[TheForge] Japanese Sen experimentation

[Frederick Faller]

After the thread a few weeks back about the Japanese
using the Sen to remove metal from blades I did a bit
of poking around and asked a few questions.

After I had some idea about what I was doing, I took
and old file that had been abused. It was about
.30"thick (big file) I ground the teeth off one face
about 3" wide in the middle. Then I ground the edge so
that all the teeth were gone (carefull not to burn the
steel in the grinding process) and then I ground the
bevel to the smooth side of the file to be 60-70
degrees and sharpened the edge with sharpening stones
until it would shave my thumbnail.

Using a 1.5 X 1.5 angle iron I clamped in a vise, I
clamped a softened steel blade to the horizontal flat
of the angle iron so I could support the blade over
its length and used the ground file (sen) as a
scraper. It was amazing. With a little practice I
could take off curls of steel like shaving wood with a
good plane. I could even smell them ... like the smell
of steel curls coming off a lathe.

In half an hour, I had done what it would have taken
several hours to do with a file and the surface was
surprisingly smooth.

An excellent way to remove metal and shape a forged
blade without lots of grinding. I'm sold!

 

Frederick W. Faller
Shiloh Forge Ironware http://users.rcn.com/ffaller/SFI_web.htm
www.immerland.com


		
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