Bushido and Fabrication, Japanese sword making part 3

There are certain parts of any project that are like slipping into a really comfortable pair of shoes.  For me that is wood working.  Making the scabbard (saya) and the hilt (tsuka) is, for me, a perfect blending of precise geometric woodworking and organic wood sculpting.  My tanto blade has a tang (handle) that tapers in thickness so I laminated wood veneers directly on the tang so the tsuka would have a tight fit.  On Japanese swords the tsuka is secured to the blade with a conical bamboo pin.  Once all the veneers were glued and laid up, I drilled the hole for the pin and shaped the tsuka into a smooth rounded cross section with rasps and sand paper.  The tsuka of tantos are typically covered in stingray skin which was considered to be a luxury material from southern Japan.  I obtained a stingray hide from a vendor in Los Angeles I cut two pieces of Stingray skin and inlaid them into the sides of tsuka.  In the top picture you can see the tsuka.  The ray skin is the brown material on the sides.  The saya is in the foreground which I will describe next.

To make the saya I selected two pieces of wood.  The blade was placed on one of the wood pieces and traced with a pencil.  The void that the blade occupies is traditionally carved out with chisels.  I decided to use a router because I could achieve the same result much faster.  As I mentioned in the last post the blade floats loosely in the saya so I cut out the space to be a loose fit everywhere except where the habaki would rest.  I would adjust the fit to the habaki with files once the saya was finished.  Once the void was carved out I glued a second piece of wood to the top.  The outside outline was then cut on a band saw and the saya was smoothed and shaped in the same way as the tsuka.

Making the wood parts was fun and quick, and In the last photo, you can see I achieved a nice fit of the blade in the saya.  The next part of the project definitely has me stepping outside of my comfort zone.  Making the habaki was good practice for the next phase where I will be making four different metal fittings.   Stay tuned...