[TheForge] Japanese Sen shapes

[Ron Childers]

Bruce,
Jessie made his sen using spring steel. It's straight across with a curved
blade in the center the size & shape he wants the "blood grove". ---v--- or

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Any way, he does good work with it. A file, properly tempered, should work
even better; or at least hold the edge better...

Ron C 



I just pulled up a description of a sen.  The shape is different.  It's
like a drawknife in shape, but apparently can be used on the push or
pull stroke (?).  Apparently the sen is principally for swordmaking.

A scraper is like a file with no teeth, the end being sharpened for
scraping.  It's principally for making surfaces flat.

So it sounds like two different tools to do similar but different jobs
by the same means of cutting .

Bruce
NJ

>>> f_faller at yahoo.com 3/18/2005 11:04:26 AM >>>
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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