Back in 2022, I made a dagger blade, when I was out at Dragonfly Forge in Oregon. I posted about it [here] when I got home with it.

At the time, it actually looked pretty good or at least not too bad. I did not attempt to polish it mostly because I was worried about the yokote – the trim-line that delineates that cutting tip from the body of the blade. I have since learned how to do that sort of polish, and it turns out that it’s like everything involving Japanese-style blades: a lot of attention to detail. There are few secrets, really, it’s just careful fitment, a lot of filing and scraping and chiseling, and time. Anyhow, sensei Bell suggested it was worth having a professional polish it, so I contacted a polisher he suggested, one David Hofhine. [theswordpolisher]

Mr Hofhine was an interesting fellow to email with; he was businesslike and crisp, and immediately asked if sensei Bell had specifically sent me, or merely if I had discovered his name. I said that Bell had said the dagger might be worth having professionally polished and he replied, “ah, that’s good then, I sometimes get beginners who expect me to turn their work into a masterpiece.” I sent some pictures and he said he’d add me to the queue if I was serious. How long was the queue? A couple years. Apparently there are not a lot of professional sword polishers in the US and there are always blades that need polish. [Hint for the younger generation: might be a good career, especially since we are heading into an era where swords are decisive, again] Since there were a few problems with the blade that I thought could be corrected by someone who knew how, I signed up and put the dagger away.

In August, I got an email that I was next in the queue behind a large nagamaki that would probably make his carpal tunnels hurt, so I could send the blade out and it would be a few weeks after that and I’d get it back. As easy as that. He sent me a link to some great advice on how to ship blades in the mail, and recommended how I should send it, and off it went. Then, I got back to life, including another trip to Dragonfly Forge, where there was a workshop held with Taro Asano sensei on making blades from tamahagane in the traditional manner. It was bittersweet because one of sensei’s dogs had gone where dogs go in time, and he was getting a bit wobbly from decades of breathing in metal dust and smoke. It was also brutally hot, the one day we were putting folds into the steel that Taro brought with him from Japan, and we had a solid 6 hour session that (I think) was mostly survivable thanks to the hydraulic forging press that Dragonfly had set up. There was also a Japanese-style hand-pumped forge, which Taro demonstrated and we each used for a few bits of our process. In the midst of all of that, I got a tracking number in my email from Hofhine, and watched USPS tracking as my precious box found its way to my place.

This is what it looked like when it left here:

This is what it looks like, now:

There are magical polishing techniques that bring out the matte-ness of the martensite along the edge, while increasing the reflectivity of the bands of carbides between the layers.

(those are not scratches, they’re a wipe-mark)

What blows my mind the hardest is the detailing of the lines on the shinogi (the upper shoulder) which are now perfectly corrected and highlighted by making the edges clean so they grab the light.

The yokote is formed by laying down a barrier and then using a slightly different grit (this was all done on stones) at a different angle, so it’s still highly polished, but reflects at a different angle.

Back in late August, someone mentioned that Christopher Osborne [yugenswords] was offering a 2 day workshop on sword polishing, well, last week. I quickly signed up, forgot I signed up, forgot to add it to my calendar, and was blithely working on something else when Chris called me to ask if I was planning on showing up…? Oops, panic – Oil City Pennsylvania is only 2 hours from my house, so I ran home and jammed things in my bag, hopped in my car, and headed north. All in all it was a great weekend and I learned a bunch of stuff and came home with my head spinning with ideas. Could I execute a polish like the one above? No, probably not, but it’s not as hard as I expected. Often, when we take classes in something like this, what we really need is permission to try, and a situation where it won’t do any damage. Chris had us working collectively on a beautiful and expensive piece (not a notable antique) and at one point I commented that I was surprised he had a bunch of beginners working on something like that. Then, he explained that doing damage using hand stones takes much more time and effort – it’s not like a belt grinder that could take a 1/4″ chunk out of the steel in a second – and there was nothing he was letting us try that he couldn’t fix if we pooched it. Well, that was reassuring!

In fact, our session with Osborne dropped a remaining puzzle-piece into my process that caused what I expect will be significant improvements elsewhere. When doing my own grinding, or even forging with a hammer, one problem area for me was the shinogi-line, which must be straight, clear, and perfect. I learned that the polisher shapes that line by coming at it from the flats and slowly moving the contact area to meet exactly where the line is supposed to be. That is, in fact, the whole trick of it – and once he explained that, I immediately started attacking the metal differently with my belt grinder; basically set it up so that the polishing step will be easy and precise and don’t worry about any of the other stuff. I felt as though my working on polishing has unlocked other parts of my brain and taken away a bit more of the endless Fear Of Fucking Up.

