[TheForge] Japanese Sen experimentation

[Frederick Faller]

Probably there is no difference. I had never seen a
scraper used on iron (at least not in the context of
black or blade smithing and the information I got
about it in information about japanese sword making it
was called a sen. 

--- Bruce Freeman <FREEMAB at pt.fdah.com> wrote:
> What you're describing sounds like a scraper.  Is
> there a difference?
> 
> Bruce
> NJ
> 
> >>> f_faller at yahoo.com 3/17/2005 12:37:25 PM >>>
> 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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Frederick W. Faller
Shiloh Forge Ironware http://users.rcn.com/ffaller/SFI_web.htm
www.immerland.com

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