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I really like the basic wood-mounted Shapton 2000 grit stone, it cuts fast but uniformly so you don't spend all day polishing. A good middle stone like this can make a big difference in your...

I'm also a big fan of Fujihiro chisels, they've been my working set for years and years.

That's a reasonable alternative, essentially jointing the blade with a grinder. May have to experiment with how much needs to be removed to reach/soften the body of the teeth enough to cut them with...

If the teeth are dull enough to require resharpening or replacement, rather than disposing of the blade, you can retemper the hardness of the teeth down to a range where they are resharpenable. The...

On todays episode of "How It's Made" they paid a visit to a western chisel factory, not sure which one but they were making chisels labeled as Buck Bros. with yellow plastic handles. Drop forged into...

For most peoples definition of "hand made", indeed they are. There's no CNC machines or stamps or presses etc. There are stationary grinders and power hammers involved - but those types of machines...

It's simple enough (maybe time consuming) to make smallish chisels via stock reduction (grinding/sawing/filing away whatever doesn't look like a chisel). You can do simple heat treating with a...

good one Pam. :) I've already forgotten more than I ever knew...

Most smiths have their own favorite recipe for forge welding flux. The ingredients are basically the same but the proportions will...

Hey Pam!

That nice toasty miso smell we all remember came from the hardening stage, when the miso plus salt mix was applied to the faces of the hammers we made.

I don't think it would work so...

Carrying swords was banned in the 1870's, and swordmaking was banned not long after. This happened around the same time that relatively cheap (compared to sword steel) european steels became...

My 2 cents. I think it's a mistake to spend much time contemplating which steel a chisel should be made from - especially when it's going to be one of your first japanese chisels. Buy a decent brand...

Not sure I follow the logic here... Steve can you explain what you were trying to say?

Shoot! I entered a long post about sen making and usage hoping to catch Clinton before he left - somehow it was lost in the ether (possibly in the ether between my ears).

I can reconstruct the...

"Modern tools are made with labor and time saving mass production techniques and "space age" materials and can be sold at very low prices - it's all in convincing buyers that nothing significant was...

Lloyd, I'm thinking you want to polish out the whole body of the knife, right?

I use a couple of Scotch Brite wheels (from MSC) to polish out hammer faces.
I work up through 320 grit on a belt...

If you rub two surfaces together, like abrasive stones or glass plates and abrasive, and orient them randomly (mathematically speaking) - what you get are spherical sections. So you might get two...

It will be interesting to hear what the professional metallurgists have to say about this.

Technically decalescence is defined as the point where energy is being absorbed by the material as it...

Hey Mark,

Lucky dog! Nice chisel set, it's the same as the one I've been using for the last 15 years or so. Nice saws and hammers too, Enjoy!

Dave

Also keep in mind that the Matsumura "Factory" may only have one or two employees (the smith and maybe his wife). That's the case for many japanese toolmakers.

Suweet! Nice work, Mike.

For a sawmakers sen you grind/file an initial bevel of 45 degrees or so - you can do this before hardening. Then when sharpening you use a bevel angle of around 70 degrees. You need to use a fairly...

Thanks, Mike. Also here's my sen page with various photos and sens in use.

Dave's Sen page

Also check out these discussions:

Sen discussion

Knifemakers sen discussion

O1 would work fine for a sen, so would 5160 spring steel or 1080-1095. Some of the US knife/sword guys started out with files they had reground and handled - so an old file would work too. Unique to...

One possible solution is to use a sen (japanese metal cutting/scraping tool - looks a little like a drawknife) to scrape the taper you want. That's what was traditionally used in japan to taper saws....

Hida Tool sells handles (with the hoop) in a variety of sizes. They have a few extra hoops but not many. I suppose you could get a few different sized pieces of pipe and make your own.