I also learned that sword polishers spend an inordinate amount of time discussing rocks. I’m probably a barbarian or insufficiently appreciative of the great subtleties but it seems to me that the rocks don’t have that many different properties, and the swords don’t, either. Somewhere between worrying about rocks, and just using dead flat diamond surface plates, there’s a happy place for me.

One thing I learned which was cool as heck is that it’s pretty easy to make diamond abrasive files, plates, etc. What you do is take a piece of steel, clean the heck out of it, sink it into an electroplating tank, sprinkle diamond crush on where you want the abrasive bits, and electroplate it with a couple good thick layers of nickel. Or, you can join the discussion about rocks.

I have nearly convinced myself to quit the internet – which sucks because I have been with it since right after the beginning, and worked many of the people who wrote it. I lived through (and managed uucp/USENET node “decuac”) the news wars, and the flame wars and Zumabot and Biff and many of the interesting characters who came together and suddenly found themselves riding a sensational tiger. The internet has had trolls for a long time – some of the 1st generation trolls would have slapped Elon Musk down posthaste – but the flow has gone the wrong way: the trolls are now running the country, and the Mall Ninja(tm) [totmn] is making public policy. I have tortured myself by watching them work and, let me say: they are nothing to fear. All this dire talk about revolution and violence is just political baby-talk. [Here’s a fun trick: ask someone who starts talking about ‘right’ and ‘left’ who deployed the guillotine first] Anyone who is talking about such things is who Bonaparte was referring to when he said “amateurs talk of tactics, professionals talk about logistics.” He was wrong a few notable times, or more precisely: wrong when it mattered, but generally his only peer was Caesar. Note: if Caesar was in the process of taking over our government it would be done and dusted by now. The current crowd are nothings that Genghis Khan would not even bother to order killed. (Although he was very detail-oriented and probably would do it out of professional pride)  But, what the established canonical fuck is going on when we’ve suddenly got flat-earthers, anti-jew conspiracy theorists, and utter twaddle-pushers popping out of the woodwork like oak-borers? Any thread on instagram is larded with anti-jew conspiracy theorists; I saw one the other day where several of them were saying that the Titanic didn’t sink, it was the Olympia because something something Rothschilds, jews something. I actually encountered a space denier – someone who insists that space is fake and our planetary existence is some kind of Truman Show effect. These people bother me, because they give the lie to my carefully constructed self-opinion that I’m a fairly chill person, not some raving barbarian who wants to smash and rieve and order a lot of death-putting. I get so enervated when some idiot ex-military talks about “beating down the libs” because he doesn’t understand that we have granted the monopoly on violence to the state and can revoke it any time. Although, I feel as if I should shred and burn my “liberal” credentials because I also now hate the media, and am no longer exactly progressive, and feel like I am sliding more and more toward being an anarcho-syndicalist revolutionary who utterly rejects the fake democratic process that Jefferson and his sleazy buddies foisted on us. That results in weird things like my screaming that “you don’t have to beat up the cops, just outflank them and they will retreat!” Arrgh! Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world, there are real riots and people actually giving the cops what they need to settle them down. Of course DHS Barbie insists that calling a cop “pig” is an “attack” on the cop but really they shouldn’t complain until they’re dealing with unexpected baths in diesel fuel.

Bah. Study the French revolutions, all 9 of them. [how to barricade]

This is how you fucking do it: [That is a 6 lb’er, which would churn the entire street for a half a block into chum if charged with grapeshot]

One of my favorite cafes is just across the street to camera left. I had many breakfasts of hot chocolate and croissants, literally, where that cannon is pointing. It’s crazy, crazy stuff to realize that the places you are familiar with have been battlefields before, and they will be again. I see the protesters getting shoved by cops and I’m screaming at the screen, “damn it! grab one of them! take hostages!” and “fly drones over, drop glitter bombs, and tell them to disarm and back off or the next wave is gasoline.” Use pepper spray and we’ll tar and feather you, when we overrun you. The people who are getting their rocks off beating taco-makers (hey!) and old journalists really need to test their courage against some real shit. If they were dealing with 1830s Parisians they’d form up in the street with their shields in a nice 1-deep shield “wall” and suddenly find themselves the recipients of well-aimed cinderblocks dropped from the rooftops of the buildings on both sides of the street. The only unit that would stand that was Napoleon’s old’ guard. Caesar’s Legio X would have gone on the offensive and that would have been bad.

Anyhow, I see what is going on and it’s all I can do to just shrug and think it’ll work itself out. Remember, they are surrounded by cities of people. It’s “blackhawk down” times ten. The administration is sending 100 national guard from Texas. Wow. Really? 1830 Parisians would have overwhelmed them in a minute and taken their weapons and trousers and sent them crying back to their rear lines.

PS – isn’t that osoraku tactical AF?