Japanese Sword Arts in Sports Directory

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Barrett Custom Knives in Sports Directory

 

Thought it was time to share some technical data as well as a bit of a rant. Ill soon be adding a technical page here on the site that will give some insight into how I do things as well as my personal feelings on blades as both a smith and a martial artist. Lately Ive heard lots of people making statements about the beauty of my blades and attention to traditional aesthetics but in the same breathe wonder about functionality. In most cases I spend about an entire week giving attention to the fine details including proper niku, geometric correctness, finishing the blade so that the polisher only has to polish and not reshape the blade, finishing the nakago and finally signing and dating the blade in Japanese. First off, I think Id have to say why would I spend all the extra time and effort to make a blade beautiful and traditionally correct only to neglect performance?. Doesnt make sense logically and thats probably why I havent ever made profound claims in the past about performance. So I figured it was the time to share some of the extra steps I take to ensure performance in my blades. First and foremost, with the help of several other metalheads Ive spent a great deal of time studying metallurgy and then incorporating and blending modern science with some of the traditional methods I use. Ive spent close to a decade alone studying quenchants both modern and ancient to pick apart the benefits and shortcomings of each. As such Ive settled in to using a modern quenchant that gives me superior results in performance while still being able to obtain any aesthetic feature present in older Japanese blades. It took me at least 6-7 years of this time just to fine tune my heattreating so that I can, more or less, get these features on demand. I found out very quickly that water is simply unacceptable for any other reason than being traditional. Even when trying to control the medium it is unruly and the results can be dangerous. Generally there is a 50-70 percent failure rate due to cracks but that only includes those that are visibly discernable. Under the microscope you can quite often find both perpendicular and longitudinal stress fractures that are invisible to the naked eye. Once seeing this first hand, I said goodbye to water as a quenchant forever.

 

Address: 18943 County Rd 18, Goshen, IN 46528
Telephone: (574) 533-4297
Website: http://www.barrettcustomknives.com/