"Hira Zukri" Tanto

To continue my practice with knife-making I decided to make a Japanese Tanto. It is a dagger or a miniature katana. The style tanto I decided to make is a call "Hira Zukuri". It is a common tanto design used by Samurai in feudal Japan. The reason I chose to do a tanto is because, Japanese style blades are what influenced me to become a bladesmith. 


The first thing I did, was draw up a design. Second you make a preform otherwise known as a "sunobe". A "sunboe" is the initial shape of the tanto, I started with a steel billet 1"x 1/4"x 12". All a steel billet is, is a rectangle bar of steel. You heat the steel to temperature, then start hammering the steel to shape, making sure you hammer blows are consistent and in the right spots. When forming the "sunobe" you want to make sure, you forge your "distal taper". "Distal taper" is when the tip of the blade tapers to the "machi" (machi is where the middle of the blade starts its shoulders that separate  the blade and the tang.) and from the "machi" to the tang. That is the basic explanation of the a how to forge a "sunobe" on a Japanese blade. There is actually a lot more to it, but this is not a tutorial. 

Anyway, here are some pictures of my "sunobe" coming to shape.

  

That was the first session, here are the pictures from the second session.

That is where I am at so far, I still have to straighten the spine and fix up a few kinks here and there. Then I move on to forging the bevels. Stay tuned!
Thanks!