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Tamahagane (玉鋼) is a type of steel made in the Japanese tradition. The word tama means 'precious', and the word hagane means 'steel'. [ 1 ] Tamahagane is used to make Japanese swords , daggers , knives , and other kinds of tools.
Japanese swordsmithing is the labour-intensive bladesmithing process developed in Japan beginning in the sixth century for forging traditionally made bladed weapons [1] [2] including katana, wakizashi, tantō, yari, naginata, nagamaki, tachi, nodachi, ōdachi, kodachi, and ya.
Katana are traditionally made from a specialized Japanese steel called tamahagane, [60] which is created from a traditional smelting process that results in several, layered steels with different carbon concentrations. [61]
The Sankei Shimbun analyzed that this is because the Japanese government allowed swordsmiths to make only 24 Japanese swords per person per year to maintain the quality of Japanese swords. [30] [31] In Japan, genuine edged hand-made Japanese swords, whether antique or modern, are classified as art objects (and not weapons) and must have ...
Tamahagane. Japanese smiths discovered, similarly to many others, that iron sand (with little to no sulfur and phosphorus) heated together with coal (carbon) made the steel they called tamahagane. This allows the sword to have the strength and the ability to hold a sharp edge, as well as to cause the sword to tend to bend rather than flex under ...
Tamahagane, which is used to forge the blade of traditionally made Japanese blade nihonto. It takes about a week to build the tatara and complete the iron conversion to steel. When the process is done, the clay tub is broken and the steel bloom, known as a kera , is removed.
Many of his forged tachi were later made into katana by cutting the tang (nakago). For this reason, his only existing works are katana, tantō, and wakizashi. [3] [4] Thus, cutting the tang of an old tachi and making it into a katana according to the popularity of the katana was called suriage, which was common in Japanese history. [14]
Perhaps one of the most famed Kotetsu blades was a fake: that of Kondō Isami, the commander of the late Edo-era patrol force called Shinsengumi.However, this sword was not a Kotetsu, but instead a sword made by the foremost smith of that era (known in Japanese swordmaking history as the shinshin-to era), Minamoto Kiyomaro, and bearing a forged Kotetsu signature made by master signature-faker ...