a scraper burnisher. Maybe hardness isn't all it's cracked up to be (pardon the pun), of course the Japanese ability to defy the laws of material physics notwithstanding... :roll:

 

[Jelly]

... a gas forge can have an oxygen starved atmosphere too when you turn down the air supply. That of course reduces the temperature so you need some big manly burners to start with.

It starts to get terrifying when you look at Carburising processes in a gas hearth... A large refractory cylinder inside the hearth, with a supply providing a slight positive pressure of pure acetylene inside it, such that there's a sooty acetylene flame in the mouth of the cylinder for inserting the workpiece; extremely controllable though.

Coal is much easier in that respect. But coal stinks so I don't use it at home and I haven't made a gas forge yet.

Have you considered induction heating instead of a hearth? I've
used coal, gas and induction and the latter is my favourite by far.

I don't feel the need to poo-poo one or the other, or suggest that one is all fan-fiction.

You'll have to forgive me if you feel I'm dismissing the positives of the Japanese tradition out of hand, but I felt quite strongly that your argument failed to acknowledge the level of advancement that modern forging techniques have achieved, in the best traditions of Brearley, Huntsman, Firth-Brown, Bessemer, et all.


The real issue (in my view) is that Japanese society has respect for good products well made, much moreso than others parts of the world; the vast majority of modern western chisels for instance, even of high quality seem to be drop-stamped blanks which are shaped by grinding or milling; with modern steels that's "good enough", meaning only a handful of firms actually forge the whole shape.

With a greater drive for "best" rather than "adequate" quality in the western world, I'm sure Stanley could churn out very fine machine made chisels to compete with Japan's finest, but as I've illustrated at length elsewhere, the financial drivers behind the market simply don't justify the capital investments to do something like that.

I would think anyone carving with handtools might raise an eyebrow if I suggested their process is better done by CNC machine. Do you think smithing is any different?

Better still when you think of the virtues or hand planing and someone comes along to tell you that your missing out in not simply putting the wood through a sanding machine....

As it happens, I do carve, and rather enjoy it... I also programme CNC machines, and that has its own charm too; I've recently been playing with the idea of using a V-bit in a CNC router to rough out incised Latin letters, then working the serifs and fine details by hand (where the work is both easier, and of higher quality by hand than by programming the router).

I learned by experience that there's no virtue in hand-planing, beyond when it's a more sensible choice for reasons of practicality; I will quite happily bang timber through a Planer-Thicknesser all day long if needs be, or plane a similar board by hand if factors like reversing grain or simply huge size make it impractical.

It took me some time, to arrive at the conclusion that unless the work is an end in itself (and as a hobbyist, it can be for me), then the value of the results is independent of the process, it's all down to what's been achieved.