Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Quasi-shinobi-zukuri o-tanto and tanto and upswept fighter

These got made a while back, but just this week got sheaths. All are forged from 3/4" round 5160 and given the usual triple normalized, triple hardened, triple tempered heat treatment I use on that alloy. All have paracord wraps with an underlay and an overlay with two strand Turk's head knots, all impregnated with Minwax Wood Hardener. They'll be making the trip to Atlanta next week.


The tanto and o-tanto are both my rendition of a shobu-zukuri style, with a pinched-in spine and no yokote. But I don't claim to be traditional in anything I do, especially making a forge-finished Japanese-style blade with a paracord handle, so I throw the quasi in there as well. :D If nothing else, there's a secondary bevel that true Japanese blades don't have. And a choil.


The tanto is overall 13" long with a 7 3/8" blade.

The o-tanto is 18 1/2" overall with a 12 1/2" blade. I gave it extra curvature prior to the hardening phase, and it straightened itself up to right where I hoped it would. What's weird is that I seem to get negative sori mostly on Japanese-style blades. It's like they know. :) Except I didn't get a noticeable amount on the tanto. They need some length to them for the negative sori to really show up.

The sheaths are Kydex with two MOLLE locks. I think of the color scheme for the paracord as "Kill Bill". :)


The upswept fighter has an overall length of 11 3/4" and a blade length of 6 3/8". Its paracord is black for the underlay and olive drab for the overlay. The sheath is a foldover design with a single MOLLE lock.



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