this is man at arms reforged perhaps no blade has been more revered throughout history than
the katana and today we're making the epic no dachi sword a katana style blade that is
used by the kenzei in for honor which will be available on february 14th in for honor players
can step into a visceral battlefield and fight as some of history's greatest warriors the vikings
the knights and the samurai any katana style sword over 30 inches was in odachi which made
for a fearsome weapon the nordacchia that we are making is based on the real swords of the japanese
samurai in japanese samurai translates as those who serve this manta samurai dedicated his life
to mastering the art of combat in order to defend their master legend has it that they took this so
seriously that a samurai could neither be born nor die without a sword nearby now that is commitment
even though this blade is going to be made out of traditional japanese tahamagani steel
and that's a pretty big deal we've shown you that several times
and we usually skip over the fittings pretty quickly because we've seen a lot of requests
to show more work on the fittings and the fit and finish we're going to jump
right into the hand beveling of the blade and then move on to the highly detailed
fittings
we need some thick masses of copper for some of these fittings we'll be melting down some copper
pipe it'll go in the crucible come up over 2000 degrees fahrenheit be poured directly into an
ingot mold and then we'll begin forging the ingot to get the sheet we'll be making the souba from
now the blade is forged it's time to start the stock removal portion of this build i'm
just going to follow the guidelines that ilya's forged into this blade already
take out a few of the little bumps here and there and then i'll hand it off to him
he'll get it clayed and he treated because this material is so precious and we are going to be
quenching it into water i want to make sure my edge thickness stays nice and thick just to play
it on the safe side so you notice i'm taking my time make sure i don't remove too much material
after annealing rick and i begin to drive this ingot down on itself
we'll need to anneal it several times as it begins to flatten out it'll give us a
better consistency of material that we can cut and form the souba from
it is a tradition in japanese swords to prefer differential heat treating that is
usually achieved by masking off the back of the blade with clay and leaving the edge uncovered
if you notice there are small lines of clay extending from the back clade to the edge
those are called ashy lines the purpose of usher lines is to introduce smaller regions of softer
material extending from the back to the edge that prevents chipping that might occur during combat
so we've continued to reduce this ingot down and we have a fair amount of material it's much more
than what we need so we're going to keep working this down we're going to get it down just above
a quarter inch and then saw pierce and cut out the entire piece for the subaru i'm still mostly doing
roughing work and i'm also doing some grinding so i'm not going to worry about hammer marks too much
now the clay is nice and dry on the surface of the blade it's time to heat treat
since this is really precious material we are taking a risk going in the water
but we really want to show you this as he removes the blade from the quench
you can see it's gained a lot of curve it went in straight and came out just right
using the template that ilia gave her lauren's now going to lay the design onto our
copper disk and then use a saw and pierce it out
now the shape is cut out lauren's going to go around the entire edge with a file
making a nice clean bevel the middle of the handle the tsuka has a copper ornament
the game designers executed that in a very victorian style so consequently i'm going to
use a set of chisels first aligner to outline the design then i'm going to use a planishing
chisel to push the design back the pitch which fills the ornament is going to push the design
up and at that stage i will rotate to more finer set of chisels to do all the detail work
so now we have the copper suba finished the outside edges are all done the surfaces are
just about where they're going to be before we patina what we've got to do now is we've
got to fit it to the blade we already have a steel suba that's fitted to that blade to
make sure that we could get this shape right so what we'll be doing now is we're going to
overlay this i'm going to scratch in the ink the shape of that hole drill the whole saw
pierce all the way around until it fits and then we'll do all hand file fit to the blade
what i have to do now is to produce a or engraving on the blade so
here i have a rough outline where my hamon is the reason why i did that i want to constantly see
how close i am to the hard edge that way i don't damage neither my tools nor the sword
here is the rough sketch i'm going to generally follow the plum blossom motif that you see in the
game
for the brass embellishments on the suba i'm going to be punching these brass sections out
on this pepe tools punching system uh what we'll do is we're going to punch them all
see they're fairly small they're about a half inch rather than drilling through and putting
rivets which was a consideration these are going to be soldered directly onto the piece
so i'm going to punch out 20 of these there's 10 on each side i'll clean them up a little bit put
a little solder on them they'll all get set directly in place where they're going to go
and then we'll come in with a torch bring the whole piece up to temperature when the solder
sets down we'll see everything kind of fall into place bring it off let it cool it'll be permanent
according to the samurai code of conduct or bushido
the way of the samurai is found in death this is what helped give them their warrior spirit
a samurai would rather die than fail or be dishonored and were prepared to do so in
every battle without a fear of death a samurai could reach a state of mind known as mushi
or selflessness they would become one with their blade and give themselves completely
to their training becoming ruthless killers capable of the swiftest combat
out of all the fittings that the craftsman makes the habakkuk is the only part of the fittings
that permanently stays with the blade while the rest the tube where the fushi the kashara
the tsuka minuki can be all switched around for different occasions the baki is crucial
as it is a structural piece rather than a decorative one and is formed specifically
to that blade the way it is done you stretch out a piece of copper create two offsets on one
side and then one offset in the back it is very similar to the way in the west people make axes
at this point you form it around the tang and then file it which is what i'm gonna do now
all i have to do is rough filing and rough shaping removing all the hammer marks
and setting up my general form
now that he has his surfaces prepared the way he wants for a finish
ilya can go in and lay in the engraving on the hibaki
there are several ways to create a two-piece or two-tone hivaki in this case what we're
doing is working directly with the copper and laying 24 karat gold over the back section
on the hibaki you've seen that ilia has already engraved this section we've put
some tape over it both to protect it and to keep it away from the plating solution
gold plating solution has 24 karat gold directly in it it'll allow the electricity
to flow through positive our negative here which is attached directly to the hibaki
we're going to be laying this solution down you'll see it here pretty quickly
we'll put on two or three coats over the entire piece and then we'll be able to peel this back
and see a two-tone finish for the koshero which will also be the pommel for this sword the entire
piece will be raised from a sheet of copper it'll first be dished from this side then it'll
be raised over a stake i'll be working around the concentric rings to keep it round we'll trim it
then ilia is going to take that piece it's going to get cut carved and fitted over the existing
handle
as you can see now we've gotten quite a bit of height we've gotten much smaller this is
about the size we're going to be when we're finished these sides are almost going to be
straight on this before we take this piece to be oval but it'll be only about that big
so i'll keep driving it in and hammering it until that surface is brought all the way in
kerry's done raising and planishing the caster of the pommel for the sword and
i'm prepared to engrave it the kosher on the sword is characteristic of early tachycastras
with a cut out right here i'm going to engrave the piece first and then cut it out because it's
easier for me to hold it with my holding stick right here if i cut it out first
the piece will start moving and responding way too much to the blows of even this tiny hammer
it's time to move to the mill and carve out the recess and then we'll file it all to shape later
using a small hand hammer on the end of the horn of our anvil ilya goes in upsets the end drives
it back and rolls it over creating a bead once this is in place he'll be able to place a plug
in the end of the copper to support it and take a chisel over the edges to create the roping
using hand chisels and a mallet leah is going to very carefully carve out the recess
for our tang this is the beginning of the sukkah
now that both sides of the handle are recessed it's time to clamp them together and glue them up
once they're glued we move right to the sander and start forming it to shape first thing you want to
do is get your length and width then you're going to knock the corners and round everything over
so jen now uses a razor to cut this ray skin usually you would see us use
a sharp pair of shears or large scissors for something like this but in this case
this material will destroy the surfaces and edges so we need to use something disposable
now the second coat of glue is applied we'll let it dry then we'll come back and put it together
the fushi or the fitting that is closest to the guard on this sword
keeps the handle tight and allows it to be under compression from the coogie pin that
holds the entire sword together i was able to make it quickly from a piece of copper pipe
once it's to form billia now puts in the serious work
the last stage in polishing the japanese sword is to burnish the back
and the shinogi g the purpose of burnishing is to close off the natural porosity
in the grain of the steel that produces a rich dark mirror finish
even though this handle is in two pieces it's going to be the largest handle that john's
wrapped for length he's got to make sure he has just the right amount of cord he'll take his time
keep everything tight and lay it all in place at the very end it'll be tied into the cashier
it was said that the ancient japanese swordsmiths put everything they had into making the perfect
weapon including their very soul of course there's really only one way to test the
blade
so
until next time stay sharp
thanks to for honor for sponsoring this episode you can wield the nodaci and fight for the kensei
in the game available february 14th if you want to see the construction of the knights
peacekeeper armor featured in this episode's demolition segment click the box on the